25th May, 2008
Question
I have been with my girlfriend for nearly 3 years and we are now engaged. We have a wonderful, loving relationship. I know she loves me more than anything in this world, as I do her. My concern is about her past relationships. The fact that she has been open with me about them is commendable, but there have been a few little details that I don't believe she needed to share with me.
She got into a reasonably long-lasting relationship when she was quite young, but broke it off because she knew it wasn't right for her. She then went abroad, met up with a man, and kept a travel diary, including intimate details of their time together. And when I asked her if she had ever had a one-night stand, she admitted that she had, with an old friend.
This started my concern about her value system, namely having sex versus making love with someone you love. But to my knowledge, this is the extent of her 'sexual' past, although I know there are other people she has dated.
She has recently moved in with me, which involved her leaving her home city, friends, family and a good job. She has secured a new job, and we're happily involved in planning our wedding, but I do know that she has certainly made a huge sacrifice for our relationship. However, during the process of unpacking, I stumbled across the said travel diary and read some of the details, which was very hard for me because I instantly had a 'visual'.
She said she'd forgotten about the travel diary, didn't realise it was with her many books, and said she'd never even read it. I explained that I did not want these things in 'our home' because I wanted to build our own memories and leave the past behind. So she threw out the travel diary. A few days later, when we were finishing off her unpacking, I found a photo album featuring, amongst other things, pictures of her first boyfriend - and this after I had explained how I didn't want any of this stuff in our home. She felt very bad and said she'd forgotten about this album as well, and that her sister must have packed it without mentioning it to her. She agreed, even encouraged me, to destroy all the pictures, which I did. I burned them. She also told me that they mean nothing and that she wants to move on to the next chapter of our lives.
Am I over-reacting about these things, and about the fact that she said she just forgot them? I am the last person to pass judgment on past mistakes and I am completely willing to leave it behind. It's just that these things keep surfacing and that's what makes me uncomfortable. If there was nothing concrete to be found, I wouldn't have a problem. I'm looking for honest feedback here.
Answer
Why don't you throw her out too? Or burn her on the bonfire of your insecurity? You're already bullying her to within an inch of her whole identity. What more do you want? Her mind?
Your girlfriend made a mistake. She misread you. She missed the fact that she's dealing with a vulnerable insecure and hence sexually jealous man. She's a child of her generation, misguidedly believing in the merit of telling all. When you asked about her past, she answered, too innocent to understand that questions can be traps. Or at least she was. I'm sure she knows all about it now.
Her past behaviour is not the problem. What's worrying is her present preparedness to appease you. You're jealous. And she believes that by allowing, indeed encouraging, you to throw out her travel diary and burn old photos of her and her first boyfriend, that your jealousy will ease. Maybe you should show her this letter you've written. She badly needs to learn the first principle of grown up behaviour: Appeasement never works.
Look at what's happened. You've taken the moral high ground, hiding your jealous insecurity behind a judgmental questioning of your girlfriend's value system. Suddenly she's in the dock, the sinner who got it wrong, one who is trying to make amends by throwing away all evidence of her past. She clearly still reeling from the shock of having thrown in her lot with you only to find herself emotionally bullied. Thrown off-balance, she doesn't see that in trying to fix it, she's making it her problem. But it's not her problem. It's yours.
You asked about her past. You asked if she'd had a one-night stand. You didn't 'stumble' across the travel diary. You looked for it while helping her to unpack. It didn't fall open either. It's entirely down to you that you got 'a visual' as you put it. And it wasn't an accident that you found her old photo album with pictures of that early boyfriend. You went through her stuff, driven by jealous hunger.
No, you're not overreacting. That's a kind of put-down and unfair to yourself. You're just missing the point. You are reacting to your own internal insecurity. Your distress is not caused by your girlfriend. The issue is not her past. The issue is your vulnerability. That vulnerability deserves due respect. Pretending the problem lies with your fiancé is a failure to pay proper respect. Accept that, and you can begin to heal that awful hurt.
You are a good kind and loving man, struggling to get it right. You have a woman who loves you. Your future could be so bright. Isn't all of that worth fighting for? Turn the searchlight on your terrified self.
