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Monday, March 30, 2015

A friend told me about my wife’s sexual past – and now I can’t trust her



The dilemma I am troubled by my wife’s sexual past. I recently found out through a mutual friend who knew her before I met her that my wife had been a “bit of a groupie” and had slept with several men in bands. We have pretty much told each other everything about our lives, and this part of my wife’s life has come as a shock to me, as I had no idea. I knew she liked to see bands play, but didn’t know she had slept with the musicians. A mutual friend joked that she probably spent more time in hotel rooms than in her own bedroom when she was younger. I don’t trust her any more, as this sounds to me like someone else, not my wife. It’s all true, by the way – she did confess to it, but played it down. We have had some bad arguments about it. This has soured what was otherwise a good marriage.
Mariella replies Nice friend you’ve got! But I’ll come to your informant in a moment. This is the second letter I’ve had this week from a lover haunted by their partner’s past. My first was from an 18-year-old dating a man of 28 with an ex-fiancée and two kids back in the gloaming. What was concerning her was how he could have had a second child with the mother of his first, a woman he “had never loved”.
A relationship as a compromise or half-formed thing is anathema to most young people, who view the emotional world as a place of emphatic action ruled by prevailing passions far stronger than empathy or irrationality. This young lady seemed floored by the possibility that this man could have loved before (unthinkable when you’re young and naive) and baffled as to how, when whatever they had together waned, he’d failed to simply call it quits and lingered long enough to father again. Clearly this guy had made some foolish choices – you could argue one of them was saying that he’d never loved his ex. His teenage girlfriend probably needs to keep an eye on him as the relationship evolves to ensure that it wasn’t wilful irresponsibility which has left him a separated father of two before his 30th birthday.
Why should I care about all this, you may ask. The reason is this – at 18 it’s normal to imagine that you need to compete with a partner’s past. You and I, however, know that one of the really satisfying aspects of maturity is the understanding it offers into life’s less clear-cut scenarios. The human heart is an ever-expanding organ, and its ability to stretch and grow to encompass each new relationship is one of the miracles of life.
You have had a happy marriage and that makes you a lucky man. Your wife, like all of us, is of course the sum of her past, but all that adds up to making her the person you fell in love with. She’s admitted she enjoyed some nights of passion with the objects of her desires – who wouldn’t take such an opportunity when young, free and single? What more do you want from her in atonement? It’s not for you to judge or condone, accept or rage against; it’s just what was. So why have you allowed this friend, who clearly has his own agenda, to let his “reminiscences” come between you?
To me this “friend” has something of the Shakespearean villain about him – he is clearly mindful of how a seed of doubt well sown can fester and flourish in the human mind. What possible reason could he have for his “revelations”, and why does he feel he can insult your wife without you resorting to Neanderthal protective impulses? There’s plenty of material in all our lives that is inexplicable even to ourselves, and when a third party gets involved, demanding logical answers, we tend to flounder about, digging ourselves deeper and deeper into the sand. If only life were so simple that A led to B and then to C, though that would be pretty dull.
She’ll never be able to satisfactorily explain to you why she embraced a lifestyle you struggle to understand – and nor should she have to. Neither will my other correspondent ever know for sure what her boyfriend felt for his ex or what went on in their relationship. The solution is not to judge or dwell on what preceded you but to accept your wife for the woman she is now, not the experiences that shaped her along the way. If you ditch anyone, I suggest it be your so-called “friend”.


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