SIGHS & moans: Living With Your New (or Even Long-Time) Lover's Sexual Past By. Ralph Greco

Yes, You Can Go Home Again, But Should You?: Living With Your New (or Even Long-Time) Lover's Sexual Past

In this installment of his series, writer Ralph Greco explores the perils of digging deep into your lover’s past.

Sorry, but all that fun sex you and your partner are having is likely not the first time for either of you. Even if you married four-score-and-a-bunch-of-years-ago, there was most likely some hanky-panky your lover got into before you met.

Not that their past matters or is any of your business, but so many of us begin down that path of: "Who was this person with before me?" or "How skilled was he/she/them?" and can’t then avoid considering or asking questions.

So, how do we deal with our lover's sexual past?

What You Don't Know Can Hurt You…If You Let It

The less we know about something we want to really know, the more we will pepper in details of our imagining trying to know it. And when it comes to what we might conjure over our lover's sexual past, these details can be doozies! Take some of what you have experienced, a little bit from the porn scenes you watch, and some assumptions, and boy, you could have a field day thinking up all kinds of bed-rocking scenarios only somebody in their 20's could be limber enough to manage.

In our fear of the unknown, we try to know. And in this trying, we damn well let our imaginations run wild. The problem is, unless we ask (and we will get into this in a bit), we can never know--and what we don’t know hurts us. We take to "awfulizing" (a term from noted psychologist Dr. Albert Ellis) -- investing the negative into that which we anticipate or worry over, and in a sexual connotation, this awfulizing assures you that your lover’s had bigger and better, and that their past lovers were all that much more experimental (which translates to “more exciting”).

But mainly, that they’re much more sexually experienced than you and, therefore, you would be an inadequate lover.

Too Many Time Triggers To Trigger You

Once the idea stakes its claim in your brain, it takes an awful lot of discipline to keep yourself from interrogating your partner about their past. But maybe you're not all to blame here.

These days we pretty much find a way to travel back in time at every turn. Facebook, Classmates.com, so many online portals allow anybody to go searching their glory days and for the past lover they made them with. But very little good ever comes from traipsing back into our intimate past. The internet is littered with too many long-term relationships that have ended because one partner or another risks hooking up decades later with their high school sweetheart via the ubiquitous “friend request.”

We are now so used to delving deep into what “was” we all have no filter for doing so. But just because you can do something (in this case, start interrogating your partner about their sexual past) doesn't mean you should.

If You've Asked The Question, You Might Have Already Lost Them

No matter how you couch it, hint at it, dance around with some clever semantics, sooner or later (and it's usually sooner), your lover will realize you are acting the part of a sexual Columbo. And once they realize you are mining for answers about their sexual pasts, unless they have no problem telling you about it (and for some couples, a little tipping through the tulips of one another's past liaisons act as a form of foreplay), your partner will start to resent you asking.

This need-to-know will come across as you being weak and scared of who you are now and what you can bring to the bed. This need-to-know can become quite bothersome, all but driving a wedge between you and the partner in question. And this need-to-know, sometimes, becomes all that a couple ever speaks about or tries to avoid.

So, avoid it.

Let's face it, even if you get to know all you want to know about your lover's sexual past, you can't change it or compete with it. It all happened before you; live with it. They’re with you now. Take comfort in that fact and let the rest go…or…make the both of you crazy with your questions and worry.

The Crush Letter
The Crush Letter is a weekly newsletter from Dish Stanley curating articles & intelligence on everything love & connection - friendship, romance, self-love, sex. If you’d like to take a look at some of our best stories go to Read Us. Want the Dish?