Different question [relationship advice]

I posted earlier and I got a lot of helpful answers
but I think I should have wrote it in a different way.

http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=602696

My concerns are more about a long-term relationship.

I think it is easy to deal with it as a question but
really when it comes to a private life, dont people
want to have a nice life ?
If a female has to imagine her partner going to sleep with
a slut and pay for it (even years before meeting him),
then I dont think she would want that thought for too
long. It is easier to leave him than feeling like, well,
see those houses/adverts/… he was there with them.
It can get pretty nasty, and from my experience people
keep these thoughts hidden until it gets really hard to live
with… dont you agree ? is it wrong that this is giving me
a bit of anxiety over my future ?

Dude. You’re being ridiculous. No girl on this planet thinks like you do.

I’d be more worried about the medical aspects of it, but once he was clear, I don’t think it would bother me on a daily basis.

My husband wasn’t a virgin when he married me, and that doesn’t ever really bother me. I think about it on occasion, and sometimes I’ll ask him about past relationships, but it’s not like knowing it is something that hurts me intensely or anything. :smiley:

I can’t see that sleeping with a prostitute is any different than sleeping with anyone else. In some sense, at least with a prostitute, I’m less likely to know who they are, and less likely to run into them, so I don’t have to think - Oh hey, that’s my acquaintance from college right across the restaurant with her husband, and here I am with MY husband, and they used to sleep together. How weird is that! So, there’s already a bonus there.

I think you’re a little strung up about this. If you feel that it’s bad to have seen a prostitute (didn’t read the other thread and am just guessing from your OP) then that’s on you to hash out with yourself. I don’t think every girl ever will have a problem with it and judge you/leave you because of it. There may be individual (very religious or very anti-prostitution for two examples) girls who will not like it, but not every girl has that background.

What does this sentence mean? I’ve read it over several times and keep coming up blank.

Could you do your readers the service of responding to the questions you were asked in your last thread?

Where are you living?(Country) How old are you?(roughly) Is English your first language?

Now it’s about sleeping with a slut? I don’t know a single male that hasn’t slept with a slut at some point. Paid or not, is a hair splitting difference.

If you’re not going to respond to questions posed, then we have very little to go on.

I live in Wales, I am from an Arab country, and well no English isnt my first lang.

I did say I wasnt from a western country and I am 26.

Nobody is perfect, neither am I but I dont know why I feel this history is
going to slpa me in the face really hard in the future. After all that’s what
I chose to do to make myself feel better in a way. It can change and does
change a females view of me. I can love, I am caring, I want an intimate
relationship but this can make any female feel like they are sleeping with
someone who used another female or with someone who god knows
what… I dont know… I am just going mental over my self-image,
I have lost confidence…

Seriously, very nearly no women in Wales are going to give a shit. You’re making a mountain out of a molehill. And this didn’t require a second thread.

I can understand why this is making you anxious, but it has happened and is in the past, and it’s not as if some women don’t have their own shameful pasts that they’re sure have tarnished them forever, at least in men’s eyes. The real question is: If you find a woman who doesn’t mind that this happened at all, or does mind but ‘forgives’ you out of love (I know it’s not her place to forgive, since this happened before you met this hypothetical woman, but I can imagine it would seem like this if you told her later in the relationship), are you also willing to accept her faults?

So, you feel like you’ve lost confidence, lost some inner purity or manliness or something fuck-all. It sounds like you need… a quest! Yes, a quest. If videogames have taught me anything, it’s that no funk is too deep not to be solved by a character-enriching side quest. In the digital world, this usually involves slaying some nasty monster or fetching some rare item. In real life, I recommend camping. Rough it for a little while. Get in touch with your inner awesomeness. Dance around a bonfire waving your ding-dong about! You’ll feel right as rain in a few weeks.

Thanks for answering those few questions, it really does help to understand where you’re coming from.

That said, you need to recognize this is all about you. Women do not think and react the way you are imagining. Well, maybe last century in some backward place where purity is all. What you’re doing is called projection. This isn’t about how they will feel or react at all, it’s all about what you feel and you’re projecting it onto them, and imagining you can never date again, sigh.

Remember that famous Woody Allen line about, ‘I’d never want to be a member of any club that would want me, as a member!’ This is sort of what you’re doing. You’re not saying it outright, of course, but it appears as though you’re saying you can never date again because you wouldn’t want to be with any woman who would accept a man who had slept with a prostitute.

It has nothing to do with the women and everything to do with you. You’ve convinced yourself that you have so defiled yourself, in sleeping with a prostitute, that you are no longer fit to date virtuous women.

No one can really help you with this issue as it’s all you. Get over yourself already. Nobody’s perfect. Climb on down from that high horse and join us regular flawed beings.

You know what’s really virtuous? Being able to forgive someone their shortcomings. Could you forgive a woman who had slept with a male slut, (let’s put aside the issue of payment, for the moment), or would she, regardless of any other accomplishments, or virtues, be forever defiled in your eyes?

If you answer, ‘yes, I could forgive her’, then take a hard look at why you can’t forgive yourself, or imagine any worthy woman could forgive you. If you answer, ‘no, I could not forgive a less than virtuous woman’, then that explains a great deal. You are feeling a harsh judgment, (where none actually exists), because you judge others just as harshly.

So which is it? Could you forgive a woman such transgressions?

Sorry, that’s Groucho Marx. Alvy Singer (played by Woody Allen) quotes Groucho in Annie Hall.

Please continue.

yes yes it is true. that is 50% of my problem.

the other 50% is that i have also experienced that
a woman will try to save a relationship even if it
means hiding their true feelings.
let’s say she loves me and she tells me ok i forgive
you or ok let it go. but it can hurt her and if she wants
to save us then she will get sad behind my back.
this is what I dont want and this is what happened to
my last relationship. she tried so hard but wasnt strong
enough and i couldnt help anymore.

this is not rare, humans may forgive but they cant forget.
the image, the thought, … it can be hard for anyone
to let go and we all know that females are more emotional.

i have got myself into this and this is giving me anxiety.

not saying everyone will be the same but the fact that I have
to now dea with this thought is killing me.

Can you address this point? It would help us to understand where you stand on forgiveness generally. Although you seem to be saying you can forgive but never forget. Hmm, doesn’t really sound like forgiveness at all, really.

Female here.

Not once in my life have I ever sat around and imagined or thought “has my partner slept with a slut?” or “has my partner paid for it?” before they met me.

Know why? Because I don’t care. I have other things to think about and occupy my time with. My concerns are in the here and now, or for the future. If there is anything in either of our backgrounds that would affect there here and now, then there is an obligation to disclose. Other than that, who cares.

You are obsessing to the point where I wonder if you have OCD. Have you seen a mental health professional about these thoughts?

Yes I am seeing because as I said I have anxiety - partially caused by the woman I was with as she had anger issues. I was happy and confident and young, now I have anxiety, I have lost confidence, and I feel old…
Instead of leaving her I decided to satisfy myself with prostitutes, now that its all over I am not even thinking of sex let alone paying for it but what I am thinking instead is that I could be categorised as god knows what - sex abuser, some one with sex issues, or any nasty thing nobody would want to be around…
This is adding to my problems…

@elbows
>> So which is it? Could you forgive a woman such transgressions?

I dont know really, would be a bit hard I guess which is why I am finding myself scary for a woman…

And if he told you he had or you found out ?

I wouldn’t care. It’s in the past, and nothing from those incidents affects our present or future. It’s a non-issue.

ok. My anxiety may make things feel very different.

Being able to forgive yourself hinges upon being able to forgive another, like a potential partner. When you judge another for making mistakes, whatever they may be, you are neglecting to recognize that, you also have made mistakes. All human beings make mistakes - that’s how they learn to forgive, both themselves and others. Making mistakes is something we all have in common.

Being able to forgive others, their shortcomings, stems from recognizing we have them also.

(If you have a religious faith, you should look up forgiveness, both for yourself and for others. I believe all faiths address it.)

Unbalancing your mental health by obsessively imagining how another person must surely feel about your past, is a really good reason to consider a therapist, cause that’s a long way to go to find something to obsess about, in my opinion.

I think the main thing standing in the way of a relationship is the fact that you seem to think you already know everything about your future girl-friend, because you know what women are like. You know what she thinks, what her values are, how she will act when she disagrees with you, how you will eventually break up. Not every girl is the same. Not every woman is a carbon-copy of your psycho ex. Practically none of them will behave exactly the way you expect them to; there is not a template they were designed to.

This is all in your head. Stop believing all the stories you are telling yourself, and give a real person a chance.

I am told I am still young. So look at it this way.
Until 12 months ago I could approach anyone and
talk to them, smile, have fun,…
Now I have to learn how to say “oo by the way, I slept with
a few pros do you want to know why?”

How easy is that for a “young” person?

This is my image and I have no way out of it.

I dont think it has much to do with forgiving myself really
my life has changed.