Thank you for saying it better than I could.
I’d fap to the porn and then decide.
The past is no problem, lying about it/ hiding it is.
Never trade places with me.
Seriously man, never do that.
We don’t necessarily know that. It’s obviously something that she’s very reluctant to talk about, and would likely have put off talking about it as long as she felt she ethically could - and we don’t know how long that might have been, because he asked her about it first. And when he asked, she said, “I don’t want to talk about my past, but I will if you insist.” He didn’t insist, so she didn’t tell him - and at that point, I think she’s justified in never telling him. She’s made it clear that there’s something big in her past. He’s willing to marry her without finding out what it was. He’s knowingly taking the risk that marrying her is worth the chance that she’s done something he’d find unforgivable. By doing so, he’s released her from the obligation to disclose her past.
(Interesting, incidentally, that it only took five posts before someone started assuming that the ex-prostitute and porn star was a woman, and the other person a man - and here I am, doing the same thing.)
Bonus questions: If you’re Sean, how do you feel about Alex finding and revealing this information? If you’re Terry, how do you feel?
I voted for " Asshole" Because that should be on all polls, including General Elections.
No.
But if you’re considering the “til death do us part” bit, then you DO bring up any aspects of your past that you think the other party might consider a deal-breaker. You DON’T marry someone under false pretenses, and hiding something from your partner because you think it might be a deal-breaker is false pretenses.
Happy new year, Skald! Wait a minute, you’re not trying to take over the world anymore? But you are still an Evil Overlord, aren’t you? And you still worship Athena, yes?
Few people have absolutely squeaky clean pasts. And I personally am a great fan of avoidance as a strategy for dealing with unpleasantness. There’s a fair amount of my own past that I would be unlikely to share with someone I met now; the biggest difference is that it’s much further in my past than it is in Terry’s (and thus might well not even occur to me to share).
If I’ve known Terry long enough to want to marry him/her and to trust that his/her standard of behavior in all kinds of situations, such as stress or anger, is something I can live with, then the past is not a deal-breaker. The important thing is how “past” it is for Terry. If s/he’s traumatized by it, then it’s important for him/her to get therapy. But there doesn’t seem to be any indication of such trauma. Terry’s “crimes” were all things that, if I were dictator, would be perfectly legal, so while I am a believer in rule of law, to me, some laws are more equal than others (I am a flawed human being).
It seems evident to me that all along, Terry’s primary goal has been to shield Sean, not to deceive him/her. And, yes, perhaps the best thing for Terry to have done when discussing marriage with Sean was to pop up with “Oh, by the way, you should probably know that I used to be a porn-star and a hooker, as well as, as you already know, a drug addict.” But I find it perfectly understandable that s/he didn’t, and I wonder, if this became concrete for someone, how likely they would be to say it themselves if in Terry’s situation. There’s a lot to be said for letting sleeping dogs lie.
The six month wait would be a serious problem for me, too. I would think there was something going on, naturally. I don’t think I would wait, to be honest.
Beyond that, the only thing that bothers me is the warrant for the arrest.
Having been the Terry to my wife’s Sean, I vote “water under the bridge”. I won’t go into the details, but I have a sexual past that many people would not be able to accept. Like Terry, I waited several months before having sex with my then-future wife, and only did so after getting tested (I didn’t insist on testing for her, as given her past she had zero chance of having contracted anything). I told her that I had had unprotected sex with many women, that I had stopped after I met her but before we started dating (which was a conscious decision), and that I had been tested and was clean.
My wife never pressed for details about my past except to make sure that I was healthy and that she would be safe. I don’t think she even thinks about it anymore. I don’t know what she would do if it were somehow exposed.
Without reading any other responses: For the most part, water under the bridge… but I’d strongly encourage Terry and Sean to seek some premarital counselling to discuss the fact that Terry tried completely hiding her past from Sean. She didn’t trust him enough to expect him to understand that it was all in the past. And possibly with good reason: would Sean be able to get over it? (if not, he’s a fool).
Plus: there’s always the chance that outstanding warrant might come back and bite both of them at some point. Time to consult a lawyer. Maybe just waiting out the statute of limitations, but still it’s best to have that cleared up one way or the other.
Without reading the the other responses, I think that the issue is the lack of disclosure. I would be very troubled by the fact that Terry is keeping secrets of that nature. It appears that they have known each other for two years at this point. I couldn’t be with someone who does that, because I couldn’t be sure that they weren’t keeping other things from me.
Coupled with the outstanding bench warrant, I would run.
Not to be all judgmental and everything, but -
[list=a][li]I wouldn’t get involved with an ex-junkie in the first place, and[/li][li]I wouldn’t get involved with an ex-junkie who was an ex-porn star and ex-prostitute in the second place, and[/li][li]An ex-junkie with outstanding warrants likely has other, unresolved issues in the third place, and[/li][li]I wouldn’t get involved with an ex-junkie in the first place.[/list]My wise father once said [/li][quote=My Dad]
Never get involved with a woman whose problems are worse than yours.
[/quote]
Regards,
Shodan
Shodan, I think the point here is that Sean is him/herself an ex-junkie, and s/he has no way to know that Terry is an ex-porn star and ex-prostitute. Nothing in Terry’s manner or demeanor suggests that kind of background. A reluctance to discuss the past can stem from many causes, by no means all (or even most) of which reflect poorly on the person who is reluctant.
Do you see yourself as so perceptive that you would automatically sense that someone had an ex-porn or ex-prostitute past? Or would you simply reject automatically someone who was reluctant to discuss his/her past, even though that reluctance could, for example, be due to a great-grandfather having been heir to a grand-duchy in pre-Revolution Russia, and Terry doesn’t want to be viewed as the child of privilege? Or perhaps Terry had abuse in his/her childhood, had worked through it, and didn’t want to be defined by it in his/her present. Or maybe s/he just doesn’t get along very well with his/her family, and prefers to stay silent on the topic of his/her past.
You’re not being judgmental so much as patting yourself on the back for perception that I suspect you don’t actually have (nor does anyone else). In any case, your response is outside the parameters of the hypothetical. Whether or not you, in your perceptive brilliance, would have immediately recognized Terry for an ex-porn star or ex-prostitute, Sean did not. As for being an ex-junkie, Sean has apparently found Terry to be helpful in maintaining his/her own sobriety, and thus feels, if anything, that Terry’s background is not only a non-deal-breaker, but actually helpful to him/her. Of course, you, in your shining rectitude, would never be an ex-junkie yourself, but then we come back to the issue of how you would know Terry had been. Not everyone who has been an addict and now is not goes around dangling sobriety chips in other people’s faces, and even current junkies are often able to present themselves as normal people, let alone ex-junkies. So just how would you know Terry had been a drug user at some time earlier in life?
I think what your answer really is is that you would drop Terry like a hot potato the moment you found out anything about his/her past, and at best, try very hard to pretend you’d never known him/her at all. At worst, I think you’d try to get back at Terry some way for having lead you into having an affair with such a despicable person - most likely by public exposure to make sure that no other innocents might be the victims of his/her wiles. You might well feel that it was your duty, and I don’t think you’re a person who slacks off when it comes to duty (which, btw, is an admirable quality).
Yeah, I too find that curious. Is it not reasonable to think it’s the reverse? (There are male prostitutes and porn stars, after all.)
For that matter, they could be a homosexual couple of either stripe.
Does no one else wonder how voluntary Terry’s porn career was, giveven that it started at 15?
Poster-not-OP: Demonstrating the sexism I try to overcome but never entirely eradicate: as Sean my reaction depends somewhat on Alex’s gender. I’d be more likely to be suspicious of motives if Alex is male rather than female. Silly, I know.
I think Terry would be ambivalent. The bit about the STD tests implies to me that Terry thinks Sean has a right to know about the past incidents, but is afraid to disclose it.
Any lawyers listening? How much would Terry need to worry about a years-old misdemeanor warrant? As long as she or he stayed out of California, what is the practical impact?
(As OP, I should have specified that I imagined the charge was a misdemeanor. Sorry 'bout that, and if someone wants to argue the contrary I won’t claim it as gospel.)
Poster-not-OP:
Assuming Terry was using heroin while a hooker and porn star (not specified in the OP, but it seems likely to me), it seems reasonable to want a prospective mate tested. Terry dodged a bullet in not catching anything (or nothing that couldn’t be cleared up by antibiotics) and might well be hypersensitive to the danger.
Also, according to the OP, you’re Sean.
You don’t want to be involved with the likes of Sean and Terry, sit this poll out. 
Interestingly, Jesus once said the exact same thing.
Wait, I’m sorry, he had the exact opposite attitude.
I don’t think the statute of limitations is relevant. Wouldn’t the clock stop once she fled the jurisdiction?
As for the trust issue: I’ve dated women in the past who had major traumas in their history, some seriously. I don’t think they were obligated to tell me all the details, and I can easily imagine Terry being a porn star & later a hooker for reasons she never wants to dredge up. That part of her discretion does not seem a betrayal to me.
I am not aware of the verse where Jesus advised us to marry ex-junkies.
I am not talking about repudiating them, or condemning them. I am talking about not entering into a life-long commitment to live with them.
I thought the OP said they had met in an NA meeting. I think assuming he/she is an ex-junkie is a pretty safe bet.
We were talking, I thought, about how we might react to the news that a fiancée/fiancé was an ex-porn star, ex-hooker, and had outstanding warrants. The question in the OP is
To which my response is “yes, I would change my plans”.
I thought one of the tenets of a twelve-step program like NA was that you had dealt with the consequences of your drinking/using. Skipping the jurisdiction and leaving a warrant outstanding seems like an indication that perhaps one has not quite made it all the way thru the program.
Regards,
Shodan
I wonder what Jesus would have to say about Millionaire Matchmaker Patti Stanger’s idea of having your five non negotiables.