I have been with my girlfriend for about a four months now and I love her to death. She is everything I want in a partner, kind, caring and she loves me a lot. We are different people in a lot of ways but that’s something I enjoy as it has allowed me to try different things and it is something she has liked as well. A big thing that is different about us is our relationship history’s however. I don’t enjoy hookup culture at all and don’t see the value of sex outside of a relationship. I just know that it’s not for me and I think subconsciously I look down on people that have hooked up with a bunch of people in the past because I don’t get why people would have sex with someone they don’t truly love. I have only had 3 other previous partners in the past but I couldn’t see I would have enjoyed it any other way.
Recently my girlfriend has opened up to me about her past and said she had a lot of unemotional sex in the past and has said that her previous hookups have formed who she is today. Everytime she tells me a story about her past it involves her one night stand experiences and it seems she reminisces on this time fondly. I want to her about her past and previous relationships but everytime she mentions when she has hooked up with someone I get a deep feeling of nervousness and anxiety and my body starts to feel weird. It feels like she hasn’t cared about the previous people she has slept with so why would she care for me. She assured me that’s not the case but the more I hear about her past the more it has changed the perception I have had of her in my head. She said that she hasn’t liked commitment in the past at all but she suddenly changed this year when she met me. She hadn’t been in an actual relationship because of this and if she wanted to have sex with someone she would just do it. It started making me feel like a “safe” option which is not something that I wanted. I just can’t shake this feeling I have inside when she has talked about the guys she has hooked up. It just makes me so mad and upset when she speaks so blasé about it because I feel like your body is important and the people who you share yourself with should be as well. I just don’t get why she would fuck all these douchebags just for fun, say she doesn’t love them, then meet me and magically become committed.
She has mentioned that her past “relationships” have all been hookups and her sexual history was a big part of her past and the story’s she tells. On the contrary I would never speak about my past sexual escapades of my partners with her because I would feel like it’s disrespectful to her to talk about having sex with other women when I’m with her. I have told her how I felt about this and how I think I get emotionally triggered by it and how I feel when she tells me these things. She said that I was slutshaming her for her past and said that my reaction was disgust to her. She said that I had hurt her very bad after my reaction to the things she said and she feels like she is censoring herself whenever she has to talk about her past. I just don’t know what to do about my reaction or if it’s valid or not. I told her I would try and get therapy but she didn’t like that I was getting myself down. I feel really bad that I had made her feel this way but I can’t help my body’s reaction to when she talks about these things. I need advice on how to proceed with my relationship and if anybody else has been in situations like this how did you navigate it?
Tldr: I get upset when my girlfriend talks about her hookups, I tried setting a boundary which she didn’t enjoy and now I have to figure out how to deal with it.