Hi everyone,
I recently posted here about feeling unsettled because my girlfriend doesn’t care much about having an orgasm—and instead finds the greatest enjoyment in the emotional closeness of our sex. Your responses were thoughtful and helpful in giving me some perspective.
But I’m still stuck on one thing: prior to our relationship, she was much more sexually “free”—casual flings, friends-with-benefits, a more adventurous past than our dynamic now—even within previous long-term relationships.
If now her main motivation is emotional closeness, how do I reconcile that with the fact she was comfortable in more casual, less emotionally connected sexual scenarios before? It leaves me feeling insecure—like maybe sex with me just isn’t “exciting” enough, and closeness has become a fallback reason.
Has anyone dealt with a similar disconnect between a partner’s past sexual behavior and current desires? What perspectives helped you hold on to confidence while navigating this?
4 comments
It’s a terrain you need to navigate very carefully. From my experience, I’ve always made sure at the beginning of any important relationship, that I’m poly and have no interest in (or even fully understand) monogamy, and that is to avoid situations where there are what I consider deem fundamental incompatibilities.
In your case, it might be worth discussing with your partner what her motives are for entering what I assume is a monogamous relationship with you. Some people are perfectly capable of alternating mono and poly relationships, so it might be perfectly fine in your case.
On the other hand, if your issue is simply with accepting the fact that she’s a poly person, or that she considers sex as a valuable addition to friendship (which is also my personal stance), then it might be the case for you to do some research on the topic, and see if you can come to terms with it.
I’m sort of in the same boat. Wife was a virgin when we met. I wasn’t. She tempted me to do stuff. I was the first to make her have an orgasm she says. She even recently told me she watches porn with a prior boyfriend. Now our sex life is very vanilla and the slightest hint at any fantasy, kink, etc is basically ignored or so taboo it turns into silence or an argument. I’m not sure where to go from there because I’m always considered the bad guy. 🤷🏻♂️
Her past is not her now. It’s that simple. Would you like to be held to a past version of you?
This comes down, once again, to you either not fully understanding or not fully accepting her current motivations. You are questioning why she doesn’t want to orgasm with you and right now you’ve found her past to focus on. Tomorrow maybe you’ll find another reason to question her. It’s unfair. Either trust what she is telling you now or don’t. But don’t take what she has told you about her past and use it as a reason to distrust who she is presenting herself as now.
These are her current views on sex. That’s all that matters. Her teenager and younger self are irrelevant.
Thinking sex with you isn’t “exciting” enough and closeness is a “fallback” is pure insecurity. You can attempt to search for an answer that satisfies you (so start by asking HER your above question) directly and deal with the fallout of opening that can of worms and how she feels about her past and current words being questioned, or you choose to recognise this is an illogical insecurity and refute it with logic and truth– that people change.
If you feel you can’t trust her, end it. If you can’t end your insecurities, end it. If you just fundamentally feel you’re incompatible with a woman who doesn’t have orgasms as a goal, end it. It’s all up to you– but don’t be unfair to her, compare her to her past, or insinuate she is lying because she has personally changed.
Get her a magic wand plug in – if she can’t juice out on that – well! I did for my partner who couldn’t always orgasm and we have it out every chance we get;)