Hi. I (20F) have a boyfriend (26M). We've been officially together for about a year, but we've known each other for around two years and got close quite quickly. He's my first real relationship and my first sexual partner. I'm still discovering life, relationships, and intimacy, so everything is very new for me.
At the beginning everything moved very fast, including sex. Later, he shared his Google Calendar with me for normal relationship reasons, and out of curiosity I looked at older events. I ended up discovering things I didn't expect at all : he had a FetLife account, he used to be involved in BDSM/kink communities, and he experimented with a lot of practices in the past. Some of the things he tried are very far from what I imagined from him, and the discovery affected me strongly.
I had a very intense disgust reaction, and we argued about it a lot. It shifted how I experience our intimacy. We also tried a few things early in the relationship, and now those memories feel uncomfortable… The more we talk about his past, the more distant I feel.
He keeps telling me "curiosity kills the cat", but I disagree. If I hadn't found out on my own, I don't think he would have brought it up this early, and and I would've felt betrayed later. So I'm torn between feeling it's good that I know, and still feeling disturbed.
We agreed to stop talking about sex completely and try to "reset" and go slowly. But every time we try to be intimate again, I get intrusive images of what I learned and I feel the disgust come back. He says we don't have to do any of those things, and that he was young when he explored all that, and that he has changed. I'm just not sure that people are really capable of changing that much over time.
I also realised I really dislike the kink community in general, it feels artificial and disconnected from the kind of intimacy I want, and discovering this has made me feel more distant from him. I used to be open to experimenting, but now everything feels mechanical and without emotion, like I'm only doing things because I know he enjoys them.
I thought our intimacy was something unique we were building together, but now it feels like he's drawing from past experiences. I can't seem to shake this feeling, and I'm worried things won't go back to how they were.
I don't know what to do…
I've been trying some cognitive-behavioural techniques on my own, but I don't know if it's going to help…is it the age gap? Is it even possible to fix the relationship at this stage? Should I just pretend none of this happened and "fake it 'till I make it"?
He is a very good person, and we have a lot of compatibility outside this issue. Part of me believes that with time we could learn how to coexist with our differences and build something stable. Things were really good between us before all this. But the more I learn about his past and his way of thinking, the more out of sync I feel (maybe because I'm trying to control him unintentionally?). I'm trying to understand whether this is related to the age gap, or simply the difference in life and experience, since I'm still "discovering life".
Any advice would help …
TL;DR: I (20F) found out about my boyfriend's (26M) past kink/BDSM experiences and now I feel distant and uncomfortable during intimacy. I'm struggling to move past it and don't know how to process these feelings. Looking for advice.