Aunt Agony 291109

Originally posted by Coffeelindy:

if you love someone, would you accept anything about his or her past?

if you cant, does it mean you dont love him enough?

when i got together with my bf, he told me everything about his past. i thought i could bear with it, but as time goes by, i start to mind alot of the things he did.
he had one night stand with a stranger. it may be common for people nowadays, but being a conservative person, i find it intolerable. needless to say, i am very affected by this unchangable fact.

He explained to me he did it out of pure curiosity. It was his first time doing it and the last. he claimed he did not enjoy it at all even though his 'erhem' felt good. i cannot believe. After seeing a woman naked, fondling her breasts, doing 'it' with her, and later chat with her on the bed with her being naked and also at the same time squeezing her breasts...and later still went to have supper together and back to the hotel and stayed until morning. So much time together and having such intimate actions...is it really possible not to be attracted to her at all? even not to her body alone? i really dont believe.... and i have been bothered by this constantly....

Anyone can suggest how can i overcome this? i really need help.



You are experiencing disequilibrium in managing your beliefs against this new input forced into your thoughts. Your difficulty stem from having to reconcile these two different set of values into a harmonious equation. Unless there is a shift of perception (or adoption of some newly constructed ones) - you will behave/react/feel in a way as if your boyfriend has cheated on you, which is of course detrimental to the growth of your love.

Personally, I do not think it's wise to share events that occurred in the past, ESPECIALLY if it doesn't value add the relationship. Some people think that they are being 100% open about themselves, but that's terrible one-sided because no matter what we think we have communicated, we are never 100% open. (Some people intentionally communicate such information, but that is another topic altogether and I won't touch on that here).

The other side of the coin (which is the greater evil) is that there are even more people who can't handle certain 'truth', even if it's in the past. I will explain a little: it's paramount that we maintain an open honest relationship with our current love. However the catch is that this responsibility only covers our current relationship - it doesn't mean that we should regress and extend this coverage into the past - ad infinitum.

The goal of love should always be forward looking - in regression, we could only seek to achieve little.

My lecturer once told me that when he was younger, he smoke pot - once. He doesn't like it and still grows up like any other law-bidding citizen in the country. Having to experiment it once doesn't make him a drug addict. You see, many people get into fights, steal or do stupid things when they are younger, but that doesn't necessary mean that they are potential violent murderers/robbers/thief (of course, unless the behaviour is reinforced in regular negative pattern and conditioned by their environment) because if so, most of us are in fact criminals.

We need to consider the component of a person's ability to evolve themselves, especially if it's just a one time off. Of course, this principle is less reliable if your boyfriend has history of engaging in ONS as compared to a one time off situation.

You are definitely entitled to your own beliefs and feelings. Just that, with all that focus onto his past, you could have spend that same deal of energy into making this relationship meaningful for the both of you.

Having a deontology belief, imho, does not relate to every case.

Cheers