My girlfriend and I kissed on our third date when we first started seeing each other. That night, we became intimate, and about two weeks later, we had sex for the first time. She was a virgin, and I was her first sexual partner.
We have now been together for a year and three months. Our relationship is great, and I genuinely believe she is someone I could marry. But there is one thing I cannot seem to get past. I keep thinking about how quickly she trusted me and became intimate with me.
It makes me uncomfortable and sometimes angry. Because of that, I find myself questioning whether I actually want to marry her.
I told her about these feelings eight months ago. She was understandably very hurt, but she agreed that we should work through this together.
She says what happened between us was mutual and that I have no right to judge her for it when I was equally involved. I understand her point, but I believe men and women are different when it comes to these things, and I cannot get past the fact that she trusted me and became intimate with me so easily.
Throughout our relationship, she has never given me any reason to believe she is promiscuous or unfaithful. Quite the opposite. She loves me deeply and has always been loyal to me.
But whenever I think about how our relationship started, I get angry all over again, and it makes me question whether I should marry her.
You need to hear this clearly: your girlfriend is not the problem here. You are.
You are angry at her for having sex with you.
Read that again.
You willingly participated in every step of this relationship. You kissed her. You became intimate with her. You had sex with her. And now, more than a year later, you have somehow taken something the two of you chose together and turned it into evidence against her character.
That is deeply unfair.
And your argument that men and women are different does not get you out of the hypocrisy. You are holding her to a standard that apparently did not apply to you while you were doing the exact same thing with her.
Worse, she was a virgin. You were her first sexual partner. By your own account, she has been loving, committed, and faithful ever since. You have no evidence that she is promiscuous. You have no evidence that she cannot be trusted. You have no evidence that she has betrayed you.
So what exactly are you punishing her for?
For trusting you?
Think about how cruel that is.
She trusted you enough to become vulnerable with you, and now the man she trusted is looking backward and deciding that her willingness to trust him might make her less worthy of becoming his wife.
You should be far more concerned about what that says about you than what that night says about her.
And stop making this something the two of you need to “work on together.” She cannot fix this for you. She cannot go back in time and make you wait longer. She cannot somehow become a virgin again. She cannot provide enough reassurance to make an irrational double standard become reasonable.
This is yours.
You have been carrying this resentment for eight months, which means she has spent eight months knowing that the man she loves is quietly questioning her worth because she chose to sleep with him.
Imagine what that does to somebody.
You say everything between you is great. You say she loves you deeply. You say she is loyal. You say you could see yourself marrying her.
Then believe the woman who has actually been standing in front of you for the last fifteen months instead of inventing a version of her based on one decision that you participated in.
And if you cannot do that, do not marry her.
Not because she did something wrong.
Because she deserves better than spending her marriage being judged by her husband for something they did together.
You have two choices. Deal with your insecurity, your beliefs about women, and this double standard, and genuinely let this go. Or leave her.
But do not marry her while secretly keeping a courtroom open in your head where she is permanently on trial.
She trusted you.
The question now is whether you are going to prove that trust was a mistake.