[Tenmoku]

I hope it's not poor etiquette to jump in with a first post of this nature.

A little background:

I am a 29 year old man who had never dated at all until I met my fiance in early 2012. I have always been shy and suffered from depression, anxiety and poor self-esteem. In the years and months leading up to meeting her I had done a lot in terms of self-improvement and felt like I was finally ready to try to date people. To that point my romantic interactions had consisted of one kiss and dates I could count on one hand. I joined a dating site and through a stroke of luck the second woman on the site turned out to be amazing and actually liked me in return. She knew from the beginning I had never dated and she patiently and lovingly helped me discover romance, sex and love for the first time, culminating in our recent engagement. I love her with all my heart and have absolutely no doubt I want to spend my life with her and that we make a great team. I know she loves me and I love her. It took me a while to come around to it, but I know this is true.

She had been in one long-term relationship before and had had a handful of more casual sexual partners and short-term relationships. She has indicated that some of her past sexual encounters involved a combination of loneliness and alcohol. For a woman of 35 I would not classify her past as promiscuous by any means--she had had a total of 5 sexual partners before me. She herself came late to dating and sex and didn't have her first sexual experience until she was 25.

I feel like she and I have a great sex life. We have sex 4-5 times in an average week and I feel like the sex we have now is passionate and fulfilling.

But I am still haunted by her past sexual experience and her ex-boyfriend. I sometimes get obsessed with thoughts of her having sex with other men. The worst manifestation of this obsession I have is that I have invaded her privacy by reading journals and e-mails from her past. I feel awful about this, but it is like a compulsion I have trouble controlling. I feel like I have profoundly violated her trust in me and I highly doubt she would ever pry into my private information. Every time I have done this I have come across something I find difficult, including graphic descriptions of sex with other men. Every time I do it I promise I will not look again, but there is more info out there and it is easily accessible to me, and inevitably I lose my self-control and go back for more. her archive e-mail is available on a portable decide she owns but shares freely with me and she has journals and other mementos in a box in plain view in her bedroom. I have also looked in drawers and found things like condoms and sex lube that we have never used, and I found these a bit distressing. I also come across photos from her past relationship (not necessarily as a result of snooping) or hear her mention in passing "I went to that place with my ex once" and my thoughts go into a downward spiral obsessing over her time with him and with other men. She knows this is difficult for me and she always reassures me "He's in the past for a reason. You offer me so much more than he ever did. I love you and not him." And I believe her, but it does not change my thoughts.

I know this is my problem, not hers. I do not fault her for exploring her sexuality because I would have done the same thing given the opportunity. I do not fault her for having a past relationship before me. It is up to me to learn to manage my own emotions and come to terms with it. She has done everything I could possibly expect of her to make me feel loved and secure. I know that her past has made her the woman that I am in love with. I know that her past experiences led her to me and mine to her, but it just nags and eats at me (because I have let it do so). I need to get over it not only for my own good but because I owe it to her.

So my question is two fold:

How can I truly accept her past and not let the insecurity I feel interfere with our relationship?

And...

How can I conquer my compulsion to invade her privacy?

[hamster-bamster]

Originally Posted by Tenmoku

How can I truly accept her past and not let the insecurity I feel interfere with our relationship?

And...

How can I conquer my compulsion to invade her privacy?

Your thought process overall is quite good. You realize that she is the woman she is as a cumulative result of her past experiences, and that you love that cumulative result and not some sort of an unrealistic notion of her without her past. So you are well on track. I think you will eventually get there on your own, without help.

In terms of invading her privacy - if she does not mind, just keep invading until you get tired of it. Eventually you will have gotten your fill and will feel bored. If she minds, that is a different issue. Apparently she does not mind. So it is easier to give in to the compulsion than to fight it. One of the quickest ways to deal with temptation is to experience what you consider tempting. Per Oscar Wilde, it is actually the only way - I would disagree on the "only" part though...
The only way to get rid of temptation is to yield to it... I can resist everything but temptation. - Oscar Wilde at BrainyQuote "

[hamster-bamster]

Originally Posted by Tenmoku

I have also looked in drawers and found things like condoms and sex lube that we have never used, and I found these a bit distressing. I also come across photos from her past relationship (not necessarily as a result of snooping) or hear her mention in passing "I went to that place with my ex once" and my thoughts go into a downward spiral obsessing over her time with him and with other men. She knows this is difficult for me and she always reassures me "He's in the past for a reason. You offer me so much more than he ever did. I love you and not him." And I believe her, but it does not change my thoughts.

Face it. Paradoxical/desensitizing approaches do work. Do no shun it - face it. Ask to be taken to that place where she and her ex once went. Explore it. Find out what they talked about, if she feels comfortable sharing. Use the condoms from that box which was not bought by you. Etc. Face it.

[Travelinglady]

Welcome to Psych Central! I also suggest if you keep having struggles with this issue, then you see a therapist about it, and definitely get some couples counseling before you tie the knot. Please remember she might have had relationships before meeting you, but she is choosing to marry you now. I know you have a hard time believing that, but it's the objective truth. The operative word is "ex." You have a lot to offer, and she must be very happy with your sex life together!

[Tenmoku]

I should clarify that my snooping has been surreptitious. I have not told her I have been doing this and do not plan to tell her any time soon, as I imagine it would cause hurt more than it would solve anything. I think I'd like to tell her one day, but for now I think as long as I can stop I can in good conscience not confess immediately.

She does not know I read the journals describing a fling's "huge ****" or the e-mail telling her ex how she did not like the **** sex they had the night before. She doesn't know I opened the drawer with the condoms.

But she DOES know that I have been dwelling on her past sex life and am having discomfort about it.

On snooping until I have "had my fill"--I really do not like this idea at all. If she said "These are my old journals. Read them if you want." that would be one thing, but she has not said that, and my reading them violates a tacit trust.

I am seeing a therapist and have skirted around the issue with my therapist. I see the therapist next week and am trying to decide if I want to go alone and tell my therapist about my snooping, or go with my fiance and discuss my insecurities together without talking about the snooping.

[Heather11]

The bottom line is that it's not fair to her to invade her private past , and ultimately, does not serve You or the relationship. Try to replace your obsessive thoughts with more positive ones about the happy state of your life and future with your GF. Fantasize about your current sex life. Talk to her for reassurance if you need it but don't pester. Consider yourself lucky to have found someone in this day and age with so few men in her past. It's rare.

[hamster-bamster]

If you consider bringing her to the T session, you first need to have obtained T's OK. So probably go alone and discuss the possibility of bringing her later.

[Tenmoku]

Originally Posted by hamster-bamster

If you consider bringing her to the T session, you first need to have obtained T's OK. So probably go alone and discuss the possibility of bringing her later.

It's already been approved.

[Tenmoku]

Originally Posted by Heather11

The bottom line is that it's not fair to her to invade her private past , and ultimately, does not serve You or the relationship. Try to replace your obsessive thoughts with more positive ones about the happy state of your life and future with your GF. Fantasize about your current sex life. Talk to her for reassurance if you need it but don't pester. Consider yourself lucky to have found someone in this day and age with so few men in her past. It's rare.

I agree wholeheartedly, but am hoping to find some tips on HOW to move on and HOW to resist my urge to snoop. One thing I have done is when I want to snoop and have an opportunity instead I spend time looking at photos of us together. It helps, but I need more tools.

[Tenmoku]

Can I bump this?

[Travelinglady]

The only way I know is to talk to a therapist about it.

[Tenmoku]

I am talking to my therapist tonight. Initially I had planned on bringing my fiance into the session and had already had this approved, but I think I want to not do that yet and instead talk to the therapist about my compulsion to snoop.

[Odee]

I think you are already realistically aware of your responsibility in this situation is, but your wife can make some actions on her behalf as well.

She doesn't need journals or emails about sex with her ex. She is with you and she doesn't need to revisit experiences with someone else. The mementos are also a little weird, you can ask her to stash those away. And lastly, the comments such as "I went here with my ex" are unnecessary. She could have said "I went here before." It's kind of a simple concept that may make no sense to her but I think for everyone it's just polite to erase the unnecessary details.

[Tenmoku]

Originally Posted by Odee

I think you are already realistically aware of your responsibility in this situation is, but your wife can make some actions on her behalf as well.

She doesn't need journals or emails about sex with her ex. She is with you and she doesn't need to revisit experiences with someone else. The mementos are also a little weird, you can ask her to stash those away. And lastly, the comments such as "I went here with my ex" are unnecessary. She could have said "I went here before." It's kind of a simple concept that may make no sense to her but I think for everyone it's just polite to erase the unnecessary details.

It's not like she says these things all the time. Once I told her it causes me discomfort when she mentions him and she said she would try to be more sensitive about that, but at the same time the things she says are innocuous enough and I do not expect her to walk around on eggshells due to me being hyper-sensitive.

The e-mails were in her archive. Surely I have e-mails in my archive from several years ago. I don't think she was deliberately hanging on to them. The mementos are tiny things like photos, wine corks, etc that fit in a shoe box with her journals. It is disorderly and I don't think she really knows everything that is in it. A lot of it is not necessarily stuff from her ex but are things like pictures with her college friends. Honestly I keep hoping I will come home one day and see the shoe box gone and not know where its contents went. I am totally fine with her keeping the journals and a few photos. That was a major part of her life and I don't expect her to just toss everything. Other mementos I don't really think are appropriate, but it is considerably less appropriate that I have snooped to find them.

Off to the therapist in one hour. I am going to talk to the therapist first and tell her about my snooping, then if we have time am going to invite my fiancé in.

[hamster-bamster]

Originally Posted by Tenmoku

It's not like she says these things all the time. Once I told her it causes me discomfort when she mentions him and she said she would try to be more sensitive about that, but at the same time the things she says are innocuous enough and I do not expect her to walk around on eggshells due to me being hyper-sensitive.

I totally agree with you and disagree with Odee. Your wife is not trying to be bad. She is not trying to somehow, intentionally and selectively, dwell on her past with an ex. She is not trying to rub anything in, or make a point, or compare you to somebody in an unfavorable fashion (those would have been bad things to do). She is simply remembering things, from time to time, authentically and contextually, as she goes through the ordinary course of living. To make her censor her speech (==> not to say "I have been here with X" but to say "I have been here" is self-censorship, to call a spade a spade) would indeed, as you say, amount to expecting her to walk around on eggshells. No, no, do not do that. Go the way you have been going, by trying to fix the issue in you, by your own means, without responsibilizing her.

[hamster-bamster]

Originally Posted by Odee

for everyone it's just polite to erase the unnecessary details.

I disagree very strongly, having lived with a husband who got irate beyond any reasonable measure when an email from a casual long-time ex would pop up in our inbox (we had a joint email address besides our individual addresses, and the casual ex, when he got my email address from a common friend, happened to learn of that joint address because a long time ago I gave that address to the common friend, not foreseeing difficulties down the road) 11 years into the marriage (and, I was absolutely faithful to him for the entire 12 years of marriage, and even more - I did not have sex for three and a half years after we separated). He got irate. He went to Europe shortly after that happened and would send me long emails about how horrible I was for allowing my horrible past to rear its ugly head.

I would not say that I had a horrible past, now, but back then, I felt very guilty. And, even before that, I hid pictures taken of me with yet another man I was friends with before I met my second husband. Because - horrible past!!! Horrible!!! Pictures of two clothed smiling people - horrible!!!

So, what is the meaning - the true meaning - of asking somebody to ERASE something from the record of their life? Well, it amounts to asking somebody to ERASE a part of her. Is it nice? No...

Sure, one can be cautious and not forthcoming with too much detail, but - a spouse, in my book, should be able to tolerate some info.

What else seems wrong with this approach of "erasing the details related to exes"? What I think is wrong with this approach is that it assumes that the whole time period that preceded your wife's meeting YOU was, sort of, prep work for living with YOU. And, kind of, almost a mistake. But now that she has met YOU, and has chosen YOU, now, at last, she has arrived and is safely attached. And, her past does not matter anymore - the only important part of her past is that she was able to find YOU. Good for her - she found YOU. hallelujah!!

Is that how you really view her past? You probably do not - if you think of it. You probably think that the woman you love is the woman you love as a cumulative result of all her past experiences - yes, including being with her ex. Her past was not a mistake and not "prep" for meeting with you - it was a portion of her life (by the way, we all have just one life to live, so it is kind of important how we live it and what we do with the time we have on this planet). A PORTION OF HER LIFE. So, it is kind of important. And not to ask to erase.

[Tenmoku]

Originally Posted by hamster-bamster

Is that how you really view her past? You probably do not - if you think of it. You probably think that the woman you love is the woman you love as a cumulative result of all her past experiences - yes, including being with her ex. Her past was not a mistake and not "prep" for meeting with you - it was a portion of her life (by the way, we all have just one life to live, so it is kind of important how we live it and what we do with the time we have on this planet). A PORTION OF HER LIFE. So, it is kind of important. And not to ask to erase.

I agree. Last night my therapist said "I am sure if you could erase it you would" and I told her I would not because then I'd have a different person than the one I am in love with now.

My therapist was less than helpful last night. She basically told me to just get over it, then my fiance came in with us and my therapist told us to learn what makes the other one feel secure and focus on doing those things and not just doing for the other what makes us feel secure. As we left my fiance and I talked about this and agreed to work on it. I told her the things she says and does that make me feel most secure and vice versa and we said we'd each try to do those things more.

I got the impression that my therapist is used to approaching dysfunctional couples. She started talking about love languages and how to share time equally and how to avoid fights and my fiance and I both looked at each other and rolled our eyes because they were all things we already do.

My therapist did not give me a lot of tools to deal with the snooping compulsion. She just said to try to think of us together or focus on our future to distract myself. I feel ok about it right now because my fiance and I have been very close for the past few days as we have been navigating some difficult issues in my family and some potential health problems I am having. Hopefully this feeling will keep the temptation at bay for long enough for me to get some real long-term clarity and finally overcome this. I think if I can keep out of her private information and avoid learning anything new or revisiting the things I already know the feelings of jealousy and discomfort will fade, but I need to be diligent and strong to keep myself from giving in to self-destructive behavior.

[Travelinglady]

Thanks for getting us the feedback from your therapist. At least it sounds like some benefit came from the session.

Yes, maybe if you concentrate on the present good times with your fiance, then that will help.

[Odee]

oh oh oh okay, I didn't mean to erase parts of her life, I what I meant was faarrrr more innocuous than that. As in, if I tell someone about riding a really neat rollercoaster at an amusement park I don't talk about what year or who I was with or even really who was sitting next to me if it's not relevant to my point. I simply say "Yeah, I rode that and it nearly tore my shirt off!" You just have to pick through what is relevant or necessary at the time. I'm not saying to selectively rewrite your history to make the person you are talking to more comfortable, but at the same time your history is about you as an individual and I prefer to talk to my experiences as being ME. I am sorry, I had the impression that OPs partner did this often but it seems that it is not a case.

[hamster-bamster]

Originally Posted by Tenmoku

I got the impression that my therapist is used to approaching dysfunctional couples. She started talking about love languages and how to share time equally and how to avoid fights and my fiance and I both looked at each other and rolled our eyes because they were all things we already do.

argh! Oh how mad I am reading this. How mad I am!

I visited a psychiatrist yesterday. It was a one time visit after my regular psychiatrist left the mental health clinic at our county in favor of an adjacent county. So I do not yet have a regular psychiatrist assigned to me, and this guy was a stop gap.

So he talked to me as if I were a complete idiot. I mean - just the most idiotic person on Earth. He asked me whether I ever hear voices and other such things. At the same time he acknowledged that my former psychiatrist had left very good notes (and thus, should have explained well that no, I do not hear voices). But, this guy has 450 patients in his caseload, as he told me, so he he does not have time to read notes.

And a whole host of similar questions that should not have been asked.

And then I told him that I stopped eating because of anxiety. I do eat very little - there is some "psychological nausea" inside my throat that makes even thinking of eating overwhelming. I am not restricting or trying to lose weight - it is an unusual manifestation of anxiety. And, my former psychiatrist told me that I was anxious (before the food thing even started), so I kind of expected this one to be a little more helpful. Do you know what he told me?

He told me that I needed to eat protein. Protein is very important. If not meat, then tofu, but I need protein.

And I wanted to tell him: "Oh thank you so much. So much. You are unbelievably helpful - that my mother told me that protein was essential when I was three years old was not enough; the 40 years that followed were not enough either; really, I mean, REALLY, I needed to drive and wait in line to see YOU to learn that I need protein. Finally, you were able to get the message about the importance of protein across..."

I mean - there is some kind of a weird psychological issue that prevents me from eating; I might even need a temporary anti-anxiety med since the level of situational anxiety-provoking material (objectively and not as a result of my imagination - I have a court case trying to get visitation of my children, am working, preparing to apply to grad school, etc etc) is through the roof...

...and all he has to offer is that I need protein. Geez, this is so helpful. Geez.

In other words, those suggestions to do things that are entirely obvious are patronizing, condescending, paternalistic, and just plain idiotic.

[Tenmoku]

To be fair to my therapist, I did not go to her for couples' counseling. I went to her for my depression and anxiety, and she has been helpful in those areas. I sort of asked her to play out of position this particular day.

[hamster-bamster]

Originally Posted by Tenmoku

To be fair to my therapist, I did not go to her for couples' counseling. I went to her for my depression and anxiety, and she has been helpful in those areas. I sort of asked her to play out of position this particular day.

then she might have been both out of her depth and unprepared