How many guys nowadays have only slept with one woman all their lives? I was my boyfriend's first for a lot of things - all he did before was make out, some fondling, and fingered a girl once. He does watch porn (as do all guys, so he tells me), which makes me wonder if he thinks he's missing out by not having had sex with other girls. We've talked about this before, and he's admitted to being curious about what sex with other girls would be like, again, like all other guys, according to him. But he said he'd never do it since it would mean losing me.
I love him. Do I owe it to him to let him satisfy his curiosity and experiment with other women? Or do I go with the 'well, who knows how long this'll last, I'm sure he'll have plenty of time for other women when this goes south' route? It makes me physically ill to think of other women touching him, even though I'm the one in the relationship who has had partners before him. I'm willing to try most things once (and some things multiple times), but I can't fathom ever being okay with him having sex with someone else. Am I being unfair and selfish, or is my jealousy normal?
Long-Time Reader
My response after the jump...
According to science—science!—twenty percent of adult men have had just one sexual partner. It's an old stat; follow the link and you'll see it's from a study conducted way, way back in 1996. But kids today—kids today!—are waiting longer to have sex, they're having fewer sexual partners, and they're less likely to get pregnant than at any time in history. So it's possible that guys who've only slept with one girl are somewhat less rare today than they were way, way back in the '90s. (Abstinence backers have sought to claim credit for these developments. But teen pregnancy rates are higher in states with abstinence-only sex "education" and studies have found that teenagers who get good, comprehensive sex ed are likelier to wait to start having sex. Salon's Tracy Clark-Flory wrote a wonderful piece calling bullshit on the claims of abstinence "education" supporters.)
Two other points...
If your boyfriend is willing to go without having sex with other women to be with you, LTR, take the fucking compliment and stop standing around wringing your hands worrying about whether you're being "unfair" to him. Let him make up his own mind and be gracious enough to take "yes" for an answer. In other words: If a strictly monogamous commitment is the price he's willing to pay to ride this ride—you being the ride—let him fuckin' pay it. And, yeah, if you two stay together forever your boyfriend may go to his grave never knowing what it's like to have sex with another women. But I'm probably gonna go to my grave never knowing what it's like to have a threeway with Brad Pitt and Keanu Reeves.
Probably.
And that's okay. Because no one gets everything he wants.
Finally, swingers websites, sex clubs, and hotel rooms with three people fucking in them are full of people who at one point in their lives couldn't "fathom ever being okay with" their partners having sex with someone else. Just because you feel this way now, LTR, doesn't mean you'll feel this way always. A day may come when you'll be okay with your boyfriend—perhaps your husband by then—sleeping with someone else. So allow your boyfriend to live in hope and not, you know, nope. Because you never know.
