Hello. New to this forum. I'm 38 years old, finance professional in California. I'm divorced with 2 young kids (ages 8 & 5). I have been divorced for 3 years, and shortly after my separation I met a wonderful woman with 2 small kids. We fell in love and got engaged a year later. Due to unforeseen circumstances involving her ex-husband, I was forced to break off the engagement last April. I still love her, and my heart hurts when I think of her.
In May, I met a 46 year old woman online. She and I became really great friends. We did the whole online chat thing....hours at a time....very typical of lonely people. We are as different as night and day....in every way, but we clicked. I fell in love with her a month later when I met her for the 1st time. We started dating, and last month I took her on a trip to her hometown 400 miles away, and asked her to marry me. She was thrilled, and we are engaged after 3 months of courtship. That night we had sex for the 1st time.
Since the engagement, thoughts of insecurity began to arise for both of us. She had never been married, and was into drugs, parties for a good number of years. She told me she had many sex partners when she was on drugs, but that was her past life. She is completely changed and I can see that. She was drugged and raped more than once, and she had a phase when she only dated men 15+ years younger. She had Skype sex last year with a 24 year old "kid". And over the years she maintained a FWB relationship with a friend where they have sex but never dated. I almost broke up with her last week because all this past experiences began to formulate in my mind. I felt really insecure about how she perceived me after all the craziness in her past. She assured me that I was the only healthy relationship she had ever had, so she was determined to hold on to me and never let go. I believe her. She also assured me that I was the only man who ever completely satisfied her sexually. I also believe her because all of her past sexual experiences were under drugs or alcohol influence, and we all know drunk people or people on drugs can't perform in bed. Plus I am very good in bed, so it didn't surprise me that she would say that. So far she has been honest and honorable to me. She even deleted all of her potentially harmful friends on facebook because she didn't want me to get the wrong idea. She has tried very hard to please me. At the present time, she is the perfect fiancee. I just get really depressed when I think of all the nasty losers who she slept with. I try not to think about it, as it makes me feel bad.
One night we argued about something minor, and I threw her past at her face. I knew that was cruel, but I did it any way. Then I told her my own biggest secret. During the time I was married, for 6 years I visited prostitutes regularly because my ex-wife was emotionally cruel to me, and I needed to release. For some reason, after I told her, not only was she not mad that I concealed it from her, she told me she loved me more than ever before....because we both did stupid things in the past, and we can begin healing each other. I was shocked. But in a way she made me realize I was a hypocrit, and that made me love her more.
Now....she is beginning to feel insecure....because she knows that I paid to have sex with some of the most beautiful women money can buy. I had a lot of money back then....and I spared no expenses in hiring models to have sex with. My fiancee is a beautiful woman, but she is very self-conscious about her looks. So now she is expressing her insecurities, which makes me sad.
It seems we are just hurting each other with our past. If had a clean slate, we literally would be the happiest couple ever. We are always happy together.... Just those moments of insecurity really hurt us.
Should we allow the hurtful past to prevent us from having a happy future? Or is this relationship doomed?