DHs past sex life making me feel disgusted.

[elefanty]

I’m really struggling with my DHs ex-“love life”. I’m someone who has always thought of themselves as being “sex positive”, I think sex is fine and people should do what they want to do.

I’ve been more “traditional”/boring in my own life. I’ve only ever had sex with people I’ve been in long term relationships with. One night stands do not appeal to me at all.

When I met DH, he had been single for a year following a long term relationship. We married after 3 years. He had a little girl from a previous relationship (who’s now 10).

Over the last few years I’ve learnt more and more about him and I feel guilty about how grossed out I am about his past.

1. His little girl was conceived during a hookup with a woman he knew wanted a relationship with him, but he felt she “wasn’t girlfriend material”. He slept with her once when she was going through a breakup( had known her since a teen) and she got pregnant. I think that’s him massively taking advantage of her to be honest. He talks about her poorly, calling her a tramp or ugly or a slut.

1. He’s told me over the years we’ve been married that he had “sugar mamas” when he was in his early to mid 20s, where he’d sleep with 40/50 year old women and “act as a stepdad to their kids” so he could have somewhere to live/pay for his hobbies. I find that disgusting to be honest. He said that they were “gross” but “sex was sex” and he was “depressed”.

1. Early on in our marriage we were at a cafe and a woman in her pjs walked in (full of lip filler, tan, overweight - the opposite to me) and said “hiya babe you okay?”. DH denied knowing her but it was obvious that he did know her. I think from seeing his “type” before (his child’s mum) I assumed he’d slept with her at some point.

1. He slept with his female friend who was a lesbian. He only “felt attracted to her because she was a lesbian”. He said it was an awkward encounter but I just feel again - taking advantage? I don’t know, it just feels strange.

1. He said that his friends joked with him “rather than spending all money on dates, just go to a hooker and you’re guaranteed sex”. He said this depressed him because he realised he was paying for sex with the girls on dating apps.

I’m just so disappointed in myself to think like this and to be judgemental but I can’t stop thinking about it all. Obviously it’s all in his past, but I think it just says a lot about him?

With me, he wasn’t like this at all. He dated me for 3 months before we had sex. He was a gentleman, and has continued to be throughout our marriage. In considering individual counselling because I can’t stop thinking about it. It’s not jealousy, it’s disgust. Sometimes I don’t even want him to touch me or be near me. Aibu?

The way he is describing these women here and now demonstrates that he without doubt still holds misogynistic pig views. He - not so secretly - despises women.

This would be very close to an absolute deal breaker for me. Watch his behaviour with you and with other women very carefully.

This.

I refer to it as “theft of consent”.

It’s certainly not rape but equally it does not feel fully consensual.

he views women in a modonna/whore way. You’re the Madonna, but he views all other women as whores. He’s a misogynist. I personally couldn’t be with someone like that. But plenty of women are with misogynistic twats so you could try couples counselling, but if you don’t have kids I’d prob just ltb

This

It’s not the sex that’s the issue @elefanty

The reason you’re disgusted is because he is a misogynist who treats women like shit.

All of this speaks volumes about his character.
I think it's up to you to do with this info as you will at this point.

He has a disgusting attitude towards women and sex but I don't think because of the reasons you're thinking. Calling any woman a slut etc is grim. He has no respect for women.

Everything you’ve said about him indicates lack of respect for women. He’s not long term partner material.

Would you care if he had been sleeping with older women that he didn't care about at all just so he had somewhere nice to live, and to make it worse took money from them. Or he had unprotected sex with a girl who wanted a relationship with him and got her pregnant, sex just once though because he didn't really like her. And then he comes telling you about all his sexual adventures. Being chosen as 'the one' by someone like that really wouldn't be a great compliment. Loads of partners that he actually liked and treated with respect, if you are OK with it that's fine, that guy however young he was it was all pretty despicable.

He's not 'sex positive', he is a raging misogynist. I couldn't be with someone who talks about the mother of his child like he does.

I don't see that he's taken advantage of anyone. These were all consensual sexual encounters, presumably with no promises made.

I don't really know why it's a problem that he might have slept with someone who doesn't meet your approval in the appearance/weight/style department.

He talks about her poorly, calling her a tramp or ugly or a slut

This is the thing that would make me feel disgusted with him, as it indicates that he judges women on their sexual behaviour, while he thought it was fine for him to sleep around.

The number of people he's slept with, and the casual and/or transactional nature of the encounters, doesn't suggest he's done anything predatory or wrong to me. But he is, quite separately from that, a colossal misogynist. That's what you need to be worrying about, not the fact that he's fucked a lot of women you don't approve of.

The fact that you've known all this for years, and yet still married him, doesn't really paint a great picture of you, to be honest. If I heard a man call the mother of his child 'a tramp and a slut' I wouldn't touch him with a 10-foot pole, let alone marry him.

This. Aside from all the sex stuff, that’s how he speaks about the mother of his child? Enough said.

It’s not you that needs a therapist - it’s him. It sounds like he’s holding on to a lot of shame about past experiences that he’s not able to really articulate or process - hence the horrible language about his exes. He’s trying to distance himself from these experiences, especially in front of you.

I’d also feel free to say to him that the language he uses about women makes you feel uncomfortable and you’d prefer he didn’t.

Finally, is it fair to say that you actually are judgmental about the type of people he used to go out with - I was struck by what you said about the woman in the cafe? He’s maybe picking up on this.

I am not sure that you are 'sex positive'. Sex positivity means afaik that you are ok with any sort of sexual behaviour in yourself and others e.g. random hook-ups, various kinks etc, age no barrier to sex etc, prostitution is work and providing sex in exchange for goods is fine (which is what your DH did himself, and at least some of the women he slept with also did), or going to clubs where you walk round partially clothed/naked in order to have random sex with random people you don't know. I don't think you subscribe to all that, from what you write (fwiw, nor do I, it's the marketisation of sex as a commodity, and unpleasant). You are entirely reasonable to find your DH's past pretty nasty and his attitude to women poor (to the say the least). He treated you carefully, was a gentleman, you say - and you are not his 'type', or rather you are not the type of woman he hooks up with or pays in various ways for sex. So from the start he was looking for a long-term relationship, which is why he treated you as a human being rather than a sex object. But you were still an object, just a different sort of object.
'Consent' is part of sex positivity, as you point out, but you also make clear that the activities your DH took part in could be described as taking advantage in which case consent is not involved. But if you are sex positive then real consent is not on the agenda for various reasons: one being that a person can take advantage of another as your DH has, another being that the urge to be sex positive rather than frigid, a prude, only wanting vanilla (i.e. loving, mutually pleasurable sex that doesn't involve hurting or humiliating either person) sex puts pressure particularly on women to 'consent' to acts that they would really prefer not to engage in (e.g. strangulation, BDSM, anal sex) some of which are dangerous (all those mentioned are dangerous). It also treats people as things.
I am very much of the mind that - baring illegal activity and sexual assault - someone's past does not matter, it is the future that you make together that's important. However, it sounds like you can't get passed your DH's previous sex life. Counselling may help.💐

What does 'sex positive' mean other than liking sex?
Am I missing something?

OP I'd not want to be married to someone like this and hope I'd have found out long before the wedding.

I don't know how you reconcile his dodgy past with your own marriage.
Not being nasty- I genuinely don't know what I'd do in your shoes.
It's a bit like someone saying they used to rob bans but now they have a good income they don't bother.

People don't change that much. He's no gentleman.

As PPs have said, you're not put off by his past sex life but his attitude to women.

OP thinks she shouldn't see anything wrong in it. She says she is sex positive and trying not to be judgemental.

What's his relationship like with his mother OP?

With the Madonna-Whore Complex, it's more likely that he will continue to keep the OP on her pedestal, but will go off and find other women - the ones he sees as 'whores' - to have the kind of sex with them that he doesn't feel he can have with the OP because in his mind, she'd stop being his special pure-as-driven-snow princess if he did certain things with her.

Either way - it's all pretty repellent, isn't it? He sounds like a right cunt.

I am not sure that you are 'sex positive'. Sex positivity means afaik that you are ok with any sort of sexual behaviour in yourself and others e.g. random hook-ups, various kinks etc, age no barrier to sex etc, prostitution is work and providing sex in exchange for goods is fine (which is what your DH did himself, and at least some of the women he slept with also did), or going to clubs where you walk round partially clothed/naked in order to have random sex with random people you don't know.

Is that what it means?
If it means live and let live as far as no one gets hurt, fine.
But if it means taking advantage of other people when they are vulnerable and basically using them, then no, it's not very positive at all, is it?

You're disgusted by him because he sounds like a horrible human who has no respect for women that he considers lower than him, yet he is still willing to use their bodies for his own pleasure. Never judge a person by how they treat their perceived equals, judge them by how they treat people they consider lower than them because that will tell you who they really are.

I don't respect anyone who calls any woman a slut. I'd have found it hard to have respect for him after that alone.

I fully agree with this. Any man who talks about another woman like this is not a gentleman, but especially not one who would speak about the mother of his child this way.