Something really lovely ended after only a week, and I’m gutted.

[HelpMeComeToTermsWithThis]

I know this probably sounds ridiculous, but I’m absolutely gutted over a man I only dated for about a week.

Im 38, had completely gone off dating. Happened to take a look on a dating app, spotted this handsome guy, and realised we actually lived really close by. He asked me out for dinner the following week but we ended up meeting for a cup of tea the following day and just clicked incredibly quickly. Spent 9 hours together that first meeting and there was loads of chemistry, we laughed constantly, and we both said there was something really lovely between us.

Met a few more times in the space of that week and it was just so lovely. The we went out at the weekend for dinner, had a few drinks and sexual history came up.

Mine is considerably more extensive and out there than his, and he struggled with it.

He has apparently always had an insecurity about his partners’ previous sexual partners. He has been cheated on in the past, and says it makes him feel inadequate.

He knows I’m trustworthy and has explicitly said he doesn’t think I would cheat. He also apparently knows that his reaction is an insecurity of his own.

He ultimately decided he couldn’t have a relationship with me because he knows the thoughts about my past would “fester”.

I tried to understand it and asked whether he thought this was something he could ever work through. He said he’d never really thought about it because he’d been married for so long, and that while he wasn’t happy to accept it, he was stubborn and probably wouldn’t work on it.

I gently said it seemed sad to let an insecurity make the decision without ever challenging it but he seems to have closed the door.

And that was it.

I know I need to accept that he has made his decision. I’m not going to chase him. But I’m really struggling with it because it felt so rare to meet someone where the connection was that immediate, and it hurts enormously to think that something about my past has ultimately cost me someone I really liked.

I don’t need to be told that I should be grateful I dodged a bullet. I’m just really sad and wanted to let it out. Tell me the things I probably need to hear right now.

If you're going to go down this route for every woman who ever had sex with a man who turned out at a later point not to be nice, that's an awful lot of people who, by this definition "really have low standards and just let any guy fuck [them]". (Because, you know, sex is something women give men and would enjoy freely only if there's something wrong with them.)

Far better just to accept that while you might not have met 80 men with whom there was enough mutual attraction for sex, OP has, and it doesn't actually make you her moral superior.

He's not misogynistic for rejecting a woman for a relationship who's shagged 80 men and is a swinger. What utter tripe.

He's a mentally healthy man with boundaries.
Yes he's tried his luck with a fwb situation but so what?
She's demonstratably OK with casual sex so why not.

Just like a woman who rejected a male swinger who'd had 80 women would be rejecting the man for a relationship or viewing him as 'fun only'.

It seems all that easy sex she had from men who just used her for nothing more has turned her into the sort of person who thinks she can any man to do what she wants.

Odd mix of promiscuity and naivety.

Only a person with very low self-esteem and low sense of self-worth would accept a promiscuous swinger for an actual relationship.
She's not wife material and nor would a man who'd done the same be husband material before someone pulls the sexism card.

I honestly don't remember, but we started off as a casual/FWB arrangement and we were both sleeping with other people so trust me I knew it wasn't going to be an issue!

I wonder if you realise that this is pretty much word-for-word the line of argument which is used by defence lawyers to defend alleged rapists when the victim has any kind of sexual history at all.

Oh right! So tad different to this!

He's not misogynistic for rejecting her for having too much sex. He's misogynistic for rejecting her for having too much sex but wanting to keep her on for sex. The fact that he thinks any sexual partner of his should have a third of the history he's got is the icing on the shit misogynistic sundae.

The rest of it is pig ignorance that isn't worth the energy it would take to make fun of it.

I don't even know what OP looks like so I don't want to be casting aspersions on her in that regard.

It would be unfair and mean to do so, anyway.

I have , however, having worked as a barmaid during my student days, had the 'good fortune' of listening in on many men's conversations at the bar and have heard many a time the utterly disgusting phrase 'triple bagger' and phrases like 'only if I don't have to look at her' that men use about women they've had sex with/ planning to have sex with to give me the impression that an awful lot of them aren't too choosy about the women they have sex with.

So this mutual attraction you speak of may not actually always exist.
Your idea that they only have sex with women that are attractive to them may not be true at all.

I was able to see both sides of this until this post. Now I'm afraid I do think you have dodged a bullet. The FWB comment basically tells you that you're good enough for a shag, not good enough for a relationship in his eyes. Move on OP, you can do better.

Aside from the subject of how many sexual partners she's had he missed out on someone with rare qualities, a high labido, honesty and transparency.

Nothing to make fun of.
No mentally healthy person would marry a swinger.
You're the one who's unusual in thinking that they would. Not me.

Usually, any discussions about sexual history, (either person), if it happens at all, is much further down the line.

Next time, keep quiet - at least for a while.

No!
The original comment of mine that YOU replied to was in response to a completely different point, which was about whether it's right to conceal your sexual history from a partner if they might judge or reject you over it. YOU jumped in at the tail end of a thread and started asking me questions. You were making a different point to the one I was making originally!

You have lost me 😆

Leaving aside the stuff you're making up, because it's boring, if you think relationships are superior to casual sex then it's strange that in this case you're simping like mad for the guy having more casual sex but ranting about how he'd be mentally ill to go for a relationship.

Dude is allowed to refuse a relationship because she's had too much sex, dude is even allowed to condemn her for having sex while asking her to have sex, but it means dude is a hypocrite and a misogynist and people will notice.

I had ten sexual partners but just between the age of 17 and 22. Had I not met DH at that point, even at that going rate by the age of 40 there would have been quite a number. And that was me being extremely particular as well! A tiny fraction of the number I turned down.

I'm not simping for any man.

If I'm 'simping' it's for the people - men AND women - who reasonably and sensibly reject a relationship with somebody who's screwed around as a swinger.

I would say exactly the same if the sexes were reversed here.

You can choose a different word if you want, it doesn't matter. The point is, you think she's morally lacking for having lots of casual sex but you're all in favour of this guy hitting her up for casual sex, while condemning her for casual sex. And you think anyone would be mentally unwell to have a relationship with her even though relationships are supposedly the goal.

It sounds ridiculous and hypocritical because it is. (Also, just fyi, nobody is fooled by you carefully remembering to add "And Men!")

Why are all these bastions of purity and chastity all over this thread anyway?

In a very funny thread, this is the post that made me laugh out loud for longest. Thanks everyone, you've made my day with all this today! 😄

And yet there are thousands of people who have fulfilling sec lives involving multiple partners and a variety of experiences and go on to one day be happily married, so your 'wife material' comments are just misogynistic and unimaginative nonsense.

My sexual history involves threesomes (ah, my heady salad days) and my husband of over a decade couldn't care less. I don't know why so many of you are livid at the concept that I and others have had our fun and still settled down into happy, monogamous marriages with lovely men, but it's your problem not mine.

God I’ve definitely met 80 men in my lifetime who were handsome, charming, funny and clean. You really haven’t? I suppose it depends where you work, live and what activities you do. Obviously some - maybe most! - are attached but swinging isn’t the same as one night stands is it, I imagine more opportunity to meet people who are attractive and available.

Jesus Christ. So you think that if a woman has consented to sex with men previously that means she owes sex to any other man who might like to have sex with her whether she wants to do it or not? What is wrong with you?

How can you possibly comment on the mental health of ALL people and the likelihood of their choice of marriage partner?

Mentally healthy and unhealthy people of vast promiscuity and none marry and divorce others of vast promiscuity and none. That’s the only absolutely known fact here. anyone insisting otherwise is maybe a bit lack in all kinds of life experience.

What?

People choosing to have casual sex at certain points in their lives doesn’t mean they are fair game for anyone else who fancies some casual sex to assume they will be up for it again or with them, and particularly not when they have been dating explicitly with a view to forming a relationship.

Do you even understand the concept of consent?

Assume this means you stayed with the only man you ever kissed?

And you are actually saying that someone who has had many sexual partners is incapable of a long-term relationship, so not “wife/ husband material”?

Thes absurd posts belong in the “teachings” of a religious cult, or some primitive patriarchal and misogynistic society. If you actually believe what you’ve just written about this, along with your presumption that someone consenting to casual sex with others on previous occasions makes it ok for someone else to assume they’d consent to this with them, then there are many other countries on Earth that might suit your “values” better than the UK.