Hi Miri,
I was a promiscuous girl in high school. When I met my husband (we’ve been married for five years), I lied to him and told him I had been with just two other men before him. I felt as though he and his friends put so much emphasis on the number of sexual partners a woman has had. I didn’t think this relationship would go any further than being friends, and so I told a lie. Recently I have been dealing with the untimely and very grim death of my stepfather and have been having anxiety attacks. I was given a script for Xanax and have been taking it twice a day as prescribed. It worked for a while, taking the edge off. But soon, I started to have the anxious feelings again and sometimes the Xanax doesn’t even work.
I decided the best thing to do was to see a therapist to work out these issues. Last night was my first meeting with the therapist, where we only discussed the death of my stepfather and the traumatic events of the two years. When I came home, and laid my head down, I immediately sprang up, sick to my stomach, thinking “What if in all of
this therapy for this, my husband finds out indirectly that I lied to him about my past?” I got to feeling so anxious that I actually threw up three times. I decided that I needed to tell my husband RIGHT THAT MINUTE.He was upset, to say the least. Disappointed, hurt, humiliated, angry. All things I totally expected from him. We stayed up talking for at least 2.5 hours about all of these things. There are certain things from my past that have been coming back into my memory, things I may have been suppressing all of these years, and as they
come up, I am telling him. I told him a few things last night in addition to the lie about my sexual history.He’s leaving the decision on what should happen next up to me. He wants to know what I would do if I were in his shoes. I don’t know what I would do.
I thought telling the truth was supposed to make you feel better? Instead, I feel I have these anxious thoughts and that they’ll never leave, and eventually I’ll have to be institutionalized, because who can go on living feeling like this? I know I need to tell my therapist so that we can work on these issues as well, and I know this won’t change overnight.
Thank you,
Going Nuts
Dear Going Nuts,
Here’s what I got from your letter:
You told your husband that prior to meeting him you had two other sexual partners. Your stepfather died unexpectedly. You began experiencing panic. You worried that cancer lurked undetected inside you (btw, cancer is a very common worry. You have a lot of company). You got a script for Xanax. When the dose of Xanax you were prescribed didn’t do the trick you began to look for other ways to allay your anxiety. You started therapy. After your first session you woke up in a panic, concerned that through your therapy work, your husband would indirectly discover your past. Specifically your sexual past, you decided that you needed to confess to your husband.
You confessed and stayed up for 2.5 hours beyond the confession. At the end of the 2.5 hour summit he said he was leaving “his response up to you.”
In case you hadn’t noticed, marriage is a shocking proposition when participated in fully. You learn that the core of intimacy is not in fact a shinning geode but a nub of shame and guilt. If you are lucky you get to share your truth(s) with another who loves you unconditionally. Marriage is the revelation of multiple truths. Your husband’s response, since it’s up to you is simple: He will reach out to you. He will hold you and tell you that he loves you. He will tell you that he loves that you came to him with your pain. That he is sorry for the pain you are in. That he loves all of you, all the way to your guilty, shamed core.
In your original letter, you compared yourself to another Ask Miri where the woman’s husband had been involved in online affairs. If I read your letter correctly, the confession you made to your husband involved your sexual life prior to marrying him. Not during your marriage. So, you are not “like” the husband from the previous Ask Miri. Instead of being a duplicitous, adulterous, double-dipper you are, shocker, human….
AND you are courageous. You were spinning inside a vortex of grief and shock and the awakening of painful memories. You did the only thing that made sense in the middle of the night after throwing up and hyperventilating on the edge of the tub.
We all have our pasts. We are entitled to keep parts of ourselves private. I know, you told him that you had a mere two partners prior to him. Okay, so you omitted a part of your previous life. (In your confession, did you explain that you felt the emphasis he and his friends put on the number of prior sexual partners, led you to subtract a few from your tally? I’d be curious why such a thing mattered so much to your then boyfriend and his friends? You might find out something interesting by asking him).
I am infinitely more interested in what your stepfather’s death has meant to you and the source(s) of your current anxiety. Did your stepfather’s death unlock parts of your life that you had kept locked? Why the guilt regarding the sexual partner’s and promiscuous past become too much to bear now…this is all excellent fodder for you and your therapist. The painful memories you alluded to sound particulalry troubling. Take care while you unearth them.
The last time I checked, marriage was about accepting the whole kit and caboodle. You are in crisis and looking for ways to alleviate your discomfort.
And not for nothing, if the biggest problem the two of you have, is that you had a robust sex life prior to marrying? Count your blessings and make dinner or love– optimally, both.
Take good care & keep us posted.
Best,
Miri
Miri is a licensed social worker and family therapist. If you have a question for her, email her here. Your Q&A will be published on our site. If you don’t want Miri to use your name, please let her know.
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The husband
November 19, 2011
I am the husband in the above story. I am somewhat offended by your response. Yes, men put a double standard when it comes to a woman’s sexual history. But that double standard does not mean the man would not take the woman with open arms and love her for the person she is today. The main core of this is now the trust between husband and wife is now broken. I am not saying she should be punished for her lie, especially when the events happened prior to ever meeting me. The fact that she lied is a direct slap in the face of honesty and the bond a husband and wife. I have done my own share of “things” in the past prior to meeting my wife but when asked I have always been straightforward with her and told the truth. Sure some things upset her, but one thing she never could doubt was the honestly to her. I’ve told her things that to this day I am embarrassed to tell to my best friends. She is the keeper of my deepest secrets. And now, how do I know that the trust I gave to her was not broken or will ever be broken. There is plenty more things to our life story that are not in this letter that give a bigger prespective on our life together.
I do agree with you that there are feelings and emotions within her in regards to the passing of her dad and step-dad that she has not faced. I have always been in her corner, to help, hold, and listen to her in whatever way I could to help. These feelings need to be addressed.
Basically, I am offended that none of this reprimands her for the lie she told. Accountability plays big in relationships. This behavior is the cause of relationships to fail.
I have decided to give this relationship one more chance. I have told my wife that no matter what there should not be secrets. I love her and cherrish the memories I have with her and don’t just want to throw this all away. The questions now should go to how to rebuild the trust? How to rebuild the relationship? And lastly for me is how to get past the graphic visions I have put in my head of the acts I have been told?
I hope in all of this, that another couple or person may see this and learn from this and make a better relationship for themself.
Sincerely,
The Husband
Miriam Novogrodsky
November 20, 2011
I’m sorry you are offended by my response. Of course there is a bigger context from which your partner wrote. Thank you for sharing that perspective. It feels horrible to share and realize that you are the only one with your pants fully down. But, that is the risk we take, no? Your pain is palpable. I’m so sorry you are having to manage so much shock and hurt.
I’m glad you are giving the relationship room to go forward. How to go about rebuilding trust? Carefully. Patiently and without anger. With an open mind, casting a rigid definition of truth aside, just for the moment. And trying to decipher how to make each of you feel safe enough to share your deepest secrets.
The pieces that regenerate trust are hard to keep in the fore. So, a couple’s therapist could be infinitely helpful — they could help you construct scripts for discussing how you feel, they could help you process the hurt and anger you are feeling and the shame and regret your partner is feeling.
With love and patience, you two can pick your way across this minefield.
Good luck and thank you for sharing your perspective, your pain and your questions.
Take Good Care.
Best,
miri
Sarah
June 27, 2012
This lie is very significant. The wife lied because she knew that the number of partners she had and her promiscuous past could very well cause her marriage prospect in jeopardy. And it very well could have caused her then-fiancee to reconsider marrying her. My husband would not have gone through with it.
Some “modern” feminist women complain about how unfair it is that men are called studs when they sleep around, yet women get called sluts for the exact same behavior. It’s actually not a double standard though, because both scenarios are pretty different in terms of biology, circumstances and consequences. I can think of at least four crucial differences:
First, sleeping around is easier for women. Regardless of how you feel about promiscuity, we can all agree that a guy who manages to rack up a lot of sexual partners has to have some skills. It’s challenging for men to rack up partners, even for men with low standards. A man needs social intelligence, interpersonal skills, persistence, thick skin, and plain old dumb luck. For women, though, a vagina and a pulse is often enough. Whenever an accomplishment requires absolutely no challenge, no one respects it. It’s just viewed as a lack of self-discipline. People respect those who accomplish challenging feats, while they consider those who overindulge in easily obtained feats as weak, untrustworthy or flawed.
Second, women have potential to do more harm by sleeping around than men do. Say a man sleeps around with a bunch of different women. He’s definitely doing harm to these women if he pretends to be monogamous while sleeping around. He may cause them emotional pain by his promiscuity. He may cause unwanted pregnancy. He may spread VD. When women sleep around, however, they can cause not only all these same ill effects but one additional crucial ill effect: the risk of unknown parentage.
If one guy sleeps around with five women, each of whom is monogamous to him, and they all get pregnant, it’s a safe bet as to who the father is. If you reverse genders and have one woman who sleeps around with five men who are monogamous to her, and she gets pregnant, the father could be any of the five men. And if one of those men is tricked into raising a baby that isn’t his, he’s investing time, money, estate and property to provide for a child that isn’t carrying his DNA into the next generations, a costly mistake from an evolutionary standpoint.
Our two basic primal drives are to survive and to reproduce, and promiscuous women traditionally make it hard for a man to know for sure whether he is truly reproducing or is secretly raising another man’s child. Men stand a lot more to lose from promiscuous women than the other way around. And it’s no picnic for the child to not know who his real father is either. And it’s a mess for the women carrying on the deception as well. Or just look at any random episode of the Maury show if you don’t believe me.
Since the DNA test and the birth control pill didn’t exist until recently, there were no reliable ways to prevent pregnancy or prove parentage for most of human history. For this reason society developed a vested interest in preventing promiscuity among women, and society accomplished this by creating the slut stigma. And even though the creation of birth control and DNA tests have made this less of a risk than the past, longstanding traditions and customs are not easy for society to break so the slut stigma remains.
Third, men have evolutionary reasons to be programmed to sleep around more. A lot of women roll their eyes when they hear that men are “hard-wired” to sleep around. But from an evolutionary standpoint, it makes total sense. If the two primal drives of humans are to survive and to reproduce, nothing leads to maximum reproduction like one man sleeping with multiple women. If one women sleeps with many men in a nine month period, she can only get pregnant just once. Nine months of rampant promiscuity would give the same result as nine months of highly sexed monogamy: one pregnancy. Now if one man sleeps with many women during a nine month period, you can get many pregnancies during that period. The more women he sleeps with, the more possible pregnancies.
So from an evolutionary standpoint, there are concrete advantages to men being promiscuous compared to women being promiscuous. This doesn’t mean that women have evolved to be strictly monogamous. Women have evolved to be somewhat promiscuous too, something men badly underestimate. However they haven’t evolved to be as rampantly promiscuous as men.
Fourth, promiscuity poses more risk to women than to men. A woman has more to lose from choosing bad sex partners than a man does. She’s the one who gets stuck with going through a pregnancy and taking care of a baby alone if she chooses a deadbeat. For this reason, promiscuous women throughout history have historically been viewed as being a vastly more irresponsible risk takers than promiscuous men, who rightly or wrongly could always run away from the consequences of unwanted pregnancies easier than women could.
These four reasons explain why the longstanding tradition came about of men being rewarded for multiple partners while women get socially punished for similar promiscuity. Of course all this is gradually changing, but we’re up against millenia of evolutionary and cultural conditioning here, so don’t expect any dramatic overnight reversals.
Understand that I’m just explaining why the double standard came into existence and not condoning or condemning it. This is not an attempt to pass judgment or be self-righteous in any way. It’s just an explanation of why the two conditions are treated differently.
Tom
August 16, 2012
To The Husband,
Sorry dude, but you sound like a loser. You seem to think that it is your place to judge the actions of your wife, which was the very reason she was reluctant to tell you in the first place. I hope she dumps your sorry ass and finds someone who will love her UNCONDITIONALLY.
Hayley Krischer
August 17, 2012
Tom, though I think you’re right on, and mostly agree, let’s give the guy the benefit of the doubt. He’s not a loser. He’s misguided. He’s upset that his wife lied. And he’s entitled to his feelings. Also, unconditional love isn’t real in any relationship, is it? I find unconditional love as code for “you can walk all over me.” We all need our boundaries. The dude has a right to be angry because of the lying. But not because of her sexuality. She has a right not to feel shameful about her past. Hopefully they’re going to meet in the middle and their relationship will grow from this.
BarryMayor
September 4, 2012
When a person lies, the bond of trust gets broken. You don’t know when they are lying and when they are telling the truth. Not a foundation for an enduring relationship.
Hugh
September 14, 2012
Miri,
I believe the husband was offended not by your response, but (as he plainly stated) by your total omission of a reprimand for her lying. Why it is perfectly acceptable to lie to get what one wants, denying their partner the opportunity to make an informed decision ? Why is it alright to betray your partners trust in the first place ? All to often, it seems, these self-serving deceptions are simply excused outright and “the problem” is deemed to be the husband’s pain/anger, which is only a natural reaction to being deceived. Most men simply want to know why they were lied to in the first place. The reasons are always selfish and pathetic and show callous disregard for their partner, right out of the gate.
Sam
February 16, 2013
I am in the same situation as the husband. I completely understand the husband’s hurt, anger, shock and loss.