The other day I was having a conversation with someone and I asked an innocent question about how many people they'd seriously dated. My question was returned and I answered and assumed we'd move on to another topic. Instead, the convo took a turn when I was asked about something else in my dating past. At first I attempted to dodge the question because I had a feeling they would not take the answer to the question well. But they persisted and so I was completely honest about it and immediately the tone of the conversation changed. I could sense the person on the other end of the line was less than enthused by what I'd said (not that I expected them to be excited about it to begin with). I reminded them that they've told me before they don't care about my dating past and that, even if they did, I've always been willing to discuss it. I'm not proud of a lot of my past in terms of dating but it is what it is and I can't change it now, and I wouldn't want to. Although I'm not proud of it, I recognize that it's all had a hand in making me who I am today and so I don't regret any of it. But just because I don't regret it, that doesn't mean I'm going to repeat it.
A friend of mine is in a similar situation, debating what to tell the person they're dating about their past. The other person seems to be on the fence about wanting to know some details and my friend is on the fence about what they're willing to offer up. I guess it all comes down to what the other person feels the need to know. Everybody comes with a past but you also have to be aware that people change and so do their behaviors and preferences. Now I would never do some of things I did back in the dark ages and I don't believe anything I did back then should be held against me by anyone who wasn't there. I had a friend awhile back who hadn't dated very many people but cheated on a boyfriend in her first year in college. It wasn't worth it, she felt awful and she'd never even had the urge to do it again. Almost a decade later, she was married and had a baby with someone else but he would constantly throw that transgression back in her face, even though it had nothing to do with him or their relationship. She regretted ever having told him about it in the first place and swore she'd never tell another dude she dated because she didn't want to go through the same drama again (she and the husband eventually divorced).
At the end of the day, people's personalities are different and some are content never knowing all the details, while others want to know every single thing. I learned a long time ago that oversharing can be a very bad thing when it comes to this topic. I once felt the need to divulge everything to someone I was dating, without giving her the option to not know, and she couldn't handle it and we broke up because of it. Since then my position has been to let the other person know I'm open about what I've done in the past if they want to know. I'm not gonna offer up every little thing about it unless I'm asked. Realistically, if you're together for a long period of time, those things will eventually come out anyway. Ideally, you should be able to share all of those things if you really love someone. I believe everything should be open and not much should be off-limits if you're in a good relationship. But I certainly don't feel the need to know everything about someone else's past. The way I see it, it's in the past and if you wanna tell me something about it or offer up a story, I will listen but I'm not gonna ask too many questions. Besides, everywhere you've been and the relationships you've been through have made you who you are now and have, in some ways, made it possible for us to be together.
The person I was having this convo with told me they'd cheated on a boyfriend before but that it was a youth thing and they'd learned their lesson and would never do it again. And that was enough for me, I accepted that they had grown enough to realize that cheating is wrong. The whole convo about it probably lasted five minutes. (Sidenote: in the past I would've been on my way had someone told me they'd once cheated, but I took into account my other friend's college-aged incident and decided not everything is so black and white.) But when I told them about this thing in my past, I had to spend the next twenty minutes convincing them it would never happen again and that I'd never want it to happen again. And since then I've still felt like either their opinion of me changed slightly (although they say it didn't) or like they're judging me for having done it. And I hate that feeling, especially because I didn't do anything wrong to begin with. I was honest and feel like I was punished for it, in a way. But I still feel like honesty is the best policy. Although maybe if I could have that conversation all over again, I would refrain from asking the question that started it all.
