No sex or relationship question is too embarrassing because it's time to ask EmpowHer's sexuality expert, Dr. Marty Klein, anything.
Michelle King Robson:
Dr. Klein, lots of women have questions like the woman who asks you, “Dear Dr. Klein, I get really upset whenever my boyfriend mentions any previous girlfriends or things he did with them sexually. And yet I am so curious when he starts mentioning his sexual history, I can’t help but want to know, but then I get really sad and jealous afterwards and probably dwell on it far too much. Would it be better just to not know or ask about his history?”
Dr. Marty Klein:
Well, I don’t know. I mean, you are really conflicted, aren’t you? I mean, you want to know stuff, but you don’t want to have feelings about the stuff that you know, and you want the excitement without maybe feeling upset. That’s pretty hard to do. In this life, it’s easy to like chocolate, and it’s not hard to lose weight; it’s just hard to do both at the same time. So I am not so sure what to advise you.
I think it’s great that you actually are willing to admit to yourself how you feel, and I think it’s great that you’re investigating this question. What I would say is you might want to ask yourself what exactly is it that you want to know. When you say that you want to know about your boyfriend’s past, what is it that you want to know? If you want to know your boyfriend better, there’s a lot of ways to do that without actually asking him how many women and how many positions and which restaurants, and all of that.
There’s also the issue of what level of detail you’re asking about. It’s possible to learn some things about your boyfriend without having to ask in the kind of detail that makes you feel uncomfortable. So maybe you want to talk with him about what you are trying to get from these conversations and see if there’s a way to sort of put some boundaries around the conversation so that you are getting either the excitement or the intimacy that you like without opening yourself up to that discomfort.
But I have to tell you, at the end of the day, it’s really difficult to ask for information when you know in advance that the information might make you uncomfortable.