“My husband’s past with brothels”
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Finally, is it an obligation to disclose if you’ve seen prostitutes in the past to your partners? I…I don’t know.
I do not think it falls under the general realm of past sexual history – which frankly while I don’t think you need to share the explicit history with anyone, but to have a healthy sexual relationship with someone you need to have conversations about the big picture of who you are and what you like.
But, I think paying someone for sex says something about you, not necessarily bad, but if you were super lonely or you had trouble connecting with people and used sex workers as way to find connection, that’s a pretty big part of your personality that your partner should know about.
And for the LW, while snooping is bad and generally you shouldn’t do it, she knows what she knows now and there’s no undoing that, so the best they can do is have an honest conversation about who he is, what drove him to seek out brothels, is that something about him that has changed or stayed unaddressed. That’s all fair to talk about.
If I had a history of being cheated on, that could certainly be a deal-breaker. Unless he thought fucking hookers wasn’t cheating. In which case, that would DEFINITELY be a deal breaker.
But you’re right! Not talking and never knowing (and living with doubt about your partner’s view of sex, fidelity, etc.) is the BEST ANSWER IN EVERY WAY!
Okay, I’ve worked along side men who left no doubts that they were vehemently opposed to abortion. Would call co-workers ‘baby killers’ if they said they didn’t thin abortion should be legally outlawed. Obviously, these men would think very differently about their wives, were they to somehow snoop in a place in which they could learn that their wife had an abortion several years before they met. Was his wife obliged to reveal that part of her history prior to marriage?
I can assure you that having learned of a wife’s past abortion, there isn’t anything that the wife could have said that would make things okay for these guys. One was a conservative evangelical and the other two were very traditional, conservatives Catholics.
I think there is about as much chance of one of these guys being talked through it by a wife open to answering questions as there is for the LW’s husband.
There marriage may be finished, but this is largely her problem and intrusive questioning of her husband about his sexual history prior to meeting her is not the answer. She already knows more than she has any right to know. Now she leaves or she works on herself.
And no, Northern Star, this has absolutely ZERO to do with her husband’s views on fidelity. He was a young SINGLE man, NOT in a relationship, and in a foreign land. They certainly should discuss THEIR views on fidelity and sex in their marriage and feelings about emotional intimacy. I deliberately say THEIR, because this is a mutual thing, not something she can simply demand of him, because of her insecurities. That is not equal and it won’t work. This whole topic of discussion is about their marriage, how they will relate to and treat each other. It requires zero discussion of his sexual history.
If they mutually agree to put the sexual history topic on the table, then hers is as much fair game as his. That doesn’t seem to be the tenor of her letter and updates and of most of the comments. It may be just me, but I would have a problem with her 6-year relationship with the serial cheater.
Okay, I’ve worked along side men who left no doubts that they were vehemently opposed to abortion. Would call co-workers ‘baby killers’ if they said they didn’t thin abortion should be legally outlawed. Obviously, these men would think very differently about their wives, were they to somehow snoop in a place in which they could learn that their wife had an abortion several years before they met. Was his wife obliged to reveal that part of her history prior to marriage?
This is an interesting thought experiment. On the one hand, no woman is every obligated to tell anyone her personal medical history, much less that she has had an abortion. However, if you know you are someone that is vehemently anti-abortion, that’s a pretty big value incompatibility and you should not be with that person. So, it may be the responsibility of women who have had abortions (and actually all women) to know where they’re prospective partners stand on such a huge issue like abortion. You can learn these things without necessarily revealing your own personal history.
Similar with people who have sought out sex workers in the past, may be important for you to establish with any prospective partners if they have a negative view of the sex trade, that might be a red flag you are not compatible with them.
There’s a spectrum when it comes to any kind of issue that a person deems a moral or ethical one. I think that forgetting that spectrum exists is what creates a lot of the arguments back and forth about things like this.
On one end are bad people. Somewhere in the middle or close to the other end are people who are generally good. They’re your decent, regular people. They make mistakes, but they don’t intend on hurting anyone or whatever. They potentially see prostitutes because they have a right to and they don’t see anything wrong with it because they aren’t cheating. This can apply to a lot of other social issues today. It’s your regular person who treats everyone with kindness, but doesn’t really think too far into the fact that they maybe unconsciously stereotype people of a different background. Or it’s the person who honks angrily at someone who cuts them off while driving because the other driver did something rude and dangerous and they have a right to be angry.
But the other end of the spectrum is a different layer. It might be a person who actively thinks about the larger implications of prostitution and what that means for the person in that job, and what it says about them to use their services. And it’s the person who also treats people with kindness, but thinks about their potential biases and tries to fix them. And the person who says, “Well, maybe the person who cut me off had a bad day.”
I’m not saying the person on that end of the spectrum is a better person, especially because so many of the issues can be subjective. But there are people who live on that end and want the person they are with to be at that end too. And that’s OK. But trying to drag a decent, good person from the middle of the spectrum to the end isn’t necessarily the right way to go about it, if their current state of being is that hurtful to you. Some people don’t care and they find that they and their partners teach each other stuff, but if it’s basically preventing you from being happy in the relationship, then you need to just go find someone who lives on your end of the spectrum.
He’s entitled not to tell you, you are entitled to want to know who you married.
I do think there are things he could say that could make her feel reassured.
“I was in a bad place then. After educating myself on the implications, I know I’d never visit a brothel again, legal or not.” Or a million other variations.The real issue is he doesn’t respect her enough to share his past with her, or it’s so abject, he knows she’d leave him.
