SAVAGE LOVE

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Dear Dan: When I was 15, I had a three-month-long sexual relationship with a 32-year-old woman. She was a friend of the family, and my parents were going through a divorce. I stayed with her for the summer, and she initiated a sexual relationship. Looking back, I can see that she had been grooming me. We used to have conversations online and via e-mail that were very inappropriate considering our age difference. The relationship ended when I went home, but she remained flirty. As a 15-year-old, I had a hard time sorting out my feelings for her, but we remained in contact. Now we speak sporadically, and it’s usually just small talk.

Soon after, I met a girl my own age and we started dating. Twenty years later, we are happily married and have two wonderful children.

Our sex life is active and fulfilling. The only problem is my wife is very proud of the fact that we were each other’s “first and only” sex partners. When we first slept together at 16, I couldn’t admit that she wasn’t my first, and I didn’t want to get the older woman in trouble. I don’t want to hurt my wife by revealing the truth. Can I keep this secret to myself?

— This Revelation Undermines Total Harmony

Dear TRUTH: Like you, TRUTH, I lost my virginity to an older woman at age 15. My first was closer to me in age (20s, not 30s) than your first — the woman who preyed on you — and I never felt like she took advantage of me. If anything, I was taking advantage of her, as our sexual relationship helped me sort out my shit. (I could get through sex with a girl, yes, but I had to think about guys the whole time. I resolved to cut out the middlewoman and have sex with guys instead.) Over the years, well-meaning people have tried to convince me that I was damaged by this experience, but I never felt that way.

Based on your letter, TRUTH, it doesn’t sound like you were damaged or traumatized by this relationship. You quickly figured out that what she had done to/with you was squicky and inappropriate; the fact that she didn’t leave you damaged or traumatized doesn’t make what she did okay. But it sounds like your only issue — it’s the only issue you raise — is whether you can continue to allow your wife to think she was your “first and only.”

You can. Unless you need to unburden yourself to the wife for your own sanity, TRUTH, or you think there’s a chance she could discover the truth on her own, don’t let one marital ideal — you should be able to tell each other everything — obscure an equally important if less obviously virtuous marital ideal: You don’t have to tell each other everything. Protecting your spouse from the truth, allowing your spouse to have their illusions, is often the more loving choice. While there are deceptions that aren’t okay — crushing student-loan debt, a second family hidden in another city, you are Dinesh D’Souza — some deceptions are harmless. Allowing your wife to continue to believe that she was your “first and only” falls squarely into the harmless camp.

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