My partner (24M) says he doesn't feel like he can be intimate with me (22F) after I told him I had sex with one of our friends before I met him

A bit of context. My bf and I are in a LDR, we met 6 months ago while I was doing an exchange semester in his country through a mutual friend a few days before I had to return to my own country. We kind of hit it off almost immediately and started a relationship a month after we had met.

He is not the first man I have been in a relationship with and I have had sex with a couple of people (my ex and a friend of ours). He, in contrast, has not been in a relationship before, is still a virgin, was raised in a sort of conservative household, and has this idea of sex the pinnacle of intimacy in a relationship (which tbh I don't share as I think sex is important but not the most important thing in a relationship).

So the thing is, a three months ago we were talking about random stuff and he jokingly asked me who I had slept with bc I have told him I had slept with a couple of people before. I told him that if he wanted to know I would tell him bc tbh I don't mind at all sharing that information with him. He said I didn't have to but he seemed to really want to know, so I told him I have had sex with my ex and our mutual friend S (23M) (not the one that introduced us). When he heard I had sex with S, he kind of freaked out and I also freaked out bc of his reaction. We had a conversation about the whole thing the next day and agreed to take some time to figure out how we were feeling about it. Needless to say, I was really anxious about the whole thing. After a week, we had a conversation and he told me he wasn't ok with this (especially because his friend got to fuck his gf before he did) and didn't feel like he could "bounce back" to how our relationship was (in sexual terms as we had been sexting before). I told him I didn't expect him to but be could work through that, talk about it and see how it would go. So we set some boundaries about that and agreed to continue our relationship.

Last week he texted me saying he still couldn't see my in a sexual way and that we should talk about it. I agreed and we had a conversation about it. I don't really know how to describe the conversation but we agreed that we needed to have that conversation as it would present a major problem in the long run if we continued to ignore it. We agreed that he should go to therapy to maybe talk about the whole thing with someone that could help him figure out why was he feeling that way, and maybe to help him with some unresolved trauma he may have. We also established some more boundaries to help him ease his anxiety about the whole thing.

The problem here is, although I am glad we had that conversation, it left me with a conflicting feeling. The way he approached the topic was a bit weird and he kept talking about our relationship as if we were about to break up or as if we couldn't overcome this problem. I told him that I wanted to try and work things out through counselling/therapy (which he agreed was a good idea), and reassured him that I will wait for him to figure things out as I am really in love with him and I really don't mind waiting.

However, after we finished our conversation I started to feel really anxious about the whole thing. I have been giving it some more thought and I feel kind of rejected and judged by him (which I told him the first time we talked it), feeling unwanted (I have struggled with self-body image since I was a child), as well as feeling like he isn't as invested in the relationship as I am and just continuing with it bc it's his first (although he says he's in love with me and doesn't want to lose me)

I don't know what to do as I certainly don't want to break up with him but also I don't want to end heartbroken.

TL;DR- My bf says he doesn't feel like he can be intimate with me after I told him I had sex with a friend before I met him. He's agreed to go to therapy but I feel unsure about the whole thing as I am starting to feel he doesn't think we can overcome this.

Submitted November 29, 2020 at 05:26PM by lenina1917 https://ift.tt/2JuhJ2R