He knew what hurt me and still didn’t act, can love be enough after that? Rj, LDR. F25, M26

It will be a long text, but please share your thoughts with me. We’ve been together for 4.5 months.

When I met him, I had never been in a relationship with anyone. He, on the other hand, had been with 15 people. He had experienced long-term relationships as well, one lasting 3 years and another 1 year. And he said that he forms deep emotional bonds very quickly, and he also had short-term relationships.

Even though all of this was difficult for me, before our relationship turned into long distance, I was able to manage my thoughts and they didn’t occupy my mind too much.

There were things that upset me while I was with him. This part will be a bit detailed, sorry. When we first started being intimate. He first tried with his finger, and I didn’t know he would do that the first time. I told him it hurt and stopped him, and he stopped. I got upset saying that I might never be able to do this, because it really hurt. When I said this, he laughed and said “hard life for you.” (for a while I thought I might have vaginismus). But after he apologized, I didn’t dwell on it much because he had never been with a virgin before and I thought maybe he didn’t realize that even a finger could hurt at the beginning.

A month and a half later, we had sex for the first time. That day was a very big thing for me. Considering my age, I had waited a long time for the right time and I was emotional. After our first time, he told me that sex without protection felt better. I can understand him saying that, but I would have preferred him to say it later. Not on the day I experienced my first sex in my life.

I told him I was hurt two weeks later, because I had returned to my own country, and RJ had started to fully show itself. I started thinking about those intimate moments he had with someone else before (actually Instagram triggered it because posts like “you are crazy: from no protection to no contact” kept appearing in front of me). I knew that he had sex in places like the shower, the beach, the car, and the park. And all of this started replaying in my mind.

Whenever my thoughts overwhelmed me, I told him. So he knew my situation. We talked many times, both face to face and through messages. Maybe 15–20 times. I told him that the number of people he had physical intimacy with in the past and the fact that it happened in what I see as crazy places made me uncomfortable. He tried to reassure me. But I didn’t want our feelings for each other to be consumed just because of this, and I wanted to end things on a good note. A few days later, he reached out to me and said he wanted to continue. After that point, everything was better. I stopped bringing up this topic so much.

But one day, he asked about someone I was following (and that guy and I are in different countries, and I hadn’t met him before because my bf didn't want). After that, I asked him whether he was following people he had slept with before. He said they meant nothing and that he could remove them.

He said that I might ask this one day and that it could become a problem. As the reason why he hadn’t removed them before, he said: “In the past, I gave everything to people who hurt me a lot, I had understood your feelings about this, but now I wanted to protect myself.” And he apologized. That day, I ended the relationship. Because I felt that he ignored my feelings about something we had talked about 15 times.

He sends messages saying he misses me. I miss him too, but the problem is that even if I explain my feelings now, my trust that he will care has been shaken, and RJ is in a much worse state.

Why RJ is worse: those girls were beautiful, but only one person especially caught my attention. Because he had shown me a celebrity he liked before, and apart from that, the physical traits he said he liked were the same as that girl. And I learned that his 3-year relationship was with that girl. And the details he told about his past relationships were always about his first relationship. He hadn’t experienced things like sex without a condom and the shower with anyone else, and details like the park. Those details were already in my mind, now they are in my mind with an image. Also, the fact that the physical traits he finds attractive belong to that girl made me compare myself to her.

I love him. He says he does too. But I don’t know. Do you think I can cope with this situation? While RJ has become worse and he has ignored my feelings, do you think we can recover at this point?