I met my husband in my late twenties, after what can only be described as the ‘feral years’.
I’d been with my high school sweetheart from 15 to 25. Ten years of ‘us’ before I even had a chance to figure out who I was. When it ended, I was devastated – and also free.
I was single at the same time as my two best friends, both of whom had also just broken up with their long-term boyfriends.
We were 25, hot, independent, and ready to make up for lost time. And we did. With enthusiasm.
We shagged our way through Sydney. Bartenders, personal trainers, accountants, one guy who may or may not have been an extra on Home and Away. If a man looked at us twice, he was fair game. We were reckless, glorious and unapologetic.
For two years, I had the best time of my life. I came alive in a way I hadn’t known was possible. After a decade of missionary sex in the suburbs, I suddenly understood my body. I learned what I liked, what I didn’t, how to say yes and how to say no.
My friends and I would sit at brunch, hungover and giggling, swapping wild stories like we were trading cards. It was liberating. It was empowering. It was messy. And it was ours.
Do I know my body count? No. Do I care? Also no. That number doesn’t define me.
‘We shagged our way through Sydney . Bartenders, personal trainers, accountants, one guy who may or may not have been an extra on Home and Away…’
When I met my husband, I wasn’t looking for a forever person.
It was a third-date conversation, the kind that happens when you’ve had two glasses of wine and you’re trading ‘relationship histories.’ He told me, with a little shrug, that he’d only slept with two people. Without thinking, I replied, ‘Same.’
Why? God only knows. Maybe it felt easier than unpacking the truth. Maybe I didn’t want him to think I was ‘too much’. Maybe I didn’t even imagine I’d see him again after that date.
And then I fell in love with him.
I fell hard. He made me laugh until I snorted, he made me feel safe, and I still get butterflies when he walks in the room. He’s been my person ever since.
And here’s the thing: I never thought about that lie again. It wasn’t some dirty secret I was hiding in the shadows. It was more like a sock that slipped behind the couch – out of sight, out of mind, while life was happening. I was busy falling in love, moving in together, planning a wedding, having a baby. Honestly, I could barely even remember saying it.
I never once sat there thinking about how many people he’d slept with, or how many I had. It just wasn’t relevant. We didn’t talk about it – not because it was forbidden, but because it was done. Over. Who we’d been before each other wasn’t part of the equation anymore.
And in my head, of course he knew I wasn’t some virginal librarian with a tidy ‘two and done’ past. I thought it was obvious I’d lived a little.
Since the night one of my old single friends came to stay, my marriage has been in freefall…
We’ve been married nine years. We’ve got a beautiful seven-year-old daughter who lights up our world. Like any parents, we had rough patches when she was little – the kind where you’re both too tired to think straight and snapping over who changed the last nappy – but we worked through it. We found our rhythm.
I thought we were solid.
Five months ago, one of my single girlfriends from my wild years came to stay. She had moved interstate, so it had been years since we’d had a night like we used to. We opened a bottle of wine, and then another, and before long we were cackling over our wild twenties – the nights we couldn’t remember, the men whose names we barely did.
It was fun. It was nostalgic. Until it wasn’t.
Because my husband heard us.
He sat there, stunned, as we swapped stories like we were still 26 and invincible. And then he left. He packed a bag and went to his parents’ house.
Since that night, my marriage has been in freefall.
He says it’s not the number. He swears he doesn’t care how many people I’ve slept with. What he can’t get past is the lie.
That one stupid, meaningless, off-the-cuff ‘same’ on a third date. That’s what has him questioning everything.
He says he feels like he doesn’t know me. That if I could lie about something so personal, so early, how can he be sure I haven’t lied about other things?
He tells me he can’t stop replaying it in his head – imagining me with all those people, then coming home and pretending I was someone else.
I tell him I wasn’t pretending. That who I was before him isn’t who I was with him. That the girl who danced on tables in Darling Harbour at 2am wasn’t the same girl who fell in love with him and never looked back.
But he has this disgust he can’t shake. And it’s breaking my heart.
We’re in counselling. We’re trying. But it feels like I’m watching him pull further away every week. It feels like I’m clinging to a marriage that is already over.
I wish I’d never lied. I wish I’d just laughed and said, ‘Mate, my number is higher than I can count on two hands.’ If he’d run away then, so be it.
But part of me also wonders – is it really the lie? Or is it the number after all?
Because I can’t change either. I can’t go back and un-live those years, and I wouldn’t want to. They made me who I am. They gave me the confidence, the experience, the joy that shaped me into the woman who fell in love with him.
But I also wouldn’t trade what I have with him for anything. Not for every wild night in Sydney, not for every laugh, not for every story.
So now I’m stuck in the middle – between the woman I was, the woman I am, and the woman he wishes I’d been all along.
I still adore him.
Even now, even with him sleeping at his parents’ and talking about divorce, even with him looking at me like I’m someone he doesn’t recognise – I love him more than I can put into words.
And I don’t know how to fix this.
I don’t know how to prove that one silly lie about my past doesn’t undo our present. That my body count doesn’t erase nine years of love, laughter, parenting, and partnership.
I just know that if this is the end of us, it’s the most devastating lesson of my life.
