Dear Prudence,

You are uncharacteristically monotone on the subject of sharing one's romantic past with spouses -- spare the privacy, you write, every time.

Now, Talked Out's beau sounds so controlling he's worth fleeing.

But this kind of privacy is not needed for all individuals, or even optimum. Some personalities, including some females, desire a more confessional partnership and the deeper bond it brings. Sometimes, one partner wants it and the other doesn't, without pathological pre-stalking involved, but with a lot of discomfort and even bullying on the subject. And in such cases, sometimes the "privacy" advocate is actually hiding a lingering emotional link that is potentially harmful to the newer relationship. You never acknowledge this, that I've seen, and instead you always counsel the more private party to stand firm or bail.

And I agree, if both partners cannot reach a comfortable agreement on this issue, they should call it off. Yet that doesn't make one right and the other wrong. It merely makes them incompatible, unless something else is going on. And that something else can be a problem with either or both parties, not necessarily or only the prying one.

Now for the part on Gertrude Stein. Her first lesbian lover was May Bookstaver, whose name figured prominently (as the verb "may") in part of Stein's "Stanzas in Meditation." When Gertrude's later life partner, Alice, first learned about Gertrude's past with May, Alice was furious for a secrecy not kosher with the terms of the Gertrude-Alice relationship. Gertrude did penance, perhaps angrily, by rewriting that poem segment, replacing every "may" with "can." The two women remained epically devoted to each other until Alice's own death some two decades after Gertrude's.

jvanke,

Your post makes great sense, and asks legitimate questions, except that it ignores the letter writer's claims that she was held captive in the house, to the point of tears and pleading, with requests of intimate details. She writes, further, that the boyfriend badgers her to the point that she's "begun hanging up on him, something we both agree is disrespectful, but [she doesn't] know how else to end the interrogating!" I think those facts, unless unreliably reported by the letter writer, go way past being a "privacy advocate" or "full-disclosure advocate" and move on to psycho-abusive, stalker man.

As for Alice, she was out of line to demand Gertrude's "penance." What Gertrude did before meeting Alice was Gertrude's business, and, even if she chose to share details with Alice, regardless of what they were, they didn't warrant penance?!?! Alice did not have any rights on Gertrude's loyalty prior to meeting her, did she? Should Gertrude have not been with any other woman in her whole life in the hopes that one day she'd meet Alice? And changing her poems?! Shameful.

The fact remains the boyfriend is demanding sexual details of the letter writer's romantic past to the point of her /hanging up the phone because he won't stop/.

This is not respectful, harmless, or acceptable.

Her past is her own.

Unless it could seriously affect him, risky behaviors, children, former long term relationships etc., it isn't any of his damn business.