Tl;dr: my boyfriend misunderstood my sexual past and upon knowing the correct timeline regarding my sexual partners, he’s distraught and looks at me differently.
For context, my boyfriend and I have been dating for 6 months. I adore him and think we compliment each other very well. For context, I was in a 5 year relationship with someone I loved very much from ages 18-23 that I had to break off for unfortunate reasons (my current boyfriend knows the situation). My current boyfriend has never had a relationship. We both have a body count of 5. Past that, he has never asked about my sexual past. From my understanding/ interpretation, this means don’t ask and don’t tell because if a guy cares about you, he will not want to know the details.
I met his parents this past weekend. We had so much fun and whatnot. After they left, we were sitting on his couch and I just randomly asked how many people are in his complete sexual history outside, including and excluding sex. This is something I had wanted to know for a while. From here, he brought up the assumption that I had sex with 4 people before the age of 18 and then my ex of 5 years. I corrected him and said there were two partners after my ex and before my current boyfriend (once I met my now boyfriend, I had already long cut off things with the previous people). He was shocked and pretty distraught. He said he felt lied to and betrayed and that he sees me differently because of the timeline of sexual partners. He said “things may have been different with us” had he known…. His concern is how fast I slept with someone after breaking off a long term relationship.
I’m giving him some time to process it all. He’s not taking it well at all. I genuinely would tell him anything with complete honesty if he asked. But…. He never asked. I had no idea he would want to know the extent of my past because he never asked. His counter is that it’s a form of lying by withholding information like that:( I’m just extremely bummed about all of this and would like to know how to move forward.