>>399142Nona, you do not need to feel ashamed, regretful, or dirty that you had sex a few times without a relationship on the horizon just because it felt good. As much as anyone else out there, you deserve to have consensual sex that feels good. (I am guessing that what you're thinking is: 'it's manipulative libfem talk to say it's empowering to have sex that goes nowhere.' But the flipside of that is that it truly is hateful, incorrect, and regressive to think that having consensual sex degrades you in some way, and you don't deserve to carry that shame.) You deserve to explore and be curious and do selfish, silly, care-free things like that. One thing any scientist can tell you is that experiments fail and end poorly or inconclusively all the time, but you need to take risks in order to learn and collect more information and experience. I also think that when all of your experiences are bad and traumatic, it really helps to satisfy that curiosity and put less-traumatic experiences between you and the past, even if you don't swing immediately into a perfect relationship (in this way, you are simply like all of the millions of women who did not end up marrying their first high school sweetheart). I hope you can try to look at yourself with the same empathy that you would look at any friend of yours who tried dating around, slept with someone, and found out it didn't work before moving on to the next guy.
It sounds to me like you are a smart, thoughtful, and cautious woman, and I completely believe in your ability to balance protecting yourself and yet exploring the world and taking the risks necessary to find fulfilling romantic and sexual experiences. I'm proud of you for being so careful in the dating world as an adult, and I'm proud of you for taking a risk now, even though it didn't work out. Also fwiw I don't think it's always productive to tell people about the trauma too early on (and he wasn't the one, so does he even deserve to know you that deeply? no).