My girlfriend has slept with 100 men – I’m worried about fidelity

 You know her cravings come from the loss of her father, says Mariella Frostrup. But understanding what you want from this relationship must be your priority

The dilemma My partner’s relationships with other men is concerning me. She has admitted to sleeping with close to 100 men in the past, many for personal gain – including cash, gifts and holidays. I was shell-shocked, not so much that she participated, but that she confessed so blatantly. I also know that she has flirted with married men, enjoying dinner and sharing a hotel bed with one of them.

To me it appears that as a woman who was abandoned by her father at a young age, she struggles to say no to men. She went on holiday with a female friend and came back with a new man’s number in her phone whom she messaged frequently, and said I was being silly when I asked about him. She has no qualms about telling me that her male colleagues look at her in a way that suggests they’re interested in her. She appears to thirst for this attention, perhaps subconsciously.

Her reaction to my concerns is normally anger and so I avoid these topics, although inside me it is grating. I love her and have cut all ties with past flames, so she has nothing to worry about in terms of my faithfulness, but this is not reciprocated. Do I have it out with her, or shrug and accept that this is who she is?

Mariella replies Where to begin? Certainly not with a headcount of past lovers, which means little or nothing and certainly has no real bearing on your current predicament. If you’re judging a partner by the number of people they’ve slept with, then your priorities are seriously questionable. Then again, I’m not impressed by the transactional nature of some of her past choices either. The question you should be asking is what this woman is looking for, and do you have the strength, courage or, indeed, desire to help her find it.

She seems to need love, not in a clingy way but in a manner that aims to serve an all-consuming hunger for someone to feed her emotional cravings. You tell me a lot about her, but very little about you and why your needs and desires should be so sublimated. What do you want from this relationship? Do you want to be tortured in this way by the desirability and unpredictability of another?