“I wonder who else will be at K and C’s dinner party next weekend. I hope no one we don’t want to see,” I said somewhat rhetorically to my girlfriend Saturday morning.

We had begun our new routine of spending an hour on weekend mornings walking together through Prospect Park. When she stays over at my place, that is. If we’re at her place on a weekend morning, I’m unsure if we will walk anywhere. But if we do it will be in Maria Hernandez Park.

So, this pricked up my girlfriend’s ears, and she replied, “Well, I hope it’s not anyone you’ve had sex with.” She said it in jest, but her statement had a somewhat bitter edge.

I know she is not an overly jealous, possessive freak. She has a very healthy attitude towards everything in our relationship and pretty normal feelings about my sex and dating history. And my shit-eating grin accompanying some discussions of my past sexual adventures doesn’t help her feel secure. My sister nailed me on that particular relationship felony on the phone from Madison, WI. She said it doesn’t help my gal feel better about the whole thing when I’m winking and grinning. And she’s right.

I admit I would feel somewhat uncomfortable seeing a long-lost one-night stand or someone I serially dated at an intimate dinner party, and I can imagine my girlfriend would be, too. “What if you were in my position,” she asks me, “how would you feel if, on a fairly regular basis, you ran into my past liaisons?”

Well, I’m not sure, and, with one or two exceptions, I don’t have to worry about it because all her hookups took place in other states, and her exes have moved away.

We agree that everyone should have sex, casual or otherwise, hookups or ongoing relationships, monogamous, poly, whatever floats your boat. It’s essential to have a sexual life and the sex life you want, but no one will ever feel comfortable about the past, and that’s okay.

Maybe because “sowing my wild oats” happened later in my life is part of the reason we, as a couple, are running into a lot of my past sexual partners currently. But now I’m in a monogamous relationship, feel good about it, and it’s fabulous to finally have a communicative mate who is not afraid about talking through all of this.

She says it’s all just primordial: It’s perhaps a place people go to emotionally, an incredible feeling, the sense that there is still an attraction and, like the proverbial caveman, the territory is being marked. Plus, because we’ve both been cheated on in other relationships, it seems like maybe I’m lying, too.

But really, she’s highly evolved and healthy and knows none of that is true…but feels a twinge of jealousy. And that’s okay.