#281: When You Want to Work on the Relationship But Your Partner Doesn't
So many people will know the frustration of wanting to work on your relationship and being met with resistance, shutdown, or disengagement from a partner. When your sincere attempts at getting through and finding a path forward aren't landing, it's easy to feel hopeless—and confused as to what it means for your future.
In today's episode, I'm sharing some thoughts on this predicament, as well as tips for breaking through the impasse and how you can find your way back to centre irrespective of whether your partner comes to the table.
There are few things more frustrating and lonely than feeling like your relationship needs work, being willing to do that work, and feeling like your partner simply isn’t meeting you there.
Maybe you keep finding yourselves in the same conflict cycles. You’re feeling disconnected, there are unmet needs on both sides, and things just feel stuck.
You’ve tried talking about it. You’ve suggested therapy. You’ve brought up books, podcasts, conversations, or other ways you could work on things together. But instead of being met with openness, you’re met with resistance, dismissal, defensiveness, or shutdown.
It can leave you wondering: If they cared about me and this relationship, wouldn’t they want to work on it too?
It’s an understandable conclusion to reach. But your partner’s resistance may not necessarily mean what you think it means.
Why “Working on the Relationship” Can Feel So Different to Each Partner
If you lean towards anxious attachment, actively working on your relationship may feel inherently positive.
Talking about your relationship can feel connecting. It reinforces that there is an “us” and that you are both invested in building a future together.
Even when things are difficult, having your partner sit down and talk through those difficulties can provide reassurance. It can communicate: We’re still here. We’re working through this. Neither of us is going anywhere.
For someone who fears abandonment, that can feel deeply comforting.
But someone with more avoidant attachment patterns may experience those same conversations very differently.
Rather than hearing, Let’s work together to make our relationship stronger, they might hear:
You’re disappointing me.
You’re not being a good partner.
You’re failing at this relationship.
People with avoidant patterns often carry sensitivities around control, autonomy, failure, and shame. So a request to “work on the relationship” can inadvertently touch all of those tender places.
That doesn’t mean their refusal to engage is necessarily helpful or justified. But understanding what might be happening beneath the surface can help you stop automatically interpreting their resistance as proof that they don’t care.
They Might Feel Outmatched in Relationship Conversations
There’s another piece that can easily become a blind spot, particularly if you’re someone who spends a lot of time thinking and learning about relationships.
Maybe you’ve read the books. You listen to the podcasts. You understand attachment theory. You’re comfortable talking about emotions and can articulate exactly what’s happening between you.
Your partner might not have any of that language.
So when you sit down to have a big conversation about the relationship, what feels like an invitation to connect for you might feel like an incredibly unfair fight to them.
They might feel like you can run circles around them. You can process more quickly, articulate your thoughts more clearly, and explain exactly why their behaviour is contributing to the problem.
If someone already feels inadequate or ashamed, that can be incredibly intimidating.
And when they feel cornered, refusing to engage can become a form of self-protection. Shutting down gives them a way to regain some sense of control when they otherwise feel small, overwhelmed, or outmatched.
Again, understanding this doesn’t mean giving someone a free pass to avoid every difficult conversation.
It simply allows you to get curious about what might be happening rather than immediately telling yourself a painful story about what their behaviour means.
Be Careful of the Story You’re Telling Yourself
When your partner refuses to engage, it’s very easy to fill in the blanks.
You just don’t care.
If you loved me, you’d want to fix this.
Why am I the only one trying?
You clearly don’t care that I’m unhappy.
Those stories might feel incredibly convincing, particularly when you’re hurt and frustrated.
But they also tend to generate more anger, resentment, and criticism. And when you bring that energy into your next attempt at a conversation, your partner is even more likely to become defensive or withdraw.
Suddenly, you’re caught in the exact cycle you were trying to fix.
Instead, see if you can approach the situation with genuine curiosity.
You might acknowledge that you know these conversations are difficult for your partner and ask them to help you understand why.
You can explain that part of you interprets their reluctance as a sign that they don’t care, while also recognising that this might not be the whole story.
And importantly, you can invite them to contribute their own ideas.
If they don’t want to go to therapy or have the kinds of conversations you’ve been suggesting, what would working towards a better relationship look like to them?
Your way is not necessarily the only way.
The key here is that the invitation needs to be genuine. Asking your partner for ideas while internally thinking, Well, I’ve suggested everything and you’ve rejected it, so you figure it out, is very different from sincerely inviting collaboration.
Tone and energy matter.
Stop Trying to Fix Everything and Focus on Your Own Work
When a relationship feels hard, it’s natural to become fixated on fixing it.
But sometimes the most productive thing you can do is stop pointing all of your energy at the relationship and turn some of that attention back towards yourself.
This is particularly important if you struggle with anxious attachment.
A big part of anxious attachment can be hyperfixating on another person: what they’re doing, what they’re not doing, how they’re behaving, and what needs to change so that you can finally feel okay.
And while your partner absolutely has responsibility for how they show up in the relationship, constantly monitoring and trying to change their behaviour can leave you feeling powerless.
Your wellbeing becomes dependent on whether someone else does what you want or need them to do.
Part of moving towards greater security is learning to place your centre of gravity back within yourself.
What is actually within your control?
What feelings are yours to take responsibility for?
Where are you reacting rather than responding?
Where might fear be driving you towards criticism, blame, control, or protest?
What would it look like to build greater self-worth, self-respect, and self-trust regardless of what your partner chooses to do?
This isn’t about deciding that you’re the problem.
Relationship dynamics are relational. Both people contribute in different ways.
But your side of the dynamic is the place where you actually have agency.
Give Yourself Permission to Stop Scrutinising the Relationship
Sometimes we add another layer of pressure by constantly asking ourselves:
Should I stay or should I go?
Is this ever going to get better?
What if they never change?
How much longer should I give this?
When you’re examining every interaction through the lens of whether your relationship will survive, everything starts to feel incredibly high stakes.
Your threat system is already activated, so every disappointing thing your partner does becomes more evidence that something is terribly wrong.
If it feels appropriate for your situation, you might give yourself permission to temporarily park the decision.
You don’t necessarily have to decide the future of your relationship today.
Instead, you might choose a period of time where your focus is simply on yourself.
Rather than spending all of your energy cataloguing what your partner is doing wrong, you can ask what needs your attention within you.
Sometimes that shift alone changes the relational dynamic.
When you loosen your grip, stop scrutinising your partner, and redirect your attention towards yourself, you create space.
Your partner may feel less judged or monitored. They might have more room to step forward, take initiative, or move towards you in ways they couldn’t when they felt like the relationship was constantly under a microscope.
There are no guarantees that this will happen.
But even if your partner doesn’t change, you will still benefit from strengthening your relationship with yourself.
You Still Get to Decide What Kind of Relationship You Want
None of this means you need to stay indefinitely in a relationship where you feel lonely, disconnected, or unable to communicate.
Understanding why someone struggles to engage is not the same thing as accepting a relationship that consistently fails to meet your needs.
You are allowed to decide that being able to talk openly with your partner and work through important issues together is something you need in a relationship.
But making that decision from a foundation of self-trust and self-respect is very different from trying to make it from a place of panic, insecurity, or fear of abandonment.
That’s another reason your own work matters so much.
The stronger your relationship with yourself becomes, the more clearly you can assess the relationship in front of you. You can advocate for yourself more effectively. You can recognise what belongs to you and what doesn’t. And you can trust yourself to handle whatever comes next.
Bring Your Focus Back to Where You Have Agency
If you feel like you’re banging your head against a brick wall trying to convince your partner to change, engage, go to therapy, or work on the relationship in the way you think they should, consider redirecting some of that energy.
Get curious about why your attempts at connection might not be landing the way you intend.
Invite your partner into the conversation rather than prescribing what the solution needs to look like.
And most importantly, come back to yourself.
You cannot control whether your partner chooses to do their work.
But you can build greater self-awareness, self-worth, self-trust, and emotional security within yourself.
And whether your relationship ultimately changes, stays the same, or you decide that it’s no longer right for you, that work will never be wasted.
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[00:01:29]:
Hey everybody. Welcome back to another episode of On Attachment. In today's episode, we are talking about what to do when your partner doesn't wanna work on the relationship and you do, and you feel like there's a lot of work that needs to be done because things are feeling hard and stuck and unsatisfactory. And maybe you find yourselves in the same conflict cycles over and over again, and it's really clear that you're both feeling disconnected and there's unmet needs and all of the things, but your attempts at getting through to your partner at having conversations, at suggesting solutions, are being met with dismissal or resistance or shutdown, and you feel a little bit empty-handed. Which I'm sure what I've just described will be familiar to a lot of people. It's certainly something that I've dealt with at various points in my past relationships and even probably my current relationship in different seasons. And it's, it's very real and it's very hard when we feel Like we are trying in earnest to make positive changes, but our partner is not joining us in that. They're not meeting us in that.
[00:02:36]:
They're not on board. And we just don't really know where to turn, whether that means it's the end of the road for the relationship or whether we're not approaching it in the right way. And of course, I don't think that there's any one answer to that, and it will always be influenced by so many different variables. But in today's episode, I want to share some thoughts about How you might get yourself unstuck, some things that you can do, places you can put your energy so that you don't feel like you're just banging your head up against a brick wall and then feeling frustrated and lonely and resentful, which I think is where it often goes and where we often end up, which is obviously not a nice place to be. So that's what we're going to be talking about in today's episode. Before I do, just a quick reminder that I have a lot of free resources on my website. Whether you're someone who's struggling with anxious attachment and you are looking to understand yourself better and your own patterns, there's plenty there for you. But I also do have resources for couples.
[00:03:35]:
I have a couples course, but I also have a free masterclass about anxious avoidant dynamics. There's so much there and it's really worth spending some time to dig into and download a few bits and pieces that you feel might be relevant to you and your situation. So I'll pop the link to my free resources page in the show notes, or you can head straight to my website at stephanieriegg.com. Okay, so let's talk about this, what to do when you're feeling really stuck in your relationship and you're wanting to work on things and your partner isn't. So as I spoke to in the introduction, I really just want to validate how hard this can feel and how unfair it can feel. I think it really can feel very unfair when you are really trying and you're really wanting things to get better, and you're even willing to own your part and your contribution, and you're trying to approach it in a constructive way rather than devolving into blame and criticism and attack. If you're really trying to clean up your side of the street, but your partner is still unwilling and is not engaging, that can feel like they're not holding up their end of the deal, and that your hands are sort of tied because obviously you can only take it so far yourself. And so I just wanna acknowledge, again, from experience and from supporting so many people in this situation, how hard that can be.
[00:04:56]:
With that That being said, I suppose I want to offer a couple of different perspectives on that situation because I think we can have some blind spots, particularly if you are the more anxiously attached partner in the dynamic, which I know a lot of my listeners are, and you're in a relationship with someone who maybe leans more avoidant in their attachment patterns. Because so often, as with, you know, so many different areas, we can think that our way is the right way or the only way or the better way, and then we can whether we realise it or not, judge our partner or impose that onto our partner and become a little bit righteous about the fact that they're not cooperating with what we're proposing and then feel like they're the problem. And it's such an easy place for us to go. But of course, anytime we get into that oppositional mindset of, you're the problem, no, you're the problem, it's just, it's over before it's even begun. It's completely self-defeating and we're never gonna get what we want out of that, which is ultimately attunement and connection. So to take a step back, I think it's important to acknowledge at the outset that for people with anxious attachment patterns, working on the relationship is kind of a positively coded thing. It's something that is likely to feel connective because when we're actively talking about the relationship, that almost reinforces the existence of the relationship. And there's a sense of connection in that.
[00:06:16]:
There's a sense of joint endeavour. There's a sense of building something for our future together. And all of that reinforces that we're in a relationship and we're going to continue to be in a relationship. And there's a sense of investment and all of the things. And that's comforting. For someone whose tendency is to fear abandonment, to fear disconnection, to fear that things are all going to change and you're going to slip away and I'm going to lose you. So even if the relationship's feeling hard, um, you know, working on it is always something that we're going to turn towards and be enthusiastic about rather than turn away from or be reluctant to pursue. On the contrary, someone with more avoidant patterns tends not to view working on the relationship as a positive thing.
[00:06:58]:
And there's a few reasons for that. The first being, and I've spoken about this on the podcast before. Some of the underlying wounds of people with avoidant patterns, by contrast with anxious folks who tend to fear abandonment and rejection, people with more avoidant patterns tend to fear being controlled, a loss of autonomy. They tend to fear failure and have a lot of shame around not being a good partner or not doing a good job. And so they can really push back against any messaging that could be construed as, you are disappointing me, or I am unhappy because of you. And oftentimes the, we need to work on the relationship and we need to go to therapy and we need to talk about all of the things that aren't working, that can register as, you are failing as my partner and I'm disappointed in you and I'm unhappy and you're not doing a good job. And that's really hard to turn towards with an open mind and go, great, tell me more about it, for someone whose blueprint tells them to turn away from those, you know, painful and difficult feelings rather than, you know, to rush in and try and fix them with Which is the more anxious way. So it's not to say that any of that's right or wrong or better or worse.
[00:08:10]:
It's just context. And if you are really wanting to approach your relationship from a constructive place, you've got to be willing to get curious about the ways in which your partner might be different to you and why your very genuine attempts at whatever it is you're doing are not landing in the intended way with them and might be actually impacting them in a really unintended way and making them feel demoralised or discouraged or attacked. Even though that's far from being your intention. So that's one piece that can create this resistance in avoidant partners to doing the work, because it just feels like a reminder of all of the things you're doing wrong and all of the ways that you're not, you know, meeting my expectations. But there's another big piece, and again, it can be a bit of a blind spot for those of us who are more comfortable talking about feelings and talking about relationship and are quite emotionally literate. Compare that to someone with more avoidant patterns who probably has a lot less experience with articulating themselves, probably spends a lot less time thinking about the relationship dynamics and analysing that and reading the books and listening to the podcasts and having a whole framework to make sense of it. It can really feel like there's a mismatch and that to go to therapy, for example, or even just to sit at home and have a big conversation about what's not working, they can feel like, I am no match for you in this conversation. You can just run circles around me in how quickly you can process it, how you can articulate yourself, the arguments that you can mount against me as to why I'm doing something wrong or why you're in the right.
[00:09:52]:
It can feel like a really unfair fight. And so when someone's feeling like that and they're feeling a bit cornered and they're feeling lectured to and they're feeling like they're maybe intellectually or emotionally outmatched by their partner, just shutting down or refusing to engage is a bit of a power move. It's the way that they can feel like they're in control when they might otherwise be feeling really small. And again, that's not to say that that's then a reasonable or a helpful thing for them to do, but it's just looking at their refusal to engage or their reluctance to engage, not from a place of them not caring about the relationship, but actually it's just a form of self-protection a lot of the time. And again, if we can see that someone's feeling really intimidated by those conversations and really like they're almost unqualified to have those conversations because it tends not to go very well for them. The track record doesn't point to those conversations being very helpful or them being able to effectively get their point across. Just avoiding them altogether becomes a solution, even if it's not a great one, it's at least a solution that protects them from that discomfort and the impacts that those conversations tend to have on the relationship, which oftentimes they're not actually helpful because we lack the skills to have them in a constructive way. So I offer that again just to contextualise why someone might have resistance to doing the work in the way that you would naturally gravitate towards or that would feel good for you.
[00:11:26]:
And again, I'm going to just keep saying this because I know people are going to comment and protest. It's not to say that's therefore fine or justified. It's just to acknowledge that it's oftentimes not personal. And I think that contextualising someone's behaviour in the context of the things that are hard for them in relationships. It's not about giving them a free pass to continue doing that. It's just so that we can take it less personally and we cannot interpret it through the lens of what it would mean if we were doing it. Because when we do that, then we craft this whole storey of, you just don't care. You don't care about when I'm upset.
[00:11:58]:
You should wanna meet my needs. You just don't care about me or this relationship. If you really loved me, you'd wanna hear about all the things I'm struggling with, and all those other storeys which are really unhelpful because they just make you feel worse and they make you feel more upset, more angry, this greater sense of injustice. And all of that energy coming to these conversations is not gonna get you what you want. It's just going to add fuel to the fire of everything that I've just described. So all of that being said, I think a much more helpful way of approaching it, rather than making your partner wrong for not wanting to do the work in the way that you would like, is to open up a conversation and say, okay, I get that these conversations are hard for you, or you don't really enjoy them, or you don't think that they're helpful. And maybe also I get that you don't wanna go to therapy. Can you help me to understand that, where you're coming from? Because the storey I'm telling myself is that if you cared, you would wanna do that.
[00:12:58]:
And I realise that's not a helpful storey for me to be stuck in, but I'm struggling to see it from another perspective. So can you help me out? Or, do you have any other suggestions? Because I get that my way's not the only way, but I also really want us to be able to feel more connected and for us both to feel better about the relationship. And it's felt hard recently. And that's scary for me because I don't want to feel like we're just turning our backs on each other and giving up. But equally, the suggestions that I'm putting forward, you don't seem to be picking up. So do you have any other ideas? And saying all of that with a genuine spirit of openness and collaboration and invitation, rather than saying it from a judgmental and righteous place of, well, I'm making all the suggestions and you're just saying no, so you tell me what we should do. Like, there's a complete tonal difference. And even the same thing delivered from that different energy is going to elicit defensiveness and shutdown and disengagement.
[00:13:56]:
So be really mindful and be sincere in inviting collaboration and giving your partner the benefit of the doubt, rather than just assuming that they're being obstructive and difficult for the sake of it, and it's all pointless, and why do I even bother? I get it. I know that that's an easy place to go, but it's also not a helpful one if your goal is to actually get connection and engagement. So that is one piece, and it's a big piece. The other key piece is this. In my work generally, when people come to me and they're having a really hard time in their relationship, and they're trying all of the things to fix it, oftentimes my advice will be, work on your own stuff first and foremost. Just leave the relationship drama for a bit because it's probably not going anywhere. Don't keep trying to engage and fix and address the problem head on. When you know you've got your own stuff to deal with.
[00:14:52]:
And this can be a bit of a delicate dance because of course, trying to shift your own patterns when the relationship is feeling really hard can be tricky. It can be asking a lot of your system. If the relationship is inherently insecure and very triggering, to kind of heal in your own lane when you're still getting triggered every day because the relationship feels fundamentally under a lot of stress and is triggering all of your wounds, then that might be equivalent to taking one step forward and two steps back. But if you can, and to the extent that you can, focusing on doing your own work. So building up a greater sense of self, and this is particularly if you know you really struggle with anxious attachment. Because for people with anxious attachment patterns, the fixation on the other person and their behaviour and what they're doing and trying to control that so that we feel better, that's actually part of the anxious attachment pattern that we're trying to shift away from. We're trying to shift towards more agency, more self-awareness, more of a sense of, okay, what's within my control and how can I take responsibility for my own feelings rather than outsourcing them to my partner and then trying to control them so that I feel the way I want to feel? That is really bound up in a lot of our stuff. And so sometimes when we go into that relationship fixing mode from this place of grip and control and rigidity, that actually can keep us in our part of the dance even though we are really earnestly trying shift the relationship to a healthier place.
[00:16:27]:
Because what can often happen, and God knows I was guilty of this in my previous relationship, is I'd say all the right things and I'd deliver the scripts, but then if my partner didn't meet me in that, which he often didn't, I'd very quickly snap back to blame and criticism and him being the problem and I'm doing all the right things and you're not coming to the table. And so it was a very flimsy attempt at almost performing secure attachment when I just didn't have the foundation within myself to really follow through on what I was saying I needed. I didn't have that deep self-worth and self-respect. And it was only for me when I did that work within myself that my relationship dynamics changed. And it just so happened in my case that I also changed relationships. But even still, doing that work within me allowed me to show up to my relationships completely differently and from a much sturdier place where I wasn't so prone to attacking and blaming and controlling and protesting and doing all of those things that are a natural expression of So it's not to say you're the problem, so fix yourself. It's just to acknowledge that all of these dynamics are dynamic and relational, and that we contribute in our own ways. And for people with anxious attachment patterns, part of our contribution is that we are hyperfixated on the other person, on what they're doing, and what we'd like them to be doing.
[00:17:54]:
And And it's not a helpful place for us to put our energy. And part of our work, whether the relationship's feeling good or not, whether we're in a relationship or not, is actually learning to place our centre of gravity back within ourselves. Because that allows us to take responsibility for what's ours. It allows us to see more clearly. It allows us to respond rather than react. It allows us to advocate for ourselves from a more healthy and grounded place. Really, everything benefits when we build up that foundation within ourselves, which is the part that we've typically neglected. So I offer that again, recognising that it can be really hard to do that work within yourself if things are feeling really hard in your relationship, because that naturally takes up so much of your focus, and it can be challenging to create sort of an energetic boundary around yourself to do that work without being pulled back into whatever's going on in the relationship.
[00:18:49]:
But if at all possible, if you can just Choose not to engage, to choose not to focus on all the things that are missing, to not put the pressure on yourself to make a decision about the future of the relationship, if that's a piece as well. I think sometimes when we're looking at our relationship through this lens of scrutiny and should I stay or should I go, is it gonna get better, everything feels really high pressure and high stakes. And that just magnifies our threat perception with respect to everything that our partner does or doesn't do. And so just parking that and saying, I'm not gonna make any decisions for the next however long, I'm just gonna leave that there and I'm gonna focus on my own stuff because I know that there's stuff that needs my attention and focusing all my energy on what my partner's doing wrong is a really neat way to avoid looking in the mirror. And I know it takes a lot of courage and we can really feel like, but they are the one doing all of the things and if they did change, everything would get better. And that might be true, but it's not the full picture. And it's also extremely disempowering and a really reliable way to feel angry and resentful and bitter and all of those things. So if you want to free yourself from that burden and you wanna feel like there are actual things that you can do to exercise agency and to feel like, I am creating some momentum, focusing on cleaning up your side of the street is always a good idea, no matter what's going on in your relationship and what your partner's doing or not doing.
[00:20:14]:
And with the added benefit that sometimes that can actually shift things without you directly pointing a fire hose at the relationship. Sometimes you shifting your energy and letting go of the grip there and not kind of looming over your partner and them feeling the energy of your judgement or criticism or scrutiny or need to fix and sort of shifting your focus back to yourself. Like sometimes that alone can really create a ripple effect that creates some space for your partner to step forward, to take some initiative, to move towards you. That change to, to your side, to your input to the equation can actually create new experiences in the relational field. But even if it doesn't, you will always benefit from doing that work. So it's always worth doing, no matter what your partner does or doesn't do in response. And I will just finish by saying that none of this is to suggest that you have to or should stay in a relationship that feels gridlocked, that feels lonely, and no matter what you try, your partner's not coming to the table, refuses to engage. You are absolutely allowed to feel like that is not satisfactory and it's not what you want.
[00:21:25]:
And I'm certainly not telling you that, you know, you should stay in that. That's something that only you can decide. And for me personally, I wouldn't be willing to be in a relationship where I felt like I couldn't talk to my partner about things that were bothering me and that we didn't have that open channel to work on things that felt important to either of us. But what I will say is, again, going back to the self piece, oftentimes it's only when we do that work within ourselves that we can see that clearly and feel confident in our ability to make the right decision for ourselves, for the future of the relationship, if it does feel like it's at that level. It's a really hard decision to make from a place of fear and insecurity and low self-worth. So once again, all roads lead back to when we do that work within ourselves. Our self-trust around both decision-making and our trust in our ability to handle whatever might come next is always going to benefit from us having done that work within ourselves. So if you are feeling stuck in your relationship, you really can't lose by focusing on your own stuff, on your own work, not because you're the problem, but because that's ultimately where your agency can be meaningfully exercised, where you can take responsibility, where you can take action rather than banging your head up against a brick wall and waiting for someone to be different or to change or to do what you want them to, which is a recipe for a lot of stress and frustration.
[00:22:48]:
Okay. Sending you lots of love. I know what it's like to be in that situation. So if you're there, my heart goes out to you. Thank you. And I hope that you've gotten something from this episode. And thanks as always, everyone, for listening and for your support, and I look forward to seeing you again next time. Thanks, guys.
Keywords from Podcast Episode
relationship conflict, partner resistance, anxious attachment, avoidant attachment, attachment patterns, relationship dissatisfaction, emotional disconnection, unmet needs, conflict cycles, personal growth, self-awareness, communication barriers, relationship advice, couples therapy, anxious-avoidant dynamics, emotional literacy, self-protection, blame and criticism, feeling stuck, relationship solutions, self-worth, self-respect, relational dynamics, relationship agency, relationship boundaries, emotional triggers, healthy connection, relationship decision-making, self-trust, relationship resources
#280: Why You Feel Jealous About Your Partner's Past (& How to Navigate It)
In today's episode, we're talking about retroactive jealousy — being an excessive preoccupation with a partner's romantic and/or sexual history, and feelings of intense insecurity and comparison as a result. This is a really common experience (one I used to struggle with myself!), particularly among those with anxious attachment patterns who already experience a hypervigilance to perceived relational threats coupled with low self-esteem and a fear of abandonment.
We'll talk about how retroactive jealousy is often a branch off the "unworthiness" tree, and why starting there — with tending to our low self-worth — is often the fix.
Retroactive jealousy describes jealousy about the past—and, in relationships, particularly jealousy about a partner’s past.
It’s something that many people struggle with, especially those with anxious attachment patterns. When you already have a baseline sensitivity to potential threats to your relationship, that can naturally manifest as jealousy and a tendency to perceive threats everywhere you look—including in your partner’s history.
What makes retroactive jealousy particularly complicated is that, on some level, you know the past is the past.
Whatever happened occurred before you knew your partner, when they had no loyalty or obligation to you. So you can find yourself caught between comparison and insecurity on the one hand, and an awareness that you can’t reasonably have a problem with what happened on the other.
That combination can create a lot of shame and self-doubt, while doing very little to stop the preoccupation itself.
You might feel compelled to gather information about your partner’s past, compare yourself to people they’ve previously been with, or feel as though threats to your relationship are everywhere.
So why does retroactive jealousy feel so all-consuming for some people? And what should you actually focus on if you want to loosen its grip?
When Jealousy Is Responding to a Genuine Threat
Before talking about chronic or retroactive jealousy, it’s important to distinguish it from jealousy that arises in response to actual problems within a relationship.
If there have been known breaches of trust, secrecy, dishonesty, inappropriate behaviour, or blurred boundaries, jealousy can be a very natural—and even healthy—emotional response.
The same applies if the issue relates to an ex. If your partner still has a close relationship with an ex and aspects of that relationship feel uncomfortable to you, that may be more accurately understood as a trust and boundaries problem than a retroactive jealousy problem that resides with you.
You don’t need to ignore inappropriate behaviour or boundary breaches and simply focus on yourself.
The kind of jealousy we’re talking about here is different. It’s the chronic, background jealousy that may have followed you across different relationships, where you sense that your feelings have more to do with your own insecurity than anything your partner is doing or not doing.
The Constant Monitoring, Surveillance and Comparison
Chronic jealousy can create a persistent sense of monitoring and surveillance.
Whether it’s your partner’s colleagues, their exes, or other people you encounter, you might find yourself sizing people up. You watch how your partner behaves around them and how they behave around your partner. You compare yourself to them.
It can feel as though you’re examining everyone around you through the lens of threat detection and assessment.
Often, this comes back to our own patterns and insecurities.
We might carry fears that our partner will leave us the moment they have an opportunity. We might believe that we are less than, inadequate, unlovable, not enough, or too much.
When we struggle to see our own value, comparison comes very naturally—and those comparisons tend not to look very favourable for us.
We put everyone else on a pedestal. We can’t understand why our partner has chosen us. We struggle to take in their love, and we struggle to trust them and other people.
Fear of abandonment and a sense of unworthiness can collide to create the very combustible combination that is jealousy.
Why an Ex Can Feel Like a Particularly Powerful Threat
In the context of retroactive jealousy, a partner’s ex can feel especially threatening.
This isn’t a hypothetical person your partner might find attractive. It’s someone you know your partner has found attractive. Someone they may have loved, been intimate with and wanted to be with.
If it was a long-term relationship, that can make the perceived threat feel even greater.
Your threat detector can see that person as particularly dangerous even when there’s no ongoing relationship and nothing untoward happening.
There can be a sense of:
This person is a verified competitor to me because I know my partner loved them.
The idea that your partner could love someone else, be attracted to someone else or want to be intimate with someone else can feel incredibly uncomfortable. And if you already struggle with comparison, it makes sense that this person becomes someone you compare yourself to.
When Your Partner Has Had More Experience Than You
Another factor that can contribute to retroactive jealousy is an asymmetry in your respective relationship histories.
If your partner has been with many more people than you have, for example, that difference can feel threatening when you’re already starting from a place of self-doubt, insecurity and low self-worth.
You might fear that your partner will want to continue having casual relationships, or that they won’t fully choose you because they’ll want to keep their options open.
Those fears can exist even when there is nothing happening within your current relationship to suggest they’re true.
The fear is coming from that scared, insecure voice within you, and your partner’s past becomes another potential threat to the relationship.
Retroactive Jealousy Is an Inside Job
If this is something you struggle with, it makes sense that it feels so powerful because it touches into many of our deeper insecurities and fears.
But that’s also why we need to look at it through that lens.
Retroactive jealousy isn’t something we can necessarily solve in isolation.
You might ask:
How do I stop being jealous about my partner’s past?
But treating jealousy as a siloed issue, separate from everything else you might struggle with in relationships, isn’t realistic.
Jealousy is a branch off the tree.
It’s an extension of deeper wounds and fears: that you’re not good enough, that your partner doesn’t really love you, that they aren’t really choosing you, or that they aren’t fully committed to you.
Again, if there are things happening within your relationship that reinforce those fears—uncertainty about the relationship, for example, or an absence of healthy and open conversations about the future—then those things matter too.
But for people who struggle with chronic jealousy, an important question to ask is:
What is my work here?
And for many people, that work is building self-worth.
Why Building Self-Worth Matters
Building self-worth isn’t going to solve every relational problem.
What it can do is give you greater clarity about whether those problems are mainly residing with you or whether there are issues within the relationship that genuinely need your attention.
It can also significantly increase your capacity to navigate relational problems.
When you’re coming from a very jealous, insecure or paranoid place, that energy inevitably enters the way you approach difficulties in your relationship.
It might sound like:
Why won’t you choose me?
Why do you find that person attractive?
You still love them, don’t you?
There can be a desperate, clinging quality to these interactions. And then, afterwards, you might feel enormous shame because you can see yourself self-destructing in real time while feeling powerless to stop it.
That’s why it can be helpful to stop viewing this purely as a jealousy problem and start viewing it as a self-worth problem.
Not as another reason to criticise yourself, but as an invitation to become someone you’re proud of being, someone you’re comfortable being and someone you like.
Because from that place, it becomes much easier to genuinely believe that your partner sees your value and loves you.
When you don’t like or respect yourself, it can be very difficult to believe that anyone else genuinely sees you differently.
What Changes When You Feel Secure in Your Own Value
When you can anchor into the felt sense that yes, I am a valuable person, you no longer need to constantly question why someone would love you.
You’re no longer operating from such a strong place of self-devaluation.
And from there, the perceived threats to your relationship can naturally start to soften.
You’re not on such high alert.
The fear that your partner will leave you doesn’t feel quite so overpowering. Abandonment and rejection don’t carry the same sense that they would confirm all of your worst fears about yourself—that you aren’t good enough, lovable enough or otherwise enough.
That noise might not disappear entirely, but it can fade into the background.
In its place can be a greater sense of comfort within yourself, allowing you to navigate these experiences in a more level-headed way rather than being blinded by fear.
Your partner’s past can simply become part of the journey they were on before your relationship.
It doesn’t have to have anything to do with you.
Tend to the Underlying Wound
The solution to retroactive jealousy, then, isn’t necessarily a direct strategy for fixing jealousy in isolation.
Instead, we can ask:
How do I tend to the underlying wound that is expressing itself through jealousy and retroactive jealousy?
And importantly, that does not mean shaming yourself for feeling jealous.
Shaming yourself for jealousy—or for any expression of fear—isn’t helpful. If you’re already feeling low, vulnerable and insecure, beating yourself up is only going to entrench those patterns of fear and reactivity.
Saying that this is an inside job does not mean saying:
I am the problem and I need to fix myself.
Instead, it means recognising:
This is reflecting back to me some parts of myself that need my care, attention, compassion and support.
The mentality that you are the problem and need to be fixed only creates more insecurity and adds to the burden of shame that drives these patterns in the first place.
So if retroactive jealousy is something you struggle with, don’t feel badly about yourself for it.
Instead, see it as a trailhead.
It can point you towards the parts of yourself that need your attention—and tending to those parts with care and compassion can be a beautiful gift to give yourself.
You might also like…
[00:01:26]:
Hey everybody, welcome back to another episode of On Attachment. In today's episode, we are talking all about navigating jealousy in relationships and in particular retroactive jealousy, which is a term describing jealousy about the past and generally jealousy about a partner's past. And this is something that a lot of people struggle with, particularly people with anxious attachment patterns who we know, and as we'll talk about today, tend to experience a baseline sensitivity to any threats to the relationship. And that can really naturally manifest in experiencing a lot of jealousy and perceiving those threats everywhere you look, including in a partner's history. But all of that is, of course, made more complicated by the fact that the past is the past. There's nothing we can do about it. And so oftentimes we're grappling with this simultaneous comparison and insecurity about something that happened before we knew our partner, but Equally, we have an awareness that we can't reasonably have a problem with that because it was before our partner had any loyalty or obligation to us. And so there is this sort of irrational fear coupled with an awareness that we're maybe being unreasonable.
[00:02:40]:
And so that can lead us to experience a lot of shame and self-doubt while still being preoccupied with whatever the object of our retroactive jealousy is. So in today's episode, we're going to unpack some of those pieces, why you might really struggle with this, what might be sitting underneath it and what you might look to focus on within yourself and within your relationship so that jealousy and retroactive jealousy doesn't have such a chokehold on you, because I know it can feel really overwhelming and can really undermine your sense of security within the relationship to be in that mode of constant comparison and feeling like you have to gather all of this information about your partner's past and that there are threats everywhere, including in their previous relationships or their previous encounters. So That's what we're going to be talking about today. Before we get into today's episode, a quick reminder perhaps if you are newer to the podcast or to my work that I have a whole host of free resources on my website, including free trainings on how to heal anxious attachment and finally feel secure in life and love. I have a free breakup training. So if you're going through a breakup or you've been through a breakup recently and you're struggling to let go and process, I have free downloads. I have a free quiz, all sorts of things. If you wanna dig in a little deeper to this work, that is a great place to start, obviously.
[00:04:00]:
In addition to the almost 300 podcast episodes over the past 4 and a half years. So feel free to cheque that out. It's all linked in the show notes, or you can just head to stephanierigg.com. Okay, so let's talk about retroactive jealousy, why it's there, why it can feel so all-consuming for some of us, and what you should focus on if you want to shift away from feeling so overrun with this jealousy about a partner's past. Now, I always want to offer the disclaimer in any conversation about jealousy, whether it's retroactive or your present-day jealousy, that if there are actual known breaches of trust, instances of secrecy, or other inappropriate things going on in the relationship, then I think we have to put that in its own category of jealousy in the sense that jealousy is a really natural and even healthy emotional response to the existence of genuine threats to the relationship or things being kept from you or your partner not being honest or forthcoming about other people who might be on the scene and any blurred boundaries around that. So if that's the situation that you are finding yourself in, maybe even with respect to a partner's ex, if they've still got quite a close relationship and that feels uncomfortable, that's not really what I'm talking about today. I think that's more of a trust and a boundaries problem than it is a retroactive jealousy problem that resides with you. And so what I'm gonna be talking about today is more the chronic background, constant jealousy that you've experienced probably across different relationships that feels like it's just a near constant companion and that you sense is maybe more to do with your own insecurity than it is anything that your partner is doing or not doing.
[00:05:48]:
So it's not to discount that kind of jealousy. It's just to put that in a separate category because I will invariably get people who say, but what if my partner's doing all of these things? And I would never want to suggest that you just have to, you know, focus on your own stuff and ignore if there are actual boundary breaches or other inappropriate behaviours going on that need to be addressed. So just offering that caveat or that disclaimer at the top of the episode so that we're all on the same page about what we're actually talking about. So with that being said, what we're actually talking about is, as I said, that kind of chronic background jealousy, that sense of monitoring and surveillance and comparison, just lurking beneath the surface for you. And anyone who you interact with, who your partner interacts with, whether it's their colleagues, whether it's their exes, you feel this sense of sizing people up and watching how your partner is around them and how they are around your partner and comparing that to yourself and almost examining everyone in the field through this lens of threat detection and assessment. And that is oftentimes a function of our own patterns, our own insecurities that tell us that our partner will leave us at a moment's notice if they have an opportunity, and that tell us that we are less than, that we are inadequate, that we are unlovable, that we are not enough, or we are too much. And when we really struggle to see our own value, then naturally we are prone to comparison. And those comparisons tend to look really unfavourable for us.
[00:07:23]:
And we put everyone else on a pedestal and then we can't understand why our partner's chosen us. We can't really take in their love and we struggle to trust them, and we certainly struggle to trust others. So the combination of those factors, that fear of abandonment, that sense of unworthiness, those pieces can collide and create this very combustible combination that is jealousy. And a lot of people with anxious attachment patterns will experience fairly crippling jealousy. I certainly used to when I was in my early 20s. In previous relationships, I used to struggle with this a lot. Everything that I've just described, a feeling like everyone was a potential threat, that I couldn't really understand why my partner would choose me if they were given the choice and could choose someone else. And so I was very wary of anyone that either of us came into contact with.
[00:08:11]:
And there was this sense that I really had to keep an eye on those things, even in the absence of my partner doing anything wrong or untrustworthy. That fear really lived within me and it was very hard to shake. And in the context of retroactive jealousy, I would obsessively compare myself to my partner's exes. I would find out everything I could about these people that my partner had loved and been intimate with because that felt like not even a hypothetical threat. It's not like taking a second look at the person making your coffee and trying to figure out if your partner finds them attractive. This is a person who you know that your partner has found attractive, has loved, has wanted to be with, and particularly if that's been for an extended period of time, if they were in a long-term relationship, it makes sense that your threat detector sees that person as particularly dangerous, even if there's no ongoing relationship, even if there's nothing untoward. There can be this sense that that person is a verified competitor to me because I know that my partner loved them. And that can feel really uncomfortable.
[00:09:19]:
The idea that your partner could love anyone else, could be attracted to anyone else, could want to be intimate with anyone else. Naturally, that person emerges as someone that you are going to compare yourself to if you struggle with this in this way. I think there can be some other extenuating factors as well, which were present for me in that pretty much all, bar one, of my long-term partners had been with many more people than I had. And so there was this asymmetry in experience and how many partners they'd had. And that felt, again, threatening to me because when I was starting from this place of self-doubt and insecurity and low self-worth, there was this fear that they were going to want to continue to have casual relationships Or that they weren't going to want to fully choose me because they would want to keep their options open. Again, there was nothing in the relationship to suggest that that was true at all, that that was my insecurity and that scared voice within me that felt threatened by the fact that they'd had those casual encounters in the past and, you know, feared that they would want to have them again. And that just sat there as another potential threat to my relationship with these people. So I offer all of that in part to validate that I get it if this is something you struggle with, and I know that a lot of people do because I receive questions about it all the time, that it makes sense because it does really touch into, and as I said, like create a bit of a cocktail of a lot of our deeper insecurities and fears.
[00:10:50]:
But I think that's part of why we've got to look at it through that lens and realise that this is an inside job. And it's not something that we can solve in isolation because people will always ask, how do I solve Or how do I stop being jealous about my partner's past? And treating it as a siloed issue that exists separate from all of the other bits and pieces that you might be struggling with in your relationship, that's just not realistic because it is a branch off the tree. It is an extension of those other deeper wounds and fears that you carry that you are not good enough, that your partner doesn't really love you, isn't really choosing you, that they're not really committed to you. And again, going back to that caveat, if there are other pieces within the relationship that would reinforce that storey. If there is uncertainty, if there aren't healthy, open conversations about the future and all of those things that might contribute to a sense of fear about whether you're being fully chosen, that all makes sense. But I think we do have to look at the big picture and go like, what is my work here? And for a lot of people who struggle with this chronically, your work is building self-worth. And that is why, like, I feel a bit like a broken record, but so much of what I teach comes back to that as the starting point, because it's the thing that makes everything else feel easier, feel more secure, and feel clearer. So it's not like building self-worth will solve all of your relational problems, but it will give you a sense of clarity about whether those problems were mainly residing with you or whether there were problems within the relationship that need your attention.
[00:12:29]:
But your capacity to solve them relationally is going to be vastly increased once you focus on building self-worth, because if you are coming from this very jealous, insecure, paranoid place, your ability to navigate relational problems is going to be infused with that energy and it's not going to land well because you're going to have this desperate clinging. Why won't you choose me? Why do you find that person attractive? You still love them, don't you? And people don't respond well to that, of course. And then we feel a lot of shame because we can kind of see ourselves self-destructing in real time, but we feel powerless to stop it. So for all of those reasons, I really encourage you to start viewing this not as a jealousy problem, but as a self-worth problem. And I use the term problem there, but really it's like, oh, this is inviting me to do some work around becoming a person that I'm proud of being, a person I'm comfortable being, a person that I like, so that I can really believe hand on heart that my partner sees my value, that my partner loves me. And that's not something that I have to question because I'm coming from this place of really not liking myself, not respecting myself. And so I can't really believe that anyone else would see me in that way. And so that is so much of our work because until we can anchor into that felt sense of like, yes, I am a valuable person and I don't have to question why someone would love me because I'm not operating from this place of self-devaluation, then all of the threats to the relationship naturally start to soften because we're not on such high alert.
[00:13:59]:
We're not feeling like, oh, my partner's gonna leave me and I'm desperately afraid of abandonment and rejection because that would confirm all my worst fears and I'm not good enough and I'm not lovable and I'm not whatever enough. All of that noise, it might not completely go away, but it stops being so overpowering and it sort of fades to the background. And in its place is this sense of comfort within yourself that allows you to navigate all of this in a more level-headed way rather than being so blinded by fear. And from personal experience, I can share that it's completely a non-issue for me anymore. I don't feel at all jealous about my partner's past relationships. It feels completely irrelevant to Our relationship. It has nothing to do with me. It has nothing to do with anything.
[00:14:44]:
It's just part of the journey that my partner has been on. And now we're in a relationship and that's fine. That's not something that I could have said 10 years ago. I really struggled very much, as I said. But I do think that the thing that changed was not, I mean, the relationships changed, but it wasn't because of that. It was me that changed and I became much more comfortable in who I am such that I wasn't questioning why my partner would wanna be with me relative to other people that they've been with. And so I really do think that that's the crux of the work. And that's like where the solution lies.
[00:15:19]:
It's not like a direct, how do I fix this problem in isolation? It's how do I tend to the underlying wound that then solves for all of these different expressions or manifestations of that wound, including jealousy and retroactive jealousy? And I should say, I think I alluded to it at various points there, but shaming yourself for being jealous is Absolutely not helpful. And shaming yourself for any expression of your fear is not helpful and will only make it worse because you're essentially beating yourself up when you're already feeling very low and very vulnerable and very insecure. And that's only going to entrench you in those patterns of fear and reactivity. So just to be very clear, when I say like, this is an inside job, that's not saying you are a problem or you need to fix yourself. It's just realising like, oh, this is reflecting back to me some pieces within me that need my care and attention, that need compassion. that need my support rather than I'm the problem and I need to fix myself because that mentality only keeps us stuck. It only makes us feel worse, more insecure. It only adds to the burden of shame that drives all these patterns in the first place.
[00:16:23]:
So don't feel badly about yourself if this is something that you struggle with. Just see it as a trailhead pointing you to what needs your attention. And that's a really beautiful gift that you can give to yourself. Okay. Sending you lots of love. I hope this has been helpful. If you're listening on Spotify, feel free to leave a comment. Follow the show on YouTube.
[00:16:44]:
Do subscribe to my channel. That's super helpful. Anywhere else, do whatever you can. Thank you as always for being here and for your support, and I look forward to seeing you again next time.
Keywords from Podcast Episode
navigating jealousy, relationships, retroactive jealousy, anxious attachment, insecurity, relationship threats, partner’s past, comparison, self-worth, abandonment fears, trust issues, boundaries, emotional response, breakup recovery, shame in relationships