Retroactive Jealousy: Navigating Discomfort With Our Partner's Past
Retroactive jealousy is one that focuses on the past, fixating on other partners or stages in your partner's lives and being threatened by it. In today’s conversation, I’ll dive into how such jealousy stirs immense stress, but more importantly, we share insights into building healthier, more resilient relationships.
We’ll cover:
Impacting our self worth
Looking for skeletons and reasons to not trust
If you should share the jealousy with your partner
FURTHER LINKS & RESOURCES:
Follow me on Instagram: @stephanie__rigg & @onattachment
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Episode Transcript
[00:00:04]:
Welcome back to another episode of On Attachment. In today's episode, we are talking all about retroactive jealousy, which for anyone who's not familiar with the term, refers to being preoccupied with jealousy about the past and particularly in the context of a relationship about your partner's past and maybe their past relationships. So this is something that a lot of people reach out to me about and I receive a lot of questions about. It can look like a comparison with a partner's exes or just obsessive preoccupation with what came before you and I think to the point where it can feel really all-consuming and can be really feeding a lot of insecurity. In the relationship and can really impact our connection and all of the other good things that we would want to be cultivating in our relationship in the present moment.
[00:01:18]:
It really can take us out of the here and now and create so much stress in our bodies and in our relationship with our partners when we're obsessing about things that may or may not have happened in the past. So I'm going to be talking a little bit about that today, why you might experience that and some ways that you can process it and work through it. And hopefully that will give you a little bit more context. For it and allow you to feel a bit more supported and able to work through those things as and when they arise rather than just panicking or spiralling or feeding all of those obsessive thoughts in a way that ultimately doesn't get you what you're wanting. So that's what we're going to be talking about today. Before I dive into that, I just wanted to say that my building Trust Masterclass, which I ran recently, if you're someone who really struggles with jealousy and you want to be able to reframe the way that you relate to trust within yourself and in your relationship, that might be a good one to cheque out. If the content of today's episode resonates with you and you know that trust is an area that you could use some additional support in, then definitely cheque out the building Trust Masterclass as it's very much a deep dive on all things trust, both self trust and relational trust. Okay, so let's talk about retroactive jealousy.
[00:02:41]:
As I said in the introduction, retroactive jealousy is jealousy about things that have happened in the past. And particularly when we're talking about it in a relationship, it's usually referring to things that have happened in your partner's past. So maybe their past relationships or other chapters of their life that preceded your relationship and feeling really jealous about that. I think it's important to set the scene in this conversation and normalise that for all of us. I think we can have this irrational possessiveness to varying degrees, where we might not love the idea of our partner having been in past relationships or having had sexual partners or other experiences in their life that predated us, particularly if we're hearing about that in any detail. I think it's pretty normal to have a level of discomfort or something within you that isn't crazy about hearing about those things, doesn't love it. But I think when we're talking about retroactive jealousy in the context of this discussion, it's really more than that, right? It's not mild discomfort, it's really fixating on it, becoming quite threatened by it. So feeling like your partner's past is in some way threatening to your relationship in the present and all of the things that go along with that.
[00:03:59]:
So feeling like you need to gather all of the information and know all of the details and maybe stalk your partner's exes or compare yourself to them. Find all of this data on them so that you can assess. The level of risk, which I think is a good warning sign that there's more going on there for us when we notice those behaviours come up. I think that's where it goes from being a normal, understandable level of discomfort to okay, this is really being driven by some fear and insecurity in me. And what might that be about? Can I get a little curious? So I think there are a few different possible causes of retroactive jealousy or reasons we might feel that way or struggle with that in our relationships. I think an obvious one is unworthiness and insecurity. So I think this particularly arises where we feel very threatened by a partner's exes. And I can't tell you every single time I put up a question box on Instagram, I will get at least five questions that are about comparison with exes.
[00:05:03]:
How do I make my peace with the fact that my partner had these exes and these relationships and thinking they're prettier than me? And how do I not feel bad? How do I not compare myself? Why do I need to be convinced and reassured that my partner loves me more than they ever loved their exes? All of these kind of quite obsessive, controlling thoughts around needing to be better than or different than and being persuaded of why we are more valuable than as if we are in direct competition with the past. And I think that to try and rationalise that is not really engaging with the fact that it isn't rational, right? Of course it's not really rational. In most cases it's quite emotional. But for whatever reason, we've got this story that we are unworthy or there's something wrong with us or we don't have enough to offer as a partner. And so our partner's exes might emerge as our competition because we have evidence of the fact that our partner was attracted to them, that they might be our partner's type, so to speak, that they had a relationship. So, okay, my partner loved that person at one point. Why am I better than them? Am I better than them? And if not, how can I be better than them? How can I make them worse than me so that I feel safe and secure in my relationship? And I think that again, while we can have self compassion for our unworthiness and whatever might drive us to those sorts of thoughts and patterns, I think we really need to recognise that at the relationship that we're in, our partner is in that relationship because they want to be in that relationship with us. And so it's not really useful or relevant to be obsessing over their past relationships because it's just extraneous to what is right now in the present.
[00:06:54]:
And I think that really, as I said, what that tells us is that we have some work to do on our self worth. Because I think if you were comfortable and confident in who you are and what you have to offer, kind of your value proposition as a partner, then all of that other extraneous stuff becomes much less relevant. And you can trust in the fact that your partner loves you and is choosing you and wants to be with you because of what you bring to the table. Right? Rather than thinking that you are unworthy and feeling very threatened by things that may have happened in the past or your partner's past relationships. I think that the other thing to add there is this can be exacerbated if a partner's ex is still an active part of their life. So if they still have an ongoing relationship, maybe if they were broken up with and they didn't want the relationship to end, maybe it took them a long time to recover. I think it's understandable that you might have some fears around what if they still love them, what if they want to get back together with them? All of those things, right? Again, I think are fairly normal fears to have. But ultimately we do just want to bring ourselves back to the present and be grounding ourselves in what we can see and the evidence that we actually have, which is that our partner is choosing us and that we are in relationship with them and reminding ourselves of all that we have to offer.
[00:08:20]:
And really doing that work on building self worth as well, which I think as I said, is a big part of it. I think the other kind of expression of retroactive jealousy outside of feeling threatened by past partners or past relationships, you might feel threatened by past chapters of your partner's life. So they might not be so much romantic experiences so much as like if they had a wild time in their twenty s or they used to party really hard or go and have all of these experiences that feel threatening to you in some way. Whether it brings up fears that they used to be out of control or that maybe they struggled with certain substances or any number of other things that feel like skeletons in their closet, I think that we can feel kind of uncomfortable with that because it feels so out of our control. And I think this is probably true for what I was saying earlier around the exes as well. This retroactive jealousy is we know that jealousy is a response to feeling like there's some sort of outside threat to the relationship. And I think when something is in the past and it predates our relationship with that person, our information is always going to be imperfect. So there's a lot of uncertainty, there are a lot of unknowns and that can lead us to feel very out of control and like we don't have the situation under our control and that can feel intensely vulnerable.
[00:09:43]:
So when there are all these unknowns, these blanks, our brain will often fill them in with really catastrophic interpretations rather than just looking at the facts at hand and recognising that that's not really relevant to right here, right now. The relationship that we're in with the person as they are today, we can obsess over looking for cobwebs, looking for skeletons, looking for signs that something dangerous or bad is lurking that we're unaware of and that we're going to be caught off guard. And so I think that when we can get really hyper vigilant around someone's past, it's often that part of us that struggles to trust, that is looking for evidence that something bad's going to happen, the other shoe is going to drop. What is it that I'm missing? What are you hiding from me? All of those thoughts that are often coming from that place. And so, again, while we can see that and it's always this interplay of how much we are willing or able to trust and how trustworthy the other person has proven themselves to be, I think if it is retroactive meaning it's not based on your current experience of this person. We do have to take a level of responsibility for that possibly being our stuff more than it is theirs. Because I don't think that you can punish someone for their life before you and the fact that they had a life before you. That doesn't strike me as fair or reasonable.
[00:11:10]:
Now, I suppose that leads to the question of should you share this with your partner if you're experiencing retroactive jealousy, and I think you certainly can, you can share it. But I would say, as always, share it in full recognition of the fact that part of it is your stuff. I think that's a good rule of thumb, saying, I noticed that when I hear about your exes, it's a bit uncomfortable for me. I feel a little bit threatened or insecure. And I'm not saying that you've done anything wrong, obviously, but I notice that that gets a bit of a reaction from me, and I'm trying to work through that or something. You can share it to the extent that you want to let them in on your experience and give them a little more context for why something is hard for you, but at the same time I don't think you want to be shoving it in their face and going, tell me why I'm better than her. I've again had questions from people who've described situations to me where they frequently ask their partner for reassurance that they love them more than and differently than they love their ex and explain to me all of the reasons why you want me and not them. And I think that that kind of dynamic is not healthy and it's not fair.
[00:12:27]:
And if we're in that, we really need to own that. That is our fear that's driving the bus there and we need to really prioritise working on our self worth so that we're not so obsessed by and consumed by these imaginary threats to the relationship that aren't even present day realities. And I think that as I said, when we are in that level of just obsessive intrusive thoughts about the past, that it's probably a warning sign for something else, whether that's within the relationship or within ourselves or some combination of the two. Usually we're just in threat mode and so we're going hunting for confirmation of our fears. And so again, I think we can take those feelings of jealousy and the fears that go with them and maybe the behaviours that they're driving as feedback for what's underneath it and go okay, something needs my attention here and how can I offer myself something, some work, a conversation, some self compassion? But how can I use this as feedback for what's going on for me and actually tend to the underlying fear or wound rather than just obsessing over these surface level things and feeding that loop and keeping myself really stuck in an insecure place that's ultimately harming me and my relationships. So I hope that that has been a helpful, albeit brief introduction to this topic of retroactive jealousy. And I do want to say, as I said at the start, if it's something that you experience or have experienced, it is pretty common. But obviously, and I've said this before on the topic of jealousy more broadly, jealousy is a very fundamental human emotion.
[00:14:16]:
It's part of the human experience. But obviously it can be taken to extremes and some of us can experience jealousy to degrees that really do get in the way of our relationships and just consume so much of our mental and emotional energy to the point where we feel really just totally exceeded our capacity. And so I think that if this specific flavour of jealousy is one that you struggle with. You don't need to shame yourself for it, but it is something that you might want to pay attention to and get really curious about and ask the question, what is this really about for me? Where are all of these perceived threats coming from? And what would I need to feel or think or believe in order to not feel so threatened by the past? What am I making my partner's past mean about them or about me or about the relationship that is feeling so threatening and causing me to think and act in this way? So getting a bit curious and doing the work around that, because I think that you'll be much better for it if you can reach a place of relative peace with the past, rather than feeling like you need to control it or eliminate any risks to do with your partner's history. So I do hope this has been helpful. As always, very grateful if you can leave a review or a rating. It does help me so much in continuing to get the word out about the podcast, but otherwise, I look forward to seeing you again next time. Thanks, guys.
[00:15:46]:
Thanks for joining me for this episode of On Attachment. If you want to go deep on all things attachment, love and relationships, you can find me on Instagram at stephanie__rigg or at stephanierigg.com. And if you enjoyed this episode, I'd be so grateful if you could leave a review and a five star rating. It really does help so much. Thanks again for being here and I hope to see you again soon.