Retroactive jealousy is when you feel insecure, jealous, or intimidated by your romantic partner’s past dating relationships or sexual past. It usually involves unwanted thoughts and emotional disturbance surrounding your partner’s past. While having a curiosity about your partner’s past prior to you is normal, retroactive jealousy is deeper and more omnipresent. It can interfere with normal functioning of the relationship, including:
· Obsessive thoughts about your partner’s past dating relationships
· Difficulty empathizing with your partner’s past
· Constantly asking your partner questions about their past relationships
· Feeling angry and/or anxious about your partner’s past
· Negatively comparing yourself to your partner’s past relationships
· Checking your partner’s exes on social media
· Difficulty enjoying intimate moments with your partner because of intrusive thoughts related to their exes
· Feelings of insecurity
· Guilting your partner because of their past
What triggers retroactive jealousy?
Basically, anything that makes you think about or get intrusive thoughts about your partner’s ex.
· Hearing or seeing reminders of your partner’s ex
· Learning new information about your partner’s ex
· Seeing your partner’s ex on social media
· Watching movies/tv shows about infidelity
· Discussing histories of romantic relationships
· Experiencing relationship milestones that your partner and their ex already experienced
· Feelings of insecurity about your own romantic history
How to deal with retroactive jealousy?
· Awareness: draw awareness to what you’re feeling. When an intrusive thought is present, accurately label what the thought is: intrusive. Sometimes when we have an intrusive thought, we automatically label or filter it as “true”. With awareness and practice, we can stop automatically filtering these thoughts are true thoughts, and rather, we can filter them for what they are: intrusive.
· Build Relationship Tools: develop open and honest communication with your partner about what you’re feeling, and develop coping skills and communication skills to help you better articulate what you’re feeling and why.
· Education: learn more about the psychological roots of jealousy and why they’re a natural, human emotion.
At the end of the day, recognizing these signs will help you become more aware of what is happening in your relationship. Retroactive jealousy does not mean you’re too flawed as a human to be in a relationship. And, recognizing that we all have a past and bring our experiences into a dating relationship is vital. Recognize that attachment trauma may be a factor here, too.
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