Jealous of Your Partner’s Past? Here’s Why Retroactive Jealousy Stings

We all get a little green with envy from time to time. Jealousy is a normal feeling to experience. But if you protest too much about your partner’s past, there’s a chance something deeper may be going on that’s causing you to be jealous of your partner’s previous romantic interests.

Retroactive jealousy tends to involve regretful, and sometimes harmful, feelings that your partner’s past is not your own. Over time, if retroactive jealousy festers and is reinforced by unhealthy behaviors that betray your confidence and trust in a relationship, your relationship itself may falter.

Psychologist Chivonna Childs, PhD, explores the roots of retroactive jealousy, along with ways you can overcome it with help from your partner, and quite possibly, a therapist.

What is retroactive jealousy?

Retroactive jealousy involves having an unhealthy fixation on your partner’s previous romantic history. People with retroactive jealousy often worry or obsess over details about their partner’s exes, past relationships, intimate relations and sexual experiences that occurred before their current relationship. Sometimes, people who experience retroactive jealousy may be worried their partner will leave them for an ex-partner or that an ex-partner will resurface and have an effect on their current relationship and may even ruin it altogether.

“It’s about feeling envious of who they were, who they were with or about a situation in the past before they were with you,” explains Dr. Childs. “For a lot of people, this might not make sense because there’s truly nothing to be upset about. What’s passed is past. But this happens to a lot of individuals who get caught up in the feeling that something could go wrong.”

Often, someone who feels retroactive jealousy might participate in a series of unhelpful behaviors in an effort to validate that what they’re feeling is real. Some behaviors commonly associated with retroactive jealousy include:

• Fixating on your partner’s past.
• Consistently questioning your partner about past relationships.
• Not letting details of your partner’s romantic history go.
• Searching for your partner’s exes, pictures from their previous relationship or proof of details related to their history on the internet and social media.
• Having increased anxiety whenever previous partners or experiences are brought up in conversation.
• Responding to conversations about past history with anger or gaslighting.
• Reacting to situations as if your relationship is under threat.

“If you bump into somebody’s old partner, for example, you might pull your partner closer to you because you don’t want that old ex to think they’re getting your partner back,” illustrates Dr. Childs. “That’s retroactive jealousy in action.”

What causes retroactive jealousy?

Retroactive jealousy is often rooted in anxiety.

“If you’re always worried they’re going to go back to their ex, that’s constant anxiety. That breeds insecurity and then, you’re on that rollercoaster of depression, thinking, What if they go back to their ex? What am I going to do?,” says Dr. Childs. “You have this vicious cycle of anxiety and depression, those ups and those downs, which is a rollercoaster of emotions all the time.”

Other underlying mental health conditions that are commonly associated with retroactive jealousy include:

• Bipolar disorder.
• Depression.
• Personality disorders like borderline personality disorder.
• Obsessive-compulsive disorder.

“There may be a compulsiveness with asking about past relationships or having obsessive thoughts about your partner’s past,” says Dr. Childs. “We go down these rabbit holes about what this person is thinking about their past love, what their relationship might have been like, and it’s almost an obsessiveness about something we know nothing about, about a relationship that no longer exists and the possibility of this relationship starting up again. In the end, it prevents us from living in the present moment and enjoying that person that we’re with.”

Factors that can contribute to retroactive jealousy include:

• Feeling insecure and a sense of insecurity in your relationship.
• Low self-esteem and feeling like you’re not “good enough.”
• Having an anxious attachment style and fear of abandonment.
• Having past experiences of being cheated on.
• Negative self-talk.

“If you’ve had a past experience of being cheated on, you might be a hard-line person where if someone cheats on you, it’s over and there are no second chances,” Dr. Childs adds. “So, if this has happened to you in the past, you may be on the lookout for it all the time, and that can result in retroactive jealousy even when your partner is being loyal to your current relationship. It’s like a defense mechanism.”

How to deal with retroactive jealousy

“Jealousy does nothing for us, so you want to take yourself out of the jealousy box by reframing the narrative,” states Dr. Childs.

Here’s how you do that.

Acknowledge the past

Past relationships and experiences are going to come up naturally in conversation. This is especially true if your partner was with someone for a long time, had previously been married to a partner or lived with a partner that they are no longer with. Part of moving on from the past is honoring that it happened and acknowledging that you’re leaving it there.

“The reality of it is they have a history with their ex, and if they were with them for a year or more, or 10 years even, there’s going to be history. The family is going to know them and the family is going to talk about the past, and the ex may be in that,” recognizes Dr. Childs.

“Of course, that’s uncomfortable and it’s normal to have some discomfort listening to those stories, but you just kind of sit and bear it and think about the memories you’re going to make in the family with this person now and in the future.”

Reframe your current situation

Something about your partner’s past may be triggering these emotions because of something else going on in your own psyche. Reframe the narrative by challenging your anxious or negative thoughts. Journal about your greatest fears and the good times you are currently having with your partner. Be realistic about where you stand in your current relationship and what you can control. Ask yourself how likely worst outcomes might happen, and what you will do if the worst outcome occurs.

Working with a therapist to alleviate some of your fears and working through some of these scenarios can be helpful, particularly if it’s hard for you to separate fact from fiction. At the end of the day, it comes down to recognizing that you are the master of your own path, and you only have so much control.

“The important thing to think about is the present moment. You are with this person now. You are who they are choosing to be with. If they wanted to be with that person, they would, and there’d be nothing that you could do about it,” says Dr. Childs.

“So, why focus on something you cannot control? The better thing to do would be to focus on the things that you can control and be in the present moment and focus on your relationship.”

Honor your relationship

When something feels off in a relationship, communication is key. Often, it’s good to come together and talk about how your relationship has changed, what needs changing (if anything), and what limitations or boundaries should be put in place to make all parties in the relationship feel at ease and supported.

As you’re realigning your goals, taking a break from social media might be helpful, especially if that’s a source that triggers your retroactive jealousy and its associated behaviors.

And you want to focus on doing things every day — even the smallest of things — to build up your healthy relationship.

“Go out of your way to plan dates, create your own memories, travel together,” recommends Dr. Childs. “Do things that honor who you are as individuals and support each other’s goals as you work through issues together. Along the way, as you make your own memories, things that happened in the past before your relationship tend to hold less weight and cause less anxiety.”

Change your perspective

Dr. Childs says cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT), can be especially helpful when it comes to changing some of the behaviors associated with retroactive jealousy.

“CBT works well for changing the way you think and changing the way you behave,” she shares. “It’s about perspective taking and changing your emotions so that you behave in an appropriate way based on how you’re feeling.”

And when anxiety spikes about a past relationship, rather than looking for answers online or in past recollections, perhaps having open communication with your partner about your anxieties can be more beneficial in the long run. Other mindfulness activities like meditation and yoga can also work to reduce stress, anxiety and depression and lessen the effects of retroactive jealousy over time.

Does retroactive jealousy ever go away?

Because of how triggering it can be and how it can build up over months or years, retroactive jealousy requires time and dedication to overcome completely. Even when you think you’ve moved past it, you might find that the triggers still surface from time to time — and that’s when learning healthy coping strategies and communicating with your partner becomes priority No. 1.

“I don’t think retroactive jealousy goes away on its own because the person often doesn’t have control over it,” says Dr. Childs. “They often don’t understand what it’s doing to their relationship, and it could end up becoming a vicious cycle or toxic relationship because sometimes the other partner doesn’t know what is causing so much frustration.

“So, if you’re not aware of what’s happening, how do you fix something you’re not aware of? It starts with recognizing your triggers and it ends with being intentional about your time and focus.”