How To Get Over Retroactive Jealousy

Retroactive Jealousy OCD: What It Is and How to Overcome It

If you suffer from repetitive thoughts about your partner's sexual or romantic history, you may have heard the phrase "retroactive jealousy OCD" bandied about.

In other words, retroactive jealousy as an "obsessive-compulsive disorder". But maybe you're not sure quite what it means or if you have it? Or, more importantly, how to overcome it if you do.

Often, to become distressed by retroactive jealousy, i.e. negative thoughts and emotions about a partner's past means becoming utterly bewildered by what's going on in your mind. And I suspect this is what's brought you to this page.

This retroactive jealousy OCD post comes in 4 parts:

• What is retroactive jealousy?
• What is traditional OCD?
• How traditional OCD relates to retroactive jealousy
• A retroactive jealousy OCD treatment

Ready to get started? Good, then let's kick off with a thorough definition of what retroactive jealousy OCD actually means, starting with "retroactive jealousy".

(Full disclosure: This post includes affiliate links, meaning if you purchase via one of them I will receive a small commission, at no extra cost to you.)

What Is Retroactive Jealousy?

Retroactive jealousy (sometimes known as retrograde jealousy, or retrospective jealousy) simply means an unhealthy interest in your partner's sexual and/or romantic past.

While most people may feel jealous at some point or other about their partner's past, it's only passing jealousy. If, on the other hand, it spirals out of control to include obsessive, negative thoughts and emotions, resulting in negative actions, then it's retroactive jealousy.

Retroactive jealousy can cause untold distress to the sufferer and damage to the relationship. In some cases even end it.

Negative Thoughts and Emotions Associated With Retroactive Jealousy:

• Judgment. This usually concerns a partner's sexual history and involves thinking they behaved "immorally" and like a "slut" in the past.

• Fear. Often a knowledge of a partner's "promiscuous" past leads subconsciously to a fear that they will repeat these actions in the present. In other words, there's a fear of losing them.

• Envy. A sufferer may have had less sexual experience than their partner, or dated fewer people, or not had as great a time at university. If their partner did, on the other hand, this can cause feelings of envy over opportunities missed.

• Anger. The sufferer may feel angry when they think about their partner's past, i.e. "Why did he date her?" "Why did she do that with him and not with me?" These kinds of emotions add much fuel to the retroactive jealousy fire.

• Anxiety. Overall feelings of apprehension about a partner's past may lead to anxiety attacks, in which the sufferer is completely overwhelmed by thoughts and emotions about the past.

• Doubt. Past actions can make us doubtwhether a partner is the "right fit" in the first place, i.e. "Do I really want to be with a guy who once had an affair with his best friend's wife?" Or "How can I be with a girl who once had sex in a club with a guy she met ten minutes beforehand?"

There may well be other thoughts and emotions mixed in with your individual case of retroactive jealousy, but these are the main ones.

Resulting Negative Actions From Retroactive Jealousy Behaviors

• Browsing. The confusion caused by this mix of emotions means many sufferers spend an inordinate amount of time each week browsing online forums and websites searching for a retroactive jealousy cure.

• Snooping. A strong desire to find out more about a partner's past can lead to violating their personal space, i.e. email accounts, social media profiles, cell phones, etc. A classic retroactive jealousy OCD behavior.

• Arguing. Feelings of judgment and anger can often result in arguments as the retroactive jealousy sufferer quizzes a partner who doesn't think they've done anything wrong.

• Dwelling. When jealous thoughts arise in the mind and jealous emotions arise in the body, a sufferer is often unable to step back and just shrug them off. Rather, they descend into a wormhole of overthinking, raking over and over what happened in their partner's past.

• Sniping. Sarcastic, passive/aggressive comments fired off at a partner about their romantic or sexual past may not lead to an argument every time, but can gradually undermine a relationship.

Negative thoughts and emotions about a partner's past love life don't necessarily have to result in these actions in order for someone to suffer from retroactive jealousy OCD, but they usually do.

What Is Traditional OCD?

Let's take a look at what's generally meant by the term "OCD" and then how it relates to retroactive jealousy OCD.

Obsessive-compulsive disorder in its classic definition is a mental state in which people are unable to control certain thoughts and behaviors. If you do any research on the subject, you'll find that the condition usually relates to people who have obsessive thoughts and compulsive behaviors, such as:

• Washing hands repeatedly
• Checking the front door's locked
• Thinking about harming oneself or others
• Needing symmetry and orderliness
• Thinking about contamination and disease
• Avoiding cracks in the pavement

An obsessive thought is triggered by something, causing anxiety. Then the sufferer engages with a compulsive behavior in order to find temporary relief. And so the cycle begins again…

The OCD cycle of obsessions and compulsions

Many people have negative, obsessive thoughts from time to time. A thought may occasionally pop in your head about driving your car into oncoming traffic, for example. Or thrusting an ice cream into a stranger's face.

But what differentiates random negative thoughts from OCD is the compulsion to stop them from occurring and indulging in behaviors that offer temporary relief.

There is no known definitive cause for OCD, it affects men, women, and children and can significantly reduce a person's quality of life.

A doctor will usually recommend someone with OCD sees a psychiatrist who specializes in Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT). Or they will prescribe a course of drugs to be taken by the patient. Or sometimes both.

How Traditional OCD Relates to Retroactive Jealousy OCD

The reason why retroactive jealousy is often labeled as being a form of obsessive-compulsive disorder, or OCD, is because it shares many of the same attributes.

Retroactive Jealousy OCD and Obsessive Thoughts

In the case of retroactive jealousy, this usually involves the mind constantly flinging up images and "mini movies" of your partner together with another man or woman. Over and over and over again.

As the influential author of the book A New Earth and speaker Eckhart Tolle observes:

The repetitive thoughts seem to be controlling you, rather than the other way around.

Dealing with these repetitive thoughts becomes even harder when it's clear that they're not worth thinking about. They're in the past, but that's what makes them so painful because it's obvious they shouldn't matter. And yet they do…

A sufferer will typically try and force him or herself to stop, but this causes the mind to descend into a "don't think about a pink elephant"-type war with itself.

As they say "resistance breeds persistence"—and as a result of trying to stop thinking about the past, repetitive thoughts about it are given even more power. The funny thing is, these repetitive thoughts are almost certainly not even accurate. They're just manifestations within an insecure mind that doesn't know what really happened but wants to assume the worst.

How do you know that they had such a great time in Paris? Or what the sex was like on that one-night-stand? Your mind wants to paint a picture of an insanely hot session involving your partner and their ex, or on an idyllic holiday of a lifetime with them, but the reality was maybe very different.

These kind of retroactive jealousy OCD, intrusive thoughts about the past can vary in consistency, from mild (several times a day), to extreme (a near-constant background hum.)

More on this later, but it's safe to say that many retroactive jealousy sufferer's repetitive thoughts can certainly be described as obsessive, and hence the term "retroactive jealousy OCD."

Retroactive Jealousy OCD and Compulsive Behavior

These repetitive thoughts about the past lead to compulsive behaviors. In traditional OCD this often means continually washing hands or checking that the front door's locked. But in retroactive jealousy, it means indulging in the behaviors previously described: browsing, snooping, arguing, dwelling and sniping.

In an attempt to reduce the anxiety caused by an obsessive thought, retroactive jealousy causes you to compulsively try to find relief, either through thinking things through/dwelling or "acting out". Often, this phase involves both.

When I had retroactive jealousy OCD, I would become extremely anxious and angry at the thought of my girlfriend hooking-up with one of her sex-buddies. I used to spend hours every day ruminating in very specific detail on what exactly must have gone down:

Her texting him, him arriving at her apartment, having a few drinks, her on top of him, waking up next to each other in the morning, having sex again and on and on.

This dwelling was a compulsive behavior because I couldn't stop myself and I did it constantly throughout the day. Along with other actions such as making sarcastic comments, snooping through her photos, scouring the internet how to get over retroactive jealousy OCD, and so on.

These compulsive behaviors may make you feel like you're being productive and working/finding things out, but in actual fact, all you're doing is feeding the monster.

Think of retroactive jealousy OCD as an alarm bell. It's your brain telling yourself you're in danger but, in reality, you're not. By engaging with these compulsive behaviors, therefore, you're attempting to keep yourself safe when the alarm goes off.

However, all this is doing is reinforcing the idea in your brain that you're in danger.

Retroactive Jealousy OCD and Temporary Relief

After reading other people's retroactive jealousy OCD stories on a forum, or snooping through a partner's phone, some anxiety may be lifted. But it will only ever be a temporary lift.

Overall, the general effect of these compulsive actions is to simply keep the retroactive jealousy alive. Not only that but very often these compulsive behaviors can immediately make you feel worse.

This "thinking through" of scenes in your partner's past is a way of trying to work things out in your head, but also of trying to reassure yourself.

To suffer from these compulsive thoughts and behaviors within retroactive jealousy OCD very often means feeling like you've lost control: of your mind, your actions, your relationship and, in extreme cases, your life. Your mind appears to be playing tricks on you, but there doesn't seem to be anything you can do about it.

Is Retroactive Jealousy OCD Even an Appropriate Term?

While it may appear to be a slam dunk case—"Of course retroactive jealousy is a form of OCD"—it's not as black and white as it may appear. For a start, the term Obsessive Compulsive Disorder itself is thrown around by many people without a full understanding of what it means.

In her book, Can't Just Stop, Sharon Begley argues that there's no such thing as being "a little OCD". Just as you can't be "a little pregnant", someone either suffers from OCD or they don't.

She writes that if a negative thought doesn't cause someone as much distress as a gun being held to their child's head, then it isn't OCD.

I'm sure many people who suffer from retroactive jealousy wouldn't technically be diagnosed by a doctor as suffering from OCD. But that's fine.

Your life may be completely dominated by retroactive jealousy OCD, or you may be able to function perfectly normally. The most important factor is not how severe your retroactive jealousy is, but whether you want to end the intrusive thoughts and compulsive behaviors or not.

If you do, then there's nothing wrong with saying you have a mild form of retroactive jealousy OCD and wanting to do something about it.

I would argue that the only reason why retroactive jealousy OCD isn't officially recognized as a condition is because the research hasn't yet been done on it.

Understanding Retroactive Jealousy OCD

As you may have already found out, there's not much information out there on OCD as it relates to retroactive jealousy. Or on how to get over it.

The closest I've ever found OCD being equated to retroactive jealousy is in the context of intrusive sexual thoughts.

For example, some OCD sufferers find they can't help thinking about sex in general, or committing sex acts on other people. The problem with thoughts like this (and with retroactive jealousy) is that they're not as easily defined in a classical OCD sense.

OCD is usually defined as a compulsion to stop an obsessive thought about something bad happening. So, for example, someone who washes their hands 100 times a day is trying to prevent the spread of germs. Someone who checks the locks to their windows and doors 100 times a day is trying to stop being burgled, and so on.

Retroactive Jealousy OCD and Thoughts

Someone with traditional OCD intrusive sexual thoughts may, for example, repeat a mantra to themselves in order to suppress the thoughts. And this is because they think they need to stop themselves from committing a horrible act.

With retroactive jealousy OCD, things are a little more complicated, but understanding what's going on in your head is an important first step when it comes to overcoming it.

With retroactive jealousy OCD, there's no bad event such as catching a disease to stop. And there's no despicable act that you need to stop yourself from committing. The obsessive thoughts are about events that happened (sometimes a very long time ago) in the past.

They've been and gone and so there's nothing tangible, right here in the present to protect or battle against.

This is what makes retroactive jealousy OCD even more confusing to a sufferer than traditional OCD.

But the truth is, there are more similarities between traditional OCD intrusive thoughts and retroactive jealousy OCD-related thoughts than you may realize. While there may not be a tangible, conscious threat to guard against in the present, there is an intangible, subconscious one. And that's the threat of losing your partner.

Retroactive Jealousy OCD and the Threat of Losing Your Partner

The knowledge that they were once madly in love with someone else, or had casual sex with random people in the past, has triggered a subconscious fear that there are "better" people than you out there. Your brain's primeval reasoning is that:

• If they once loved or had casual sex with someone else in the past, could they do it again in the present?

• If they behaved immorally in the past, are they really right for me?

• If they had such a great time in the past, am I living up to it in the present?

And so on… In short, these people in your partner's past take on a symbolic meaning of being special, better than you, and therefore a threat.

"If these people were better than me, then there must be other people out there right now who are better than me and who he or she could leave me for".

The truth is you're not really worried about these specific people or behaviors in your partner's past. You're worried about what they represent right now, in the present. Realizing this is the first step to overcoming retroactive jealousy OCD.

Retroactive Jealousy OCD Treatment

Here's what happens during the vicious cycle of traditional OCD:

1. Obsessive thought
2. Anxiety
3. Compulsive behavior (in an effort to reduce the anxiety)
4. Temporary relief
5. Obsessive thought

And here is the same cycle as applied to retroactive jealousy OCD:

1. Obsessive thought about partner's past
2. Anxiety and other emotions such as judgment, envy, anger, etc.
3. Compulsive behavior, such as dwelling, snooping, arguing, etc.
4. Temporary relief
5. Obsessive thought about partner's past

A common treatment for traditional OCD is Exposure and Response Prevention (ERP). It works by breaking the cycle of Obsessive thought > Anxiety > Compulsive behavior with a Response Prevention.

Here's a quick breakdown of what this involves in regular OCD therapy:

• Exposure. An obsessive thought is triggered that causes anxiety. For example, by leaving the house without checking that the gas is turned off.

• Response Prevention. Once this anxiety has been triggered, a Response Prevention simply involves making the choice to not engage with a compulsive behavior. i.e. continuing to the car and driving off without going back to check on the stove.

ERP requires the sufferer to resist the urge to give in to compulsive behaviors, face their fears and get on with their normal routine. While this may be painful at first, it's generally successful.

Indeed, the American Psychiatric Association believes ERP is the best form of OCD treatment as it has the most abundant empirical support. And the good thing is that this exact same method can be applied to retroactive jealousy OCD.

How ERP Can Be Applied to Retroactive Jealousy OCD

This technique simply means noticing your jealousy when it arises, acknowledging it, and then getting on with your day without indulging in the compulsive behavior that usually brings temporary relief.

• Trigger. Your girlfriend's sexual past >>

• Obsessive thought. Her having sex with THAT guy at a party >>

• Anxiety. Try to step outside of your head and witness yourself being anxious rather than engage with it. Detach yourself from the thoughts and emotions and feel them as merely a collection of misfiring neurons in your brain and chemical responses in your body >>

• Response Prevention. Resist the urge to engage with your anxiety and indulge in a compulsive behavior as you normally would by: dwelling on the past event, playing it over in your mind, making a sarcastic comment, searching the web for "retroactive jealousy OCD", snooping, etc. Instead carry on with whatever you were doing before the thought arose: getting dressed, tidying up, watching a movie, etc.

Your retroactive jealousy OCD may be triggered by, say, going to a bar you know your partner met their ex in. Or it may not need a trigger—it's just always there in the forefront of your mind. Either way, try carrying out ERP as normal and don't give up if it doesn't seem to work at first—this takes practice!

Have a Go at Applying ERP to Your Retroactive Jealousy OCD Right Now

• Trigger. Close your eyes and think about your partner's past. Dwell on that one moment that burns you up the most, as hard as this may be.

• Anxiety. Feel how these negative thoughts in the head translate into negative emotions in the body. Can you feel your chest tighten? Your heart beat faster? Or your forehead pound? Feels horrible doesn't it? Well, that's the power of thought. Or is it? Just how "powerful" can a thought be? The truth is, you may feel like these obsessive thoughts and emotions are never-ending and unbreakable, but they aren't. Thoughts are just that: thoughts. Which means that they're impermanent. They come and they go.

• Response Prevention. Now watch this four-minute video. Was your mind still on your partner's past while you were watching it? No. And that's because retroactive jealousy OCD is always a fleeting state of mind. And the more you're able to ignore them and get on with your day, the quicker they'll start to lose their so-called power of you.

It's your resistance to these thoughts about your partner's past at the moment that's giving your retroactive jealousy OCD it's so-called strength. You may be snooping through your partner's private belongings, dwelling on their past and digging around the Internet looking for answers, but these compulsive behaviors are impermanent too.

You're indulging in these actions right now because you're dwelling on negative thoughts and emotions about the past. But you won't be forever.

In a week, month, or even six months time, you may well not be engaging with your retroactive jealousy OCD anymore. When you fail and give in to the obsessive thought by indulging in compulsive behavior (and you will), don't worry. Don't beat yourself up over it and think you're a failure who'll never beat retroactive jealousy OCD.

As I said, it takes practice and time to train your mind to witness obsessive thoughts and anxiety rather than giving in to them. If you need more help in learning how to stop retroactive jealousy OCD symptoms, click on the button below to purchase my book The Ultimate Retroactive Jealousy Cure: How To Stop Being Jealous Of Your Partner's Past in 12 Steps.

Onward!

Jeff

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Do you suffer from retroactive jealousy OCD? Do you have constant repetitive thoughts and images about your partner's past whirring around your head? If so what are they like? Photos? Movies? Or if you're successfully dealing with retroactive jealousy, I'd love to hear about it. I'll answer any questions you have about retroactive jealousy OCD in the comments section below.

How To Get Over Retroactive Jealousy

Source: https://www.retroactivejealousycrusher.com/retroactive-jealousy-ocd/

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