Where does Retroactive Jealousy stem from?

In this blog, I will mention four reasons why people struggle with Retroactive Jealousy. Please note what I will share is based on my own experience, learning, and opinion from helping people Overcome Retroactive Jealousy for more than four years. 

The first reason: Fear of being compared or fear of getting hurt. 

If you have been hurt in your previous relationships or if you grew up and one of your parents, or both, did not meet some of your needs, it's very likely that part of your subconscious is protecting you from getting hurt and is therefore sabotaging the relationship that you are in today.

Our mind’s job is to keep us alive and safe first and foremost. It's to ensure our survival on this planet as a species.

It will try to move you away from pain, so if your past relationships caused you a lot of pain, when you get into a new one Retroactive Jealousy can show up as a form of protection.

There is likely a part of you that's afraid, that doesn't want you to get hurt or experience what you may have in the past.

The second reason: Getting your worth tangled up in your partner's past.

A lot of the time I hear the phrase “I don't wanna be with my partner because they have done “X, Y, Z” because their worth has gone down and I'm too good for them. 

This comes up more when we expect our partner to make us look better, when that's not what they are there for. Your partner is not there to make you look a certain way. 

People go out and buy an expensive car, jacket, shoes, or bag from a known brand so they can be noticed by people. Those people might say, "Oh, wow, they look good. They must be in a certain class/level/standing in society. They must have a serious job, a lot of responsibility and influence, and they must be someone important.

If you think about it like that but instead of the car, the jacket, the shoes, or the bag, put your partner in the place of that object. And you might say, my partner has done “X, Y, Z” so their value has gone down, and now they're not worthy anymore. They're not on the same level as me. If anyone that knows me finds out what they have done, that will affect how people view me.

The thing is that they're not there to boost your worth. They're not there to make you look good. You need to find that feeling and pride within yourself. Find that “enoughness” in yourself first and not expect it from your partner, because they're not an object that is supposed to be there to make you appear better. 

Third reason: Your partner has had experiences that you haven't.

Sometimes we can't understand why they did what they did because we’ve never had those experiences.

One reason is that your mind doesn't like what is unfamiliar. Your mind is wired to bring you closer to what is familiar. Familiar means safety and comfort. So if they've done something unfamiliar to you and you can't rationalise it you may think to yourself, “I can't understand. How could they have done that? Why?”

This can cause Retroactive Jealousy and it can cause your mind to constantly think about this. You need to understand how they could have done this because you haven’t had that experience yourself.

If they've had an experience that you haven't had and want to, just ask yourself, do you want to break up and go have those experiences or do you want to stay in the relationship? Because if the relationship is hindering you and you want to go out and do different things and experiment the choice is yours.

If the relationship is stopping you and you resent your partner for it, that can be an issue. You might find yourself saying, "I haven't experienced what they've experienced and I feel jealous". Ask yourself the question, "What do I want more. My partner or the experience?"

 They may have grown up around people that thought differently/acted differently, perhaps their friends acted differently, they were living in a different place. You must allow for circumstances to shift. Focus on the beliefs and the ideas that you guys have today.

Fourth reason: You put your partner on a pedestal.

What this means is that when you meet someone, you form ideas in your head about them. You form beliefs. You place expectations on them.

In the first few months of knowing them and you put them on a pedestal, right? They're this angel that is amazing and pure. Thinking of them this way makes you feel good. In your mind, you might be thinking, “No, they never could have done that.”

As the months or years go by you start talking about the past and they end up telling you that they did something. And because you had placed expectations on them without them knowing (they weren't actively participating in you and your thought process when you first met them) you go through this shock. At that moment it's almost like they fall from the pedestal and everything's ruined, but you put them up there.

You put them on a pedestal. You put them above you but at the end of the day, they are just human beings. I think it's very important to realise this. They've had experiences. They've made mistakes. They've lived life. They've grown up, they have values and beliefs that have now changed.

They are not this person that you had in your imagination when you first met them. You labelled them all these different things, you placed expectations on them and now you're disappointed. 

We do this thing with Retroactive Jealousy where we expect them to be some pure, amazing, holy thing, and when we find out the truth, everything comes crashing down for us.

A stable foundation in a relationship is built when you both accept that you are just human. That you have had experiences in the past, that you've made mistakes. That you know that everything isn't perfect in a relationship. That there will be struggles, that you will argue, that you will disagree. 

The beauty lies in that today you're both choosing each other every day. The beauty lies in not giving up and in knowing that relationships aren't easy a lot of the time and that they require work. Not in wanting them to be someone that they're not; wanting them to be some perfect, pure thing, that they're just not.

They are a human being. You're both just human beings and the quicker you realise this, and you embrace this concept, instead of wanting them again to be something that they're not, the stronger their relationship becomes.