How to stop intrusive thoughts about your partner's past

Do intrusive thoughts about your partner’s past leave you feeling disoriented, frustrated, or even questioning your relationship? You’re not alone. Many people struggle with what’s now recognised as retroactive jealousy, a condition where obsessive thoughts about a partner’s past relationships or experiences create significant emotional distress.

In this article, we’ll explore the causes and symptoms of retroactive jealousy, why it seems to be on the rise, and how therapy can help break the cycle of intrusive thoughts and compulsive behaviours.

What is retroactive jealousy?

John came to see me about the disturbing scenes that kept playing out in his mind. "It's relentless," he said. "Even during meetings or watching my son play football, the thoughts are always there." The thoughts were very specific, too: his wife's sexual history. Vivid mental movies of her with her exes. All from before John and his wife had even met.

A successful business owner, John was confident and capable. But these scenes provoked intense feelings of disgust and anger. Disorientated by all the thinking, John was beginning to question his sanity.

"I know it's irrational, I know it's the past," John sighed. "I love my wife but I can't help lashing out. I mean, what was she thinking?"

John is not alone in this struggle. If you experience obsessive thoughts about your partner's past, you'll know just how exhausting they are. And how sabotaging and hurtful your reactions can be.

I speak with other therapists who are seeing an increase in people seeking help for 'retroactive jealousy' - distressing thoughts about the past pushing their relationships to the brink.

Why is retroactive jealousy on the rise?

Wanting to be better than our partner's exes - in every sense - is natural. And so is wanting to trust and feel secure in our choice of partner. There's a healthy balance between knowing our partner has a past and not particularly wanting to know all the details. I think most people can relate to this.

So what sends these natural instincts into overdrive? Why do so many of us feel the need to correct the past somehow, or feel an urgent need to know the very details that cause us distress? Or to end the relationship to escape the torment of our own thoughts.

Social media may play a part. An urge to compare ourselves to our partner's exes can be indulged by snooping through Facebook and Instagram. It doesn't go well, especially when we see filtered photos and curated posts about having the best time ever.

Step forward dating and chat apps too. Who remains in my partner's contact list, or has my partner in theirs? The past can feel like a click or message away, triggering doubts when we see our partners smiling and tapping away on their phones.

The convenience of dating apps also seems to ramp up pressure to find the one. The stakes of trust and commitment have never felt higher. Maybe I should just find someone with less of a past?

In modern relationships, the trend towards more transparency may generally be considered positive. But it can play into our fears, too. A light-hearted conversation about the past can confront us with too much information and lead to body count comparisons.

Whether through social media or open dialogue, insights into our partner's past can leave us with severe feelings of FOMO. Our imaginations fill in the gaps. My own sexual experience doesn't stack up and I'll never catch up.

So, for a number of societal and relational reasons, it's never been easier to feel less secure about our choice of partner - or more curious and uneasy about their previous choices.

As more people struggle with these thoughts and doubts, we see more discussions, articles, books and therapy options for retroactive jealousy. This is positive - we're not alone - but it can fuel even more compulsive introspection.

Symptoms of retroactive jealousy

Here are the most common symptoms that people report in my therapy room:

• Constantly questioning their partner about the past. In the hope that knowing all the facts will cure the obsession, or will at least extract some regret from the partner for their past choices.
• Researching their partner's past and fact-checking in an effort to build trust - or to catch the partner out and know once and for all.
• Avoiding reminders or triggers, including activities, places and social events. Often an uneasy feeling that the partner's close friends know more about the past than we do.
• Constant mental rumination about the partner's past, often focussed on a specific experience or ex. A lot of mental effort goes into trying to reconcile our love and appreciation of our partner with our despair about this detail or that.
• These thoughts and behaviours are accompanied by intense emotions, including sadness, resentment, anger and disgust. People often feel a layer of embarrassment at how irrational it all seems, and guilt for subjecting their partner to such scrutiny when there's no present evidence of cheating.

If some of these behaviours resonate with you, understand that these are all forms of assurance-seeking. Looking for certainty that there's no threat from the past and our partner is who we believe them to be. We're seeking assurance externally from our partner and internally from our own research and rationalisation. But no amount of information, answers or promises seems to stop the torment.

This experience has become known as retroactive jealousy or Rebecca Syndrome, based on the lead character of the 1938 novel. It helps to have a name for this struggle, even if 'jealousy' is something of an understatement.

But for therapists, these symptoms can prove difficult to diagnose and effectively treat. Might the person be experiencing low self-esteem or commitment anxiety? Is this the result of past trauma or an insecure attachment style or traits of narcissism? Or is retroactive jealousy a form of relationship OCD?

These are all valid considerations that may be in the mix for any given individual. But, in my experience, retroactive jealousy is best treated as an obsessive compulsive problem first.

What to look for in therapy

Effective therapy for retroactive jealousy begins by recognising the process that keeps repeating:

• We have an intrusive thought, image or mental movie about our partner's past.
• This brings a rush of urgent feeling. Our fight/flight/freeze response is triggered - something feels very wrong.
• Just like any emergency, we scramble for ways to deal with it. To question, to hunt for evidence, to seek assurance or to get away. And to ruminate. To get going once again on trying to figure it all out.
• These responses bring some degree of temporary relief. But we feed the obsession in the process. Our nervous system learns that these thoughts need a response in order to let up. These behaviours become even more compulsive.

Understanding this loop of thought-feeling-reaction, and recognising when we're in the midst of it, is essential. We can also acknowledge that it's the way these thoughts feel that leads to compulsive behaviours, and not the content of the thoughts themselves.

Most of us experience strange or scary intrusive thoughts but they don't develop into obsessions. But when we have a high sensitivity to anything pertaining to our partner's past, amplified by the factors discussed above, the obsessive-compulsive process keeps the sensitivity high. These thoughts must be acted on.

OCD can latch onto any natural doubt or fear. And our relationships, with all the pressures and expectations that come with them, make for particularly sticky targets.

When this process is identified and understood, therapy can proceed with ways to effectively dismantle it:

• Agreeing with our partner on ways to minimise further hurt and relationship damage while we work on the problem.
• Recognising when we're having intrusive thoughts vs real emergencies.
  Leaning into the thoughts and feelings instead of trying to avoid or fix them. Gradual exposure work helps us to practice not reacting, and the process of lowering our sensitivity can begin.
• Learning ways to gently guide our attention out of rumination and back to the here and now.
• Recognising the inevitable uncertainties of our relationships and getting better at rolling with them.
• When sensitivity is lowered and we're spending less time in fight/flight/freeze, we might explore the reasons why the pattern developed in the first place. We're in a better place to address past trauma, attachment difficulties and relationship repair if necessary.

Lasting resilience to intrusive thoughts

In my experience of working with retroactive jealousy, I've seen relationships come back from the brink. And then some: partners can develop a deeper and more rewarding connection in the process.

And being able to recognise and roll with unwanted thoughts is a life skill in itself. Because we can't eliminate them and we only get more tangled up when we try.

Overcoming retroactive jealousy feels like taking a leap of faith. The thoughts that feel most unwanted are those that conflict with what we truly want, believe and value. Amidst the pain, confusion and struggle, there's a signal here that it's a leap worth taking.