Retroactive Jealousy is the problem in your relationship, not your partner
Why being obsessed with your partner’s past relationships can ruin yours
A few months back I wrote an article about Retroactive Jealousy OCD and my own experiences with it. Since then, I’ve received messages of support from sufferers, thanking me for writing it. I always felt the article was somewhat ‘incomplete’, which is my main reason for writing this follow up. I also felt I could have offered more insight into my own personal experiences with the disorder. Hopefully this article will do just that and serve as useful for folks suffering from Relationship OCD (ROCD), as well as for those who have partners with ROCD or for anyone generally interested in relationships and mental health.
What exactly is Retroactive Jealousy?
Firstly, it’s important to know that Relationship OCD isn’t just an arbitrary term applied to anyone who is obsessed with their relationship. Rather, it is a genuine mental health disorder, which shares all the same traits as other forms of OCD. Likewise, Retroactive Jealousy (RJ) isn’t just a quirky term used for jealousy. It is similarly a form of ROCD based around intense jealousy towards a partner’s romantic past. I have personally suffered with ROCD in practically all my relationships but didn’t even realise it was a ‘thing’ until last year. I thought I was normal. I thought that being jealous was perfectly rational. I assumed every woman wanted a man who got jealous over other guys approaching her, or that they wanted a guy who was protective over them. I thought that everyone got jealous and that I was no different.
But RJ doesn’t quite work like ‘regular’ jealousy. What’s ‘unique’ about RJ, in this respect, is that it focuses intensely on the past relationships of your partner. Rather than being able to just ‘get over’ their past flings, hook-ups, and relationships, you’re constantly barraged with, what are known as, ‘intrusive thoughts’ about your partner’s past, which are effectively your brain signalling to you that something isn’t right with your relationship; that you must do something to make things right, and that you must gain control of the relationship or risk losing them or getting hurt.
These intrusive thoughts differ depending on the particular ‘theme’ of OCD, but essentially they’re all the same thing. Whether you obsess about your relationship or something entirely different is irrelevant — obsessions are obsessions. OCD ‘themes’, like ROCD, HOCD (harm OCD), and COCD (contamination OCD) may be useful taxonomies but they’re also wildly misleading. OCD is OCD. You can swap the theme but the patterns always remain the same. OCD is about the things a person does either inside or outside of their head — often both. Ascribing to only one subtype can be harmful if you focus only on that one area of your mental health when really, there are undoubtedly multiple things you’re doing outside of your relationship which are contributing to your OCD.
Whatever your ‘theme’ is, and whatever obsessions or intrusive thoughts you have, you’ll have to use the same tools to tackle them as you would for any other ‘theme’ of OCD.
With regard to my ROCD, I grew intense jealousy towards my ex’s flings and hook-ups. Thinking about them would keep me up at night. I would text her late at night just to ask her questions about how many guys she had slept with or dated. I would wake up multiple times in the night and struggle to get back asleep due to obsessing about her past. The thoughts would be the first thing on my mind once I woke up and the last thing on my mind every night before going to sleep. I was living in a mental prison. I was obsessed. Why did I care so much? I had no idea.
It was frustrating for me that I couldn’t just ‘get over it’, that I couldn’t just be ‘normal’. I didn’t want to care, and I could see the damage it was already doing to our relationship. I started taking a ton of supplements to try to quell my mind and my anxiety. Other than a herbal supplement called Ashwagandha, which worked well for my anxiety but not so much my thoughts, they had little to no effect other than giving me gas and other stomach issues.
At one point, I even went on a weeklong meditation retreat to try to ‘fix’ my obsessions. With hindsight, this was all just another attempt at trying to control the situation — a common trait of OCD. Naturally, it didn’t help, and the retreat didn’t give me any answers. For the first three days, I snuck off between sittings during our downtime to cry, asking myself: ‘why can’t I just accept her?’ Shortly afterwards, I was admitted to therapy with a psychologist through my country’s National Health Service. By the time I received help, we had already broken up, entirely because of the strain my jealousy had put on the relationship.
Misconceptions about ROCD and how it operates
Thankfully, those months spent in psychotherapy weren’t in vain, and I’ve implemented the skills I’ve learned from psychotherapy, self-help resources, and meditation into maintaining my mental health — be it whilst I’m single or in a relationship. Meditation, in particular, isn’t a panacea as it is often touted to be, but it’s a good heuristic alongside other healthy lifestyle choices like diet, exercise and getting a good night’s sleep.
Even after breaking up with my ex I experienced bouts of RJ whilst staying in touch with her. I realised the problems I faced weren’t contingent on me being in a relationship; they were contingent on me being mentally unhealthy and having conflicting beliefs and ideas about women, relationships, and myself. There’s perhaps a misconception that you need to be in a relationship to recover from ROCD and I also once believed this. But maintaining your mental health is something you can, and should, do at any time — not just when you’re suffering from the consequences of bad mental health.
Recovering from ROCD doesn’t mean you need to be in a relationship to overcome it. It means you need to work on the mental habits, beliefs, and ideas that led you to developing those insecurities, fears, and jealousy in your relationships in the first place.
For me, I could never find an answer as to why I suffered from RJ or where my doubts about my partner came from. I stumbled into realising that it was ultimately because I was scared of being alone but, in reality, it was much deeper than that. I was really just afraid of being ripped off; that I’d invest all my time, effort and resources into a relationship just to end up losing my partner and being alone anyway. It seemed totally irrational but it was an epiphanous moment for me once I realised it. OCD may seem irrational to some but it’s actually the sufferer’s brain being overly rational. I’ll give you an example of this with two scenarios. The first being an RJ thought process, the second being another common OCD thought pattern:
Scenario 1:
1. My partner had a fling with Mr(s) X once
2. If that happened once, it means they could have a fling with Mr(s) X again
3. If that happens I’ll lose them
4. I should do whatever I can to stop that from happening
Resulting Actions:
· Checks the Facebook profiles of their partner and Mr(s) X
· Mentally reassures themselves that they are ‘better’ than Mr(s) X and that their partner is right for them
· Repeatedly asks their partner questions about Mr(s) X or other parts of their romantic past to try to gauge their commitment, offering temporary relief
Scenario 2:
1. A house in this area was burgled once
2. If that happened once, it means it could happen again to my house
3. If that happens I’ll lose everything
4. I should do whatever I can to stop that from happening
Resulting Actions:
· Checks the door is locked.
· Mentally reassures themselves that they definitely locked the door
· Tries to gain more control by repeatedly checking the locks, offering temporary relief.
Both of these scenarios aren’t irrational — they’re hyper-rational. It’s the brain (poorly) trying to make sense of the situation and maintain order. Whilst both of these above thought processes are somewhat unconscious to the sufferer, they are essentially the same mechanisms that operate ‘under the hood’. You’ll notice that both are superficially different but amount to the same thing, with both driven by the fear of losing something important: their partner or their family and belongings. They’re also both driven by an uncertainty: ‘is my partner right for me — will I lose them?’ and ‘did I lock the door — can I be sure that I did?’
That’s because all OCD compulsions stem from uncertainty, and the compulsions that accompany them always boil down to: ‘Coping, Checking & Controlling’. All compulsions are performed to alleviate doubt, and these coping, checking, and controlling compulsions are simply a reaction to that doubt. The solution? Stop the reaction to the doubt (the compulsion) and the uncomfortable feelings that accompany the doubts will dissipate with time. In other words: stop using coping mechanisms — such as drinking and binge eating — to deal with feeling anxious over your relationship; stop checking text messages from your partner to reassure yourself, and stop trying to control your relationship. If you don’t, you’ll end up repeating the same compulsions over and over; whether that’s breaking up with your partner, obsessively cleaning your hands, or checking locks.
Even good people have bad habits
If you suffer from ROCD, you may have had the thought that you’re a bad person based on how you’ve treated your partner. This may even be reinforced by others who don’t really understand anything about ROCD or what you’re going through. They may think it’s something you should just easily be able to get over; that compulsions don’t excuse things like manipulating your partner or stalking their social media, and that you can’t really ‘love’ them if you treat them this way. The exact opposite is true. It’s precisely because you love them that you have this problem. People don’t develop ROCD over people who are totally unimportant to them — they develop it over people who are the most important to them. If they weren’t important to you, your brain wouldn’t stress you out so much over them! You may have even questioned to yourself whether you really love them. Guess what? Yep — that’s OCD again, simply giving you even more doubts to play with.
It’s worth remembering that it’s not others fault that they don’t understand what you’re going through. At times, it can feel quite alienating, as the only people who can truly relate to you are those with OCD themselves. A greater knowledge of ROCD in society and mental health circles would help people better understand that people don’t choose to have ROCD in the same way nobody chooses to have any mental health disorder, and that all mental health disorders, including ROCD, are likely caused by a mix of environmental and genetic factors.
But it is important to note that you did choose to read this article. The fact that you want to overcome this disorder proves that you are not a bad person. You are a super cool, fun, interesting person who likes to read blogs about improving your relationship — whoop, whoop! If you’re anything like me, you probably wouldn’t even hurt a fly. The fact that you’ve hurt your partner and undoubtedly yourself is not entirely your fault, although I’m sure hearing that won’t make you feel any less guilty. Guilt is a very common (unhelpful) emotion that most folks with OCD suffer from, but that’s not to say you shouldn’t still take responsibility for your actions. On the contrary, you need to take more responsibility for them.
You can’t take responsibility for having ROCD, but you can take the responsibility for no longer engaging in compulsions which hurt you and your relationship.
This all means that you can no longer use your ROCD as an excuse to perform compulsions, and instead use it as something to work on in your life as you seek to form healthier relationships. An ideal partner will understand and support you with this but they can’t walk the path for you. The best you can ask of them is not to engage in your compulsions with you if you do slip up by asking them questions about their romantic past or seek reassurance from them, such as asking them whether you’re the best/most attractive/most intelligent partner they’ve ever been with. The best thing they can reply to this is simply: ‘I’m not answering that question’. You’ll thank them (and me) later for doing so.
Good people make mistakes. That is just an inarguable fact. The challenge with ROCD is that you need to replace your mistakes with virtuous actions. To do this, you need to examine your beliefs, let go of any unhelpful ones, and replace them with the kind of beliefs and values you want. If you want a healthy relationship based on mutual trust, make that your goal and choose actions that align with it. Say to yourself: ‘I value having healthy relationships, so I’m going to be supportive and trustful of my partner’. Then perform actions that align with those values, such as not checking their social media. This is taught as the ‘commitment’ part of ACT therapy: committing yourself to perform actions in accordance with things you value.
There is, however, a caveat to all of this. Even when you start cutting out compulsions, new ones will come up. Be prepared for that and get used to how these ‘new’ compulsions feel. For me, rather than asking my partner questions about her past, I would start asking her to delete guys she’d casually slept with from her social media. Your brain will always try to convince you that this new question is ‘different’ — that the next question you ask will finally resolve things. DON’T fall for it. Similarly, if you have the urge to check your partner’s social media, or think that just one more Facebook stalking session will help you, don’t do it. Don’t be like Columbo — always asking your partner: ‘just one more thing’. Instead, ask yourself, ‘what am I hoping to gain by doing this?’ If the answer isn’t one which reflects your new goals and values, then it isn’t worth a second of your time. You’ll inevitably come up with a bunch of reasons why you should perform these compulsions. Don’t allow yourself to be fooled by your brain’s reasons for why you should engage in them. Remember the sage words of Nobel Prize winning physicist Richard Feynman:
‘The first principle is that you must not fool yourself, and you are the easiest person to fool.’
In a nutshell, you need to get comfortable with feeling uncomfortable. You’ll experience the urge to say or do things at times that don‘t reflect your new values. Not engaging in doing these things will be tough at first. You’ll slip up occasionally, as everyone does, but that is all part of the recovery process. Use each slip up as a learning curve rather than a chance to judge or blame yourself. After some time, you’ll slip up less and less until you no longer slip up at all. ‘Rome wasn’t built in a day’, after all. You can then start to allow yourself to experience jealousy or doubts without the need to do anything about them. Not acting on them weakens their hold on you significantly.
Start conversations with your partner about things you both care about rather than trying to force the conversation into getting confessions or reassurances out of them. Don’t make your jealousy their problem. Most importantly, stop judging yourself and your partner. Stop thinking of either yourself or your partner as a bad person. Remember that even good people have ‘bad’ habits. Replace those bad habits with healthy ones. And finally, break out of the habits of judging, controlling, and reassurance seeking and you’ll eventually break out of the clutches of ROCD.
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