![]() Women don’t like their men being weak and they can’t stand jealousy.Īlso If she tries to reassure you it will very likely strengthen your problem. This may be detrimental to your relationship as the man who appears weak (it’s in my experience mostly men who suffer from this affliction) loses his attraction fast. Two things may happen though, that is definitely not in your interest: First of all it will sooner rather than later make your partner feel ill at ease as he or she can’t help you. This sounds – on the face of it – as a good idea. It is suggested that you have talks with your partner about your retrograde jealousy. Researching for this blog post I stumbled upon this following piece of advice, which should come with a warning. Sit yourself down and ask yourself the following provoking question: If I dialed this my retrograde jealousy up to eleven, what would my situation be like in three years from now? Try to write as a minimum 3 pages in which you consider how it will affect your relationship(s), work life, health, happiness and sense of meaning and peace of mind.įor some people this kind of exercise does nothing more than exacerbate their pain whereas for others it may create a motivation to steer clear of that miserable future image of yourself hence putting a damper on your retrograde jealousy. You may also, as Zachary also suggests want to consider taking it to the limit. This way of dealing with yourself may sound odd, but it is based on techniques developed in Gestalt Therapy and is actually quite a common method in psychotherapy. What does ‘it” want? What’s the point of thinking about your partners ex?Įxperiment: If you placed your jealousy, let’s call this part of you “Mr Retrograde Jealousy” in the chair next to you, and asked him – or her “Why do you obsess about my partners’ past?” and you changed seats and answered back as Mr Retrograde Jealousy and thus created a kind of back-and-forth conversation with your Jealousy by actually changing seats, you may get some insights into your “why”. Whatever the case it is always a good idea to ask yourself the, at first bewildering question as to the purpose of your thoughts about your partner’s past. ![]() Hence a reprieve from actually trying living up to your potential with all the struggle and challenge that goes with that. Zachary (author of the book Overcoming Retroactive Jealousy: A Guide to Getting Over Your Partner’s Past and Finding Peace) considers that the motivation behind much of retrograde jealousy comes from the need for passivity that the thought of your partner’s ex or ex’es perhaps being better than you, relieves you from the plight of taking action and being the best you can be? This is what one in a Freudian framework would call a subconscious drive to gain a secondary reward: Like the person pretending to be sick in order to get love and attention (the secondary reward), you may dwell at your partner’s past in order to give in to the feeling of not being good enough. Then I will proceed to carve out two possible underlying mechanisms: OCD and a “Rivalry Complex”.Ĭonsider the “why” of it all: What makes you think so much about your partner’s past relationships? Even your most negative habits, thoughts and feelings have some sort of meaning to them, albeit painful to you. In the following I will outline some of the first steps you should take if you suffer from retrograde jealousy. As something that threatens your self worth or as something that threatens your relationship. In this case you consider your partner’s ex’es as a kind of threat, or at least some sort of a nuisance. Retrograde jealousy on the other hand is peculiar. In this case you probably should worry and feeling jealous would be a perfectly normal reaction. Let’s say that your partner begins to speak very fondly about a colleague and this said colleague begins texting your partner late at night. While the normal kind of jealousy may make sense. In this blog post I will examine the strange case of retrograde jealousy. Photo: Richard Lee/ Unsplash/Bison fighting for the right to mate How to Kick the Habit of Retrograde Jealousy
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