Our past numbers.

[AAlike]

Why is your gf/bf having had sex once with 30 different people a cause of more jealously than them having had sex 1000 times with one person? Surely in the latter case it means their partner was great in bed - don't you feel inferior?

 

If you don't get retroactive jealousy over someone who just came out of a 10 year relationship, you shouldn't get it over someone who didn't have a relationship anywhere near as long.

 

The biggest sluts are the monogamous - they get to do it every day!

 

hahaha very good point - when applied to a straight up inferiority complex, that is correct.

 

But that's not the only component of RJ, especially with guys. I think it has to do with casual sex or ONSs having a more "dirty" or "cheap" connotation. guys get upset that other guys got to "have" their girl without having to go through the courting rituals, or that she was potentially objectified in the past. Now, this is certainly a culturally induced, immature view of sex, because it places an disproportionate amount of importance on the ONS and ignores the fact that sex with someone for the first time is generally akward and not really that fulfilling and gets better as you familiarize yourselves with each other, and more importantly it ignores the fact that the girl was most likely doing just as much objectifying as the guys (gasp!).

[AAlike]

Hey AA. Thanks for this post. I read a lot of your posts and find them insightful and helpful.

 

Question, though: You seem to be pretty much on top of your retroactive jealousy. But does it ever rear its ugly head still? And what do you do to tackle it when it does?

 

My situation is that my fiancee has slept with a load more people than I have (not a shock, since I was married for five years). She had a promiscuous period in college that ended abruptly when she got pregnant and had an abortion. She reassessed her lifestyle and settled down a lot after that, give or take the odd encounter here and there (she's 25 now).

 

From time to time, aspects of her past bother me a little. I don't suffer from this anywhere near as much as some of the guys who post on here with RJ issues. I mean, it's never even crossed my mind to split up with her over it, and I have no doubt we will get married, make babies and live happily ever after. Even so, there is a small part of my brain that loves to prod at me and torment me over it, and it's... vexing. I'm terribly vexed.

 

Sigh. Logically and rationally, I have no problem with her past. Hell, I'm so convinced that RJ is silly that I come on here and make fun of other people who suffer from it! And yet, clearly, I'm not entirely immune myself.

 

Whaddyareckon? Can we ever be free of RJ, or must we accept that it will always be there in some small capacity, and thus we must make peace with it?

 

haha wow dude we are really on the same page here! and considering my RJ was based on one isolated incident that has long since came and went and is probably not even remembered in detail by those participants, let alone anyone else, it almost makes me feel like a huge p*ssy that it has the potential to affect me like that!

 

Does it still affect me - well, yeah every once in a while - but it's weird...I don't even think that it's "RJ" anymore if we define RJ as my inability to digest her past. Like I said, when it "flares up" it's more of like a stock feeling that manifests itself when I'm mad or upset with her. I think it's completely dissociated itself from the actual reason behind it. hmmm I don't know if I'm explaining that correctly.

 

honestly I think that we all suffer from a little bit of paranoia in our relationships that never totally fades - it can come through as RJ or in many other forms. if it wasn't your GF's past, it'd probably be something else. it just so happens that in many cases that's the easiest thing to hang your vengeful hat on, you know? and that's probably the most likely case for you - logistically you've probably made peace with your wife's past, and when things are good, you can laugh it off - but in those tougher moments, it's just something that you've synonymized with distress and you fall back on that feeling, even though you've clearly made the decision to move on from her past. Does that make any sense?

[Jellyhead]

Does it still affect me - well, yeah every once in a while - but it's weird...I don't even think that it's "RJ" anymore if we define RJ as my inability to digest her past. Like I said, when it "flares up" it's more of like a stock feeling that manifests itself when I'm mad or upset with her. I think it's completely dissociated itself from the actual reason behind it. hmmm I don't know if I'm explaining that correctly.

No, I know exactly what you mean. Sometimes it flares in the stupidest circumstances. Like when I'm horny and she doesn't want to do it, my brain occasionally throws out indignant little critiques like, "Why won't she have sex? She didn't have a problem sleeping with all those other guys!" Ha ha. It's embarrassing even to type that. So childish and ridiculous.

 

So yeah, generally I suffer more when I'm tired and/or pissed off to begin with.

 

It's largely an insecurity thing, I think. For me, the problem has become slightly *worse* as the relationship has progressed, not better - and that's because when I first got together with her, I had three different women chasing me, and I felt like a god among men for a while . More than a year later, things have settled down, and my ego has deflated a bit, so I'm a little more vulnerable to the negative voice in my head that delights in bringing me down.

 

honestly I think that we all suffer from a little bit of paranoia in our relationships that never totally fades - it can come through as RJ or in many other forms. if it wasn't your GF's past, it'd probably be something else. it just so happens that in many cases that's the easiest thing to hang your vengeful hat on, you know?

Yup. And the next logical step is to think, "Well, if the thing that upsets me most about my relationship is stuff she did years before she even met me, then I'm doing well." I'd much rather feel uncomfortable from time to time about a guy she slept with at a part four years ago than, for example, have to deal with her meeting up with an ex-boyfriend behind my back or constantly demeaning me in public or whatever.

 

A quick look around Loveshack suggests that other people have far worse and more-pressing issues.

[electric_sheep]

One of the things that crops up often on these retroactive jealousy threads is guys desperately trying to come up with reasons why their partners have slept with more men than they are comfortable with. We see comments like, "Her self-esteem was very low for a number of years," or, "She'd just come out of a long-term relationship and didn't really know what she was doing." And I don't blame these guys for saying this stuff; often, they are just parroting what their gf herself has told them as she tries to fend off their inquisition.

 

When our society becomes overwhelmingly judgmental about something it's only natural for people to start looking for excuses. Suddenly something becomes a "condition" or a "disease". It's better to be afflicted with alcoholism than to simply have crappy judgment. I drank like a fish for years and, looking back on it, I'd chalk it up to not giving a rat's ass. Another example... just look at all the overweight people with thyroid problems, or "slow" metabolisms (it's an enduring myth that some people metabolize food more efficiently than others).

 

Anyway... there still exists a blatant double standard in the realm of sexuality. Women are expected to be the sexual gatekeepers. If they shrug this duty, then clearly they must have been experiencing "self-esteem" issues, etc... Otherwise their boyfriends would have to just accept the fact that their gf's have enjoyed wild sex with an assortment of different men. We have a name for girls like that and it starts with an 's'. Men who do the same thing are heroes, of course.

 

We'd all be better off if we just stopped being so judgmental. We're all human, and we all screw up sometimes. Not to mention, I don't consider having great sex a screw up.

[electric_sheep]

honestly I think that we all suffer from a little bit of paranoia in our relationships that never totally fades - it can come through as RJ or in many other forms. if it wasn't your GF's past, it'd probably be something else.

 

Relationships are fragile things. We do our best to forget this. I think one of the root causes of RJ is that all those people from the past are a constant, persistent, and unwelcome reminder of that fragility.

 

It's easy to forget that you can only control one side of the relationship equation... yourself. You can just love with all your heart, and do everything you can do for the relationship. The rest is up to the other person. None of us can control the past or the future. Uncertainty is just a fact of life.

[AAlike]

No, I know exactly what you mean. Sometimes it flares in the stupidest circumstances. Like when I'm horny and she doesn't want to do it, my brain occasionally throws out indignant little critiques like, "Why won't she have sex? She didn't have a problem sleeping with all those other guys!" Ha ha. It's embarrassing even to type that. So childish and ridiculous.

 

hahaha yep. anytime my GF acts inhibited or shy there's that voice that's like "we both know that you're not really shy" - as if her behavior during one isolated incident should define her completely as a human being and dictate her behavior on a regular basis.

[Chinook]

An interesting discussion.

 

This came up a week or so ago and I said then, as I'll say now, I don't and never have had the 'number' discussion. A mature discussion over what happens and whether that other person is clear of STDs is important. It doesn't matter about the sex they had.

 

The fact is, exes are exes for a reason... the people who slept with my SO in the past are not in his life now (my theoretical SO this is). It's only what I do is what matters. These previous partners don't just come as a sexual component alone - they came as a package. So what if my SO had great sex with his ex..? She was a biotch to him mentally and emotionally. Or maybe they fought all the time. Or something else was out of whack. The point is, even if the sex was great... it didn't keep them together.

 

It's a balance.

 

As to the question of promiscuity, or lack of judgement, or low self-esteem... or whatever else we want to call it. I'm not entirely sure it's that at all. Human beings on one level are biological and social animals. Promiscuity is nothing more in men and women than people 'trying each other out for size'. There's no self-esteem issue, no judgement issue etc.. they're just trying what fits.

 

If you trace human behaviour back in history, the judgements in western societies probably started in prehistoric times with women finding mates to have babies, males being the stronger sex, would ward off other males ... and that continues today. Men didn't like their territory being invaded and so for societies to co-exist in relative peace, the status of women as 'pure' has been reinforced.

 

Any woman who stepped outside that societal moral boundary is seen to be a threat to the patriarchal system. As some of the very astute guys have mentioned here, they know they have a problem with the fact their girl has slept with others before them. The thing is with the change in equality in the last fifty or so years, that issue has switched from being a mainly female issue to now being non-gender specific. Morally we find sexual promiscuity a huge problem. But is it really a problem if the partners are clean and careful...?! I'm not so sure it is.

 

If you look to matriarchal societies - such as those which have said to supposedly exist in far flung places of China, South America and some African nations where tribes survive purely on the female being the controller of all things, the view of sexuality and of sex is very different (I only know this because I share my office with an anthropology lecturer). Women in these societies are 'given' men to use in order to pro-create and the man then goes back to his own life within the tribe or family, the responsibility for any child which is born of the union is then the woman's and her family's. It's a collective responsibility.

 

I think what we fail to forget in our close personal relationships, is that we are not just individuals - we are also the product of our upbringing, our society and all the influences around them both which can impact us. Not everyone is brought up in the same way. In some ways, we have our own ideals, beliefs and morals and these come from somewhere. Sometimes, those beliefs and values are the core of who you are and are unchangeable. Sometimes, not.

 

Sometimes, those ideals and values can also be the sledgehammer which is used to break our relationships into tiny pieces because we don't or can't conform to one ideal which we had only a small part in constructing for ourselves. Is it just retro-active jealousy..? No, I don't think so. In some ways... it can be a source of fuel for engineering the demise of a relationship which doesn't conform to our ideal.

 

That is, it isn't really truly accepting of the person we meet as our SO. So do we accept them as they are, no past, no future...? Or do we compromise our ideals...? For me, having been in the situation where I'm staring at no future and anything and everything is possible... I find it relatively easy to say 'I don't want to know' about someone's history. I don't care because it doesn't matter to me now (as long as they're clean).

 

What I do ask about my SO and their past relationships when I am sharing my life with them is, 'what have you learned...?' because my main motivation is that an ex is an ex for a reason and either they or you, should learn at least something from having been in that situation with them. The sex, really is secondary.