Retrospective Jealousy is destroying every meaningful relationship

[toad.in.the.dungeon]

Help!. I have recently met someone who I have made a real emotional connection with - we both feel "this is it", however ...

 

Part of the process in being involved and connected inevitably involves a bit of history, complete with closet skeletons (suffice to say there is an imbalance here). In previous relationships I have pleaded ignorance is bliss, to no avail, my own morbid curiosity and I suspect some OCD traits in my character just cant leave the past in the past. I like to have a close and intimate connection with the person I love - for better or worse I will want to know.

 

Therein lies the problem - Retrospective Jealousy - I thought I had developed emotionally since the last significant other, apparently not.

The way I feel is best summed up in a quote I found

"... (and what I don't know that anyone that it's never happened to could possibly understand) is that his brain is ready and willing to move on from her past but his heart is not letting it happen. it's a terrible place to be in because you yourself can't understand why you can't either just accept it or reject it...you feel like you're losing control of your sanity. heck, in the worst stages of it for me, I don't even know that I cared whether I decided to stay with her or leave her, just so I made a f*cking decision and got control of my mind back!! so your natural tendency is to continue to fixate on it and try and find the way to "just get over it" - but since it's an emotional response and lodged squarely in one's heart, unfortunately the only way to do it is time."

 

Unfortunately "time", isn't doing it for me. I am fearful that I am subconsciously undermining this relationship before giving it any chance, its entirely my own doing, irrational and inconsolable. Its a viscous condition that feeds of ones low self worth projecting out to the other as a negative, which can be no further from the truth. I am unable to disassociate and I feel, to be frank, like I'm going loopy (SSRI's didn't work neither cognitive behavioral therapy) I am now hedging my bets on forums so ....

 

... any thoughts, criticisms, questions or affinity would be welcomed.

[Mme. Chaucer]

If you can't handle her past, then don't hang around and torture her about it. It's YOUR problem.

 

If you can't solve your issues, date only virgins.

 

People in a healthy relationship have to be able to love and accept their partner and the life they've lived.

[meerkat stew]

Rather than a round condemnation of your feelings, I will try to explore one possible origin of them and suggest a choice available to you.

 

Feelings of retroactive jealousy result from the propensity of our lizard brains to protect us from expending resources in situations where our genes may not be perpetuated. So when you feel jealous about her past, you are really exhibiting a primitive response along the line of "is there a chance this female is already impregnated thus blocking the propagation of -my- genes and risking that I will expend resources on young that aren't mine if I were to pair bond with her for the purposes of procreation?"

 

We have big brains though, big brain > lizard brain. Human thought trumps instinct. The question you need to ask yourself when looking in the mirror is, "Am I looking at a lizard or a human being?" If you see a lizard, crawl on off under a rock. If you see a human being, begin the process of categorizing and compartmentalizing these jealousies as the irrational primitive instincts that they are.

[InceptorsRule]

Toad,

 

you're allowed to have standards in the women you choose to be with.

 

Don't EVER let anyone "guilt" you out of that or try to tell you you're unreasonable for having standards for your women.

 

If you think a potential gf is too loose and has slept around too much before she met you, that's your common sense talking to you. You should listen to it.

 

Next her and don't feel guilty about it. At all.

 

Slutty women are a heap of trouble and you don't need to get involved with that drama.

[InceptorsRule]

If you can't handle her past, then don't hang around and torture her about it. It's YOUR problem.

 

No, it's HER problem. That is, if she wants a relationship with this guy. It's not his fault she made prior life choices that can't be changed because they're in the past, it's her responsibility. Pretending that she didn't make the choices she made, or that they don't or shouldn't matter, is an immature attitude.

 

 

 

If you can't solve your issues, date only virgins.

 

LOL. That's helpful. Pretend that the woman's past sexual behavior is irrelevant to a brand new relationship. I hope that works for you, I really do.

 

 

 

 

People in a healthy relationship have to be able to love and accept their partner and the life they've lived.

 

Only someone who's never actually been in a healthy relationship could say something like this.

 

No MME. Chaucer healthy people do not blindly "accept" whatever crap their partner happens to bring into a relationship.

[witabix]

Look her in the eye, what do you see?

 

Is she giving you cause for concern over the future?

 

Are there a horde of horny men she is leading on?

 

We all have pasts don't we?

 

We should not judge another person relative to our own past.

 

I do realise that you don't seem to be doing that. You are caught in a fairly commonly occuring problem I think. You know that it is within you to control these feelings.

 

What you may have to do is ask yourself what is it you are reacting to?

 

Is it that she may be comparing you to bf x from the past in some way. Is it a sexual insecurity, financial, emotional?

[toad.in.the.dungeon]

Thanks for the posts but I think its going off topic a wee bit.

 

I'm seeking insight into my RJ dilemma, in my view it has very little to do with the GF or how many previous partners or how few, or how she did it, or whatever. I have experienced RJ in many combination's of inequality or otherwise the result is the same.

 

So I feel I'm reacting to intimacy rejection or fear of abandonment combined with low self esteem, and as mentioned, this fuels my obsessive compulsive behavior and hence self destructiveness - ridiculous really!

 

Its interesting to note that reptilians with there common brain functionality possess the power to will when laying claims to a potential mate and they also exhibit obsessive-compulsive behavior, ritualizing, obeisance to precedent and deception! a nod to meerkat stew.

[jenifer1972]

Have you found that the more you care about a partner the more it becomes a problem? This is what I found.

 

If I was dating someone that I wasn't terribly emotionally attached to, their past didn't bother me at all. The more I care, the more it becomes an issue. For me, it was the addition of secretive communication with my husband's exes that set it off. So I think it needs a template of a bit of anxiety and OCD tendancy, and then a great fear of loss, and then the resulting coping mechanism of trying to control this fear by thinking about the loved one's past.

[toad.in.the.dungeon]

Have you found that the more you care about a partner the more it becomes a problem? This is what I found.

 

If I was dating someone that I wasn't terribly emotionally attached to, their past didn't bother me at all. The more I care, the more it becomes an issue. For me, it was the addition of secretive communication with my husband's exes that set it off. So I think it needs a template of a bit of anxiety and OCD tendancy, and then a great fear of loss, and then the resulting coping mechanism of trying to control this fear by thinking about the loved one's past.

Definitely! I found meaningless ONS nothing more than just physical therefore no problem.

But being involved is a completely different kettle of fish. In my mind without a real emotional connection there is little point in investing the time and effort in something that is doomed.

 

BTW This RJ thing is not triggered by anything other than intimacy which paradoxically is what I seek as paramount in a relationship, damned of i do, damned if i don't ...