Chapter 12

Getting Past the Past to Overcome Retrospective Jealousy

Josh is anxious about going to a party where he knows Molly’s former boyfriend, Emmon, will be. It makes him both worried and angry, and he doesn’t know how he will handle it. All he can think of is that Molly had sex with Emmon, which makes him furious with jealousy. He knows that Molly broke it off with Emmon because she thought Emmon was too controlling and critical. She tells Josh that she has no desire to get back together with Emmon. But this isn’t enough for Josh. “If I see him, I know that I will want to punch him in the face.” He knows that this isn’t the right thing to do, and that it has been over between Molly and Emmon for six months, but the feelings are too intense for him right now.

It’s hard to imagine any of us without a past filled with romance, sensuality, and attachment to someone else. We are not living in a world of vestal virgins and universal chastity. But many people are plagued by thoughts and images of the former lovers of their current partners. Many people think about this former partner and are upset about the idea that they were sexually intimate, or in love, with that person.

If you have this experience, you may compare yourself with that other person, whom you have never met. You think things like “I wonder how much he enjoyed sex with her,” “He probably loved her more than he loves me,” “He must be thinking about her and comparing me with her.” In this comparison, you may think your partner may still love that person, want to be with that person, or fantasize about that person.

In this chapter, we will examine how getting stuck on jealousy about past relationships can hijack you and keep you from enjoying the present moment. We will look at examples of this retrospective jealousy, how it is tied in with perfectionism and illusions about purity, and how you can use a number of powerful techniques right now to live in the present while accepting that the past is background. You don’t have to be the only one who ever existed for your partner to be the true one at the present moment. Look at the following statements and see whether any of these fit you.

If any of these statements rings true, then you might find yourself caught up in retrospective jealousy. Even if your current relationship is going well, you might dwell on your partner’s past relationships, comparing yourself with them, and feeling anxious and angry about it. In this chapter, we will look at how this rumination, anxiety, and anger might make sense to your jealous mind. And we will look at a number of techniques you can use now to reverse getting stuck on the past. After all, in order to enjoy the present moment, you will need to leave the past behind you.

“I Want to Be the Only One”

It may seem natural to believe that your partner could only desire you, or to think your partner could only have good sex with you. Part of the romantic ideal is that we are special and exclusively special to our partners. We believe at times that our partners should not find anyone else attractive while we are with them and, in the case of retrospective jealousy, we may harbor the belief that no one has been attractive to them in the past. This is romantic perfectionism, in which there is something unique about our current relationship that requires, in our minds, that all past relationships should never have existed. We become obsessed with purity, as if our current partners have been spoiled by their past behavior. But holding this assumption will only make us miserable. Let’s look at its logic by asking a series of questions.

It’s almost as if you think you should be the only person in the entire world that your partner could desire. Imagine if that were true. Of the six billion people in the world, your partner would only be able to have satisfaction with you. It’s almost as if your current partner was going along in life for twenty or thirty years, and no one was attractive to them—until you came along and everything changed.

This is what I call desire perfectionism, which is the idea that your partner should only have ever had desire for you and no one else. We often use desire perfectionism when we think about a partner’s past experiences, and also about potential fantasies or desires that our partners may have today. This is based on the purity illusion, the idea that true love requires purity and celibacy. It’s an illusion because adults in today’s world are freed from the strictures of religious and cultural taboos that have often been used to punish, even kill, women. We are living in the twenty-first century, after all.

New Ways to View Your Jealousy

Let’s look further at the logic of this. Say you and your future partner are both thirty years old. You are just meeting. Your new acquaintance tells you, “I am thirty years old and I have never been sexually attracted to anyone in the world. I have dated various men (women) and no one appealed to me. But I just noticed that I am feeling turned on to you!”

What would you think? First, you might think that this person is lying about the past. Or you might think there is something dreadfully wrong with him or her if they had never been attracted or aroused by anyone. You might wonder: Are they severely depressed? Are they unsure about sexual orientation? Does he or she have some medical condition? And, if any of those conditions accounted for a lack of previous sexual desire, what would you predict about the future? Will this desire for you be reliable? This may start to seem unrealistic. But it may be exactly how you think, with your purity illusions and desire perfectionism.

Put the Shoe on Your Own Foot

Let’s look at your own experience. Were there people you desired, and found sexual satisfaction with, before you met your current partner? Should you feel guilty about that? Maybe it simply means that you have had healthy, normal past experiences with other people. So should your current partner distrust you?

After all, think about your past and the experiences that you enjoyed. Wasn’t it fun? Ask yourself whether this means that you can’t love, and commit to, your current partner. Maybe pleasure with past partners means that you cannot control yourself now. Are you constantly going back to past partners and having sex with them? Why not? Perhaps because the past is the past for you.

Josh had many former lovers, but he is worried about Molly’s former lover appearing at the party. When I ask him if she should be concerned about his past relationships, he gets defensive: “Why should she be concerned? I love her! Those relationships are over.” I ask him if that might also be true for Molly. Her past relationships are just that—in the past, over. Josh pauses for a moment and says reluctantly, “I guess you have a point. She has as much to worry about as I do.”

After all, most relationships end, often because one person, or both partners, think it’s no longer worth it. When your past relationships ended, they opened the possibility for your current relationship.

The Hidden Rules for Retrospective Jealousy

Although it’s not unusual for us to have some jealousy about our partner’s past relationships, some people are very perplexed and hijacked by the past. When we explore the thinking behind this retrospective jealousy, we find a number of relationship rule-books that magnify it. Consider the possibility that it’s not the past that is upsetting—it’s your rules that are upsetting. Here are some examples of these rule-books.

Imagine that you believe one or more of these retrospective jealousy rules. What will happen? You will feel frustrated, even defeated, by an impossible scenario. You will continually worry about your partner leaving you for a past lover or for someone else in the future. Because you feel threatened by the past, you will find yourself testing your partner, interrogating him, trying to limit her behavior. Because the past will never disappear, you will be stuck in something you can never change.

An Evolutionary Lens

A different way to look at past desires and relationships is to view them from an evolutionary perspective. Desire has evolved because it has been adaptive to the species. Having desire for many other people is adaptive because it allowed our ancestors to procreate. If a target of desire were limited to one person, per person, and a desirable other never came along, then there would be no procreation. In the context of evolution, it’s somewhat absurd to think that you would be the only person your partner could desire or feel satisfaction with.

You may believe that your partner’s past—or current–desire will inevitably lead to action. Josh asked me, “If Molly desired Emmon, then what’s to keep her from going back to him or getting involved with someone else?” I observed that Josh thought Molly’s desire, memory, and even fantasy life were dangerous to him. He believed she would be overpowered with desire, and would not be able to control herself. This is like the thought-action fusion we described earlier: “If Molly has a desire, then she will act on it.” I suggested we test this out with himself.

Bob: How often do you see women you feel attracted to?

Josh: (Smiling) Every day.

Bob: Since you have been involved with Molly, how many times have you chosen to be unfaithful?

Josh: Never.

Bob: Doesn’t this suggest that there is often a disconnect between having a desire or a fantasy and acting on it?

Josh: Yes.

Bob: So why haven’t you acted on your fantasies and desires?

Josh: I can see another woman is attractive, and even fantasize about her, but I really love Molly. Acting on those thoughts would just screw things up. I don’t want to make my life more complicated. It’s just not worth it.

Bob: Is it possible that the same process of reflection and choice might also be true for Molly? While she might recall sex with Emmon, even having some fond sensual feelings, she might decide that it simply is not worth it. Is it possible that there is a big difference between having a thought or feeling, and making a choice to engage in a behavior? Isn’t this what you do every day?

Nathan is a happily married man. He was worried about his marriage—and about himself—because he noticed that he was attracted to young women in Starbucks. It was the late spring, so a lot of women were wearing revealing clothing. He found this sexy, but then worried, “There must be something wrong with my marriage if I find these women sexy.” I asked him what he was worried would happen.

Nathan: I am worried that I might lose control and start having an affair with one of them.

Bob: Why haven’t you? Let’s walk through the steps: You see an attractive woman, you start talking with her, you find that you hit it off, you start seeing her secretly, you hide this from your wife, you get two phones—one for your business and the other for your new lover—you see your new lover in a hotel room, this goes on for months…

Nathan: I would never do that!

Bob: Why not? Didn’t you tell me that you desire some of these women?

Nathan: (With even more intensity) I would never want to make my life complicated like that. I would never hurt my wife and children.

I suggested that this illustrates clearly how we can have fantasies and desires, and then make choices that go against them because something else is more important—in this case, a marriage.

Establishing Realistic Guidelines

Now that we have looked at these relationship rules, let’s rewrite some more realistic and livable guidelines that won’t destroy your current relationship. Here are some suggestions.

“If My Partner Wanted Him, How Can She Want Me?”

Let’s look at your either-or, black-and-white, dichotomous thinking. It goes something like this: “If my partner has a desire for someone else, in the past or present, then it means that he doesn’t have any desire for me.” This is a form of desire perfectionism, in which you can only have one desire, and this desire cancels out all other desires.

We’ll think this through by talking about food. Let’s say you really love a particular pasta dish with lobster and red sauce. You just love it. But the restaurant sold the last lobster. So the waiter tells you that they have a delicious eggplant parmesan on the menu, along with thirty other great options. Do you say, “How can you talk about anything else besides the lobster with red sauce?” and walk out of the restaurant?

Similarly, your partner might have had desires for someone else in the past, but that relationship ended. Maybe they both decided that they couldn’t stand each other. But it may also be true that your partner occasionally has a fond memory of the past with this person—perhaps selectively remembering a good time. Does this mean that her desire and fantasy prevents her from having desire for you in the present moment? Desires and fantasies are not either-or. They don’t cancel each other out. You might find yourself having a fantasy about another person but also enjoying intimacy with your partner. Both can exist, side by side.

“Maybe the Other Person Was a Better Lover Than Me”

Let’s look at your fear that your partner might think that a former lover was more satisfying. What if that were true? This was one of Josh’s fears.

Josh: I don’t know exactly what it was like for Molly and Emmon, but I worry sometimes that she might have thought he was a better lover than I am.

Bob: What would that mean if it were true? Does it necessarily mean your partner cannot be satisfied with you? Does every experience have to be the very best in order to be satisfying?

Josh: (Thinking for a moment) The sensual relationship with Molly is generally pretty good, but there are times when she is too tired or not interested. When this happens, I wonder whether she is losing interest and will start comparing our relationship with what she had with Emmon.

Josh was suffering from sensual perfectionism, a belief that the only kind of sensual experience that could be satisfying is the perfect experience. Based on that, he was assuming Molly had that with someone else in the past, and that she could only be happy with sensual perfection.

Let’s look at this with a trivial example. Imagine that five years ago you went to the best restaurant in the world and ate the best meal of your entire life. Does that mean you never ate another meal you enjoyed after that? Perhaps it would be more accurate to say that you’ve had many meals since then, and you will have many more in the future, that are very enjoyable and satisfying. The “best” does not have to be the enemy of all the rest.

Say the only experience you can find satisfying is the very best you can have in your entire life. Imagine that your best sexual experience happened five years ago. Given the logic of this perfectionism, you would never be satisfied or happy with any experience thereafter. The rest of your experiences are unsatisfactory and make you miserable. Does this really make sense? Can there be a wide range of satisfying and rewarding experiences that are not the absolute best experiences ever? Let’s imagine a conversation between two people who love each other and just had sex.

Man: That was really terrific. How about for you?

Woman: Really nice. I enjoyed myself too.

Man: Was it the best sex you ever had in your entire life?

Woman: I can’t really say, but it was really good.

Man: What? You mean that you had better sex with someone else?

Woman: I don’t recall, but I guess that’s possible.

Man: Well, that’s something I can’t live with. Your sex with me must be the best you have ever had, each and every time. It has to be better than before.

Woman: Isn’t that unrealistic?

Man: What, don’t you love me?

Woman: Of course I do, but this sounds crazy to me.

Maybe the woman in this dialogue has a point. Demanding perfection, and the very best, is an absurd standard to use. Experiences can range in terms of pleasure and, in fact, if you have pleasurable experiences frequently it makes no difference what happened five years ago. Sex is about pleasure in the current moment, not setting world records that hold up for years.

“I Can’t Get This Out of My Mind”

Many people who suffer from retrospective jealousy seem to dwell on the imagined, past experiences of their current partner. They ruminate about how exciting and meaningful a partner’s past experiences were and conclude that this must interfere with the current relationship. Take a look at the following statements and ask yourself whether any ring true.

Perhaps some, or all, of these thoughts ring true for you. You find yourself stuck on these thoughts and you may form images in your mind about your partner’s past. You may think that because you are having these thoughts, something very meaningful—and bad—has happened. Your current relationship is, in some sense, stained by the past. You may even think that, because your partner had these experiences, you are second best, a consolation prize, and you can’t accept this. You cannot tolerate these intrusive thoughts. You have to get rid of them in order to enjoy your current relationship. You try to push these thoughts out of your mind—but they keep plaguing you, nagging you, and they hijack you. Wherever you go, the thoughts follow you.

What if you were to accept that you have these thoughts and images? They could be perfectly natural curiosities. You could try seeing them as simply part of the collective memory of your relationship: just as you think these things, your partner may also have thoughts and images about your past experiences. Consider whether this might simply be a natural part of relationships, as the past is often part of our curiosity about the person we are currently with. As you accept these thoughts, you can use mindful detachment. Simply point to them and say the following:

“Ah, so there is another thought about my partner’s past. I just noticed that my mind sent that thought out and I can see it right here. It’s interesting how my mind works, sending out thoughts and images. I can accept those thoughts, they are natural, everyone has them, and I can observe them and realize that they are just thoughts. I can bring my attention back to the present moment. I can notice my breath going in and out. I can breathe in the thought, ‘He had a past partner,’ and breathe out, ‘I let that go.’ These are moment-to-moment thoughts, mental events, things in my brain. I don’t have to get rid of them; I can just live along with them.”

Begin practicing mindful detachment: standing back, observing, accepting, not trying to control these thoughts, not judging them. As you do, you may notice that these thoughts become more fluid, flowing back and forth, without hijacking you. You may begin to notice that you can live in a world where these thoughts occur, you don’t need to get rid of them, and you don’t have to spend a lot of time thinking about them. They are just thoughts.

Remind yourself that your current relationship is in the present moment. You can turn to your partner with warmth, love, and compassion—even when you have thoughts and images about the past.

Arriving at the Present Moment

What if you were to radically accept the past? Could it be a given fact that your partner was attracted to other people and enjoyed sex with them? When we radically accept something, we neither judge it nor control it, and we simply try to live with it as a fact about what is. What is—is. What was—was. Here is now.

The past is what you accept with this question: “Given the past, what can I still do in the present moment with my partner?” Well, you can have a rewarding, intimate, meaningful relationship. You can make moments together special. This is your moment with him. This is her moment with you. It’s not the only moment in your life, but it is the current moment—and that is where the rewards are. So here are some ways to arrive at the present.

Shifting Your Focus to Now

Look around you right now. At the present moment, what do you see right around you? Focus on one thing, one object, and describe it to yourself. I am looking at an abstract painting. I see gray shapes and some beige color and a dark area at the bottom. It is a painting of reflections of windows. It is my present moment, at this moment. Shifting your focus to the present moment can be this simple as you leave the past where it is.

Letting Go of the Past

You have struggled against the past for a while, and imagine that you now think, “I will try to give up on my partner’s past. I will try to live in the present.” But you also notice that thoughts about his or her past keep plaguing you, keep nagging you, and you find yourself hijacked by them.

What I want you to imagine, at the present moment, is that these thoughts about the past are inside a large balloon. The wind is picking up and you are holding the string to the balloon. The balloon, with those past jealousies, is lifting you off the ground. But you don’t want to get pulled up in the air and carried away.

As you are lifted off the ground, you let the string go. The balloon with all those jealousies drifts into the air above, turns in the wind, and drifts off—farther away from you. As you watch, you feel freed. The past drifts away, and you are here—in the present moment—with your feet firmly planted on the ground. Letting go allows you to take the next step.

Let go of the balloon.

You Can Only Have a Relationship Today

How often do you and your partner get stuck in arguments about the past? You bring up your partner’s past behavior, even behavior before you met each other, as if you are litigating his or her guilt. You bring up all kinds of past behaviors, past injuries, past suspicions. And then you dwell on them, argue with your partner, worry about what it all means, and fail to realize that you have just missed an opportunity to live in the present moment. It’s like going to your favorite restaurant, asking for a table, spending the next hour complaining about a meal that you didn’t like two years ago, and never ordering anything. You then walk out and wonder why you are still hungry.

What happened before your relationship began is simply information. It may not be information that has any relevance to how you treat each other in the present moment. No one will say, “We have a great relationship because we spend a lot of time talking about how upset I am with what she did before she met me.” Good relationships are based on how rewarding, trusting, and accepting we are in the present moment. Relationships are now.

The past is always with us, but only in the present moment can you love your partner and feel loved. You can only enjoy life by living it right now. Because every moment comes and goes.