Name: The Ultimate Retroactive Jealousy Cure
Rating: 3.8 (26 reviews)
Author: Jeff Billings

Zusammenfassung von The Ultimate Retroactive Jealousy Cure

Jeff Billings

How to Stop Being Jealous of Your Partner's Past in 12 Steps

3.8 (26 Bewertungen)

13 Min.

Kurz zusammengefasst

The Ultimate Retroactive Jealousy Cure by Jeff Billings offers a comprehensive guide to help individuals overcome their jealousy and anxiety related to past relationships. Through practical advice and personal stories, it aims to help readers create a more fulfilling present and future.

Inhaltsübersicht

What’s in it for me? Banish retroactive jealousy for good!

It’s never good news when your partner’s phone starts pinging at 2:00 a.m.

Author Jeff Billings was asleep in bed with his new girlfriend when the messages came through. Unable to help himself, he asked who they were from. He got the answer nobody wants to hear: an ex-sex buddy.

Billings knew of his partner’s “adventurous” past, but these messages were the straw that broke the camel’s back. Over the next few months, he spiraled into a hellhole of retroactive jealousy.

Yet Billings was determined to keep this relationship alive, so he started searching for a way out of the torture he was experiencing. Unable to find a comprehensive guide, he resolved to create one himself. In time – and through painful trial and error – he came upon a three-part process that completely dispelled his retroactive jealousy. Not long after, the woman whose romantic and sexual past once presented such an overwhelming obstacle became his wife.

Retroactive jealousy may posture as a formidable foe, but it’s nothing compared to your strength and the strength of your relationship. Like Billings, you too can follow this three-part process and banish your retroactive jealousy for good – if you’re truly committed to doing so.

Game? Let’s get started!

Retroactive jealousy 101

Have you ever seen ducks fight? If so, you’ll know it can be an explosive affair – all feathers, splashing, and squawking. Then, just as quickly as it began, it ends. The two creatures calmly swim off into the sunset like nothing ever happened.

Billings believes humans could learn a lot from these interactions. Where ducks shake altercations off like water from their backs, we have an impossibly hard time letting all sorts of things go. Retroactive jealousy is the term for applying this obsessive holding on to our partner’s romantic or sexual history.

Right from the get-go, it’s important to highlight that this isn’t personal. Retroactive jealousy has its roots in our species’ survival and evolution, so don’t beat yourself up for succumbing to it. You aren’t the first – and certainly won’t be the last!

We’re hardwired to be alert to signs of infidelity. Evolutionarily, a man’s infidelity could mean leaving mother and child to fend for themselves – not a great position for females in prehistoric times. A woman’s infidelity, on the other hand, could result in the father raising a child that wasn’t his – equally undesirable in the eyes of Neanderthal men.

All this to say, retroactive jealousy isn’t entirely on you. Yes, there are things you can do to free yourself from its bind, but the condition itself is totally understandable.

The actual sensation of retroactive jealousy can be difficult for people to define. It often feels like a melting pot of mixed emotions. And because it’s not something commonly talked about, it can easily remain a nebulous entity burning away in our bellies.

The good news is that, in reality, there are just two primary emotions behind retroactive jealousy: fear and judgment. To paraphrase Yoda, naming something is the first step in banishing it – in fact, this clarity alone is at least half the battle.

Ironically, the fear experienced in this condition isn’t actually about your partner’s past – it’s about what your partner’s past might represent for the future. For instance, unless you have compelling evidence to suggest someone has recently reentered their life, you probably don’t feel threatened by these individuals. What does feel threatening is that your significant other has had romantic partners or sex buddies previously, which means they could again.

Judgment is the second driving emotion behind retroactive jealousy. Broadly speaking, it’s divided into two camps: judgment toward past partners or judgment toward past sexual activities. Women tend to fall into the former camp and men into the latter, but it’s entirely possible to oscillate between the two or feel both simultaneously.

What’s tricky is that judgment about your partner’s past can quickly lead to judging them as a person today. This can even spiral into judgment toward yourself for entering into a relationship with such a “questionable” individual. Hopefully it goes without saying, but judgment – whether directed toward your partner or yourself – isn’t a solid foundation on which to build a thriving relationship.

So, how can we turn this new understanding into action – and results? Don’t worry, that’s where we’re heading next. To return to Yoda’s advice, basic knowledge of your opponent is crucial. But fortunately, no grueling Jedi training is required here!

Think better

Let’s kick things off by taking some massive ownership. As we discovered in the previous section, the experience of retroactive jealousy isn’t entirely our fault – but to the extent that it is, it’s on us, not our partner. Unless we absolutely know they’re being unfaithful, they’re innocent. It’s our minds that are guilty.

Paradoxically, this insight is tremendously empowering because our mind falls within our locus of control. If we choose to, we can flip the script.

Take action

Imagine you have 50 years left to live, and – for the sake of simple math – each one is 365 days long. That would mean you have 18,250 days or 438,000 hours left on the clock – never to be reclaimed, never to be redone.

While it’s unrealistic to live every day – or hour – as if it’s your last, it’s wise to think about how you want to spend those days and hours. Do you really want to be passively dwelling on the details of your partner’s past sexual escapades? Or would you rather be active, working toward building a fulfilling future together?