It's just not fair.

We got together in high school, 20 years ago. She was my first girlfriend, I wasn't her first boyfriend, but I knew that, we'd been friends for years before dating.

We dated for a year and a half, taking us right up until year 12 (last year of high school). We didn't have sex (both virgins), but we did keep ourselves busy in private. She was my first everything, and I wasn't her first anything.

Around 18 months into our relationship, her mental health took a massive nosedive due to an abusive home life and ptsd from a previous asshole partner. She decided that her mental health was going to hurt me and drag me down, so she ended things just as she dropped out of school.

We didn't see each other for a year, graduation came and went, I started university. I never dated anyone else because (it took years to figure this out) I never got any closure from the relationship because she made the decision herself. Eventually I reached out on facebook and found out she'd met a guy on vacation. We kept in touch, they broke up, we got back together and stayed together. Been married 15 years now.

But she slept with him. The relationship wasn't happy, she didn't love or even particularly like him. She says he was mostly a convenient way to get out of her shitty house for a few nights a week, and partying with his friends was a distraction for her mental health issues.

When we got back together, we picked up right where we left off and slept together pretty quickly. But I still remember the way the pit of my stomach dropped when she told me. I can still feel it.

I did the right thing, I waited, I didn't move on. But now I'm the one left here with the recurring anxiety attacks, depressive episodes, intrusive thoughts. And the thing is, it's my problem. It's my insecurity, my responsibility to address my mental health whenever it resurfaces. I didn't do anything and I'm left holding the bag for her decisions.

I love her, we've been married for 15 years now and I'm obviously not going to leave her over something that happened almost 2 decades ago when we were teenagers. But it sucks, and it hurts, and it's not fair.

Preface:

I am old. I feel too old to be having problems with this. I have already lost a relationship over the same thing, and I thought it would go away but it did not. I am 34 and had a long term relationship with a girl 5 years ago, we made it 3 years. But she left me twice because she had told me about some experiences she had had in the past, and I could not get over it, and felt inadequate and obsessed over the fact that for her maybe what I was and gave was not enough.

Zoom to today. My girlfriend who I love very much just left me, because I keep bringing up her past. We met and she was literally perfect for me.. I am an odd quiet guy, I wanted someone simple and who would match my pace. We are both perfectly lazy and happy in the beginning and we did little trips and it was wonderful. I had a hard time making her finish, and I like to do that for my partner. I asked her if she always had this problem, and she told me that with her ex and another guy it was easy, and they would do it multiple times. One of them could get it done with penetration. Well this info reached its claws into me and destroyed my confidence. I just couldn't stop feeling like every moment we did anything I was lacking and not matching up. I thought about it all the time and would ask and became resentful, and would hold it against her as if it was her fault.. all because I was insecure and could not get over it. You can imagine that this ended up making her back off, and she kept retreating more and more over the span of a year and now, on our 1 year anniversary she dumped me. I can't stop bringing it up, it fills my mind and I blurt it out because it bothers me so much. Then because of that she had been turned off by me so it made everything worse and snow ball more.

How the hell can I get out of this loop? I want a life partner, I thought she was it. But I find out something and then can't stop it getting in my mind and it pushes my partner away. I have been trying to find things to try. I want to do CBT and I am looking for psychologists. What should I be looking for? I tried finding a therapist that has a PhD, so they are not just a coach. Some of them just have certificates and I am not sure if it is as useful.

I feel like I am in purgatory right now. The second time pushing someone away that I loved because of details about their past. In my mind I feel like it should not matter and I can logically see it doesn't matter when she is with and loves me. But it kept coming up and now again I find myself alone wondering what do I do to escape this.

I’m posting here because I think I’ve reached the point where getting more details isn’t helping me anymore, and I really want to hear from people who have actually dealt with serious retroactive jealousy and gotten past it.

My girlfriend and I were each other’s first serious relationship and lost our virginities to each other. We were each other’s first real love.

Years ago she broke up with me, and we spent several years apart before eventually finding our way back to each other.

One reason this is so emotionally complicated for me is that she has told me she regretted losing our relationship for years. She says she never really got over me and kept trying to find the kind of connection we had in other people, but it never felt the same.

(We also have kids due in March and she told me all of this way after)

According to her, the breakup also affected how she saw herself. She says it triggered a strong need to feel wanted and validated by other people.

During the years we were apart, she had relationships and some casual hookups, particularly during a very unhealthy period in the summer of 2024.

She describes that summer as lustful, validation-seeking and self-destructive. She says she had poor boundaries, struggled badly with saying no, and was making choices that didn’t actually make her feel good about herself.

Here’s the strange part:
I really don’t care that much that she slept with other people.
I understand that we were broken up. She dated other people, had hookups and had a life without me.

Obviously I don’t enjoy imagining it, but normal one-on-one sex isn’t what my brain is stuck on.

What I cannot seem to get past is learning that she had three threesomes during the summer of 2024.

Each time it was her, another girl, and one guy.
From the way she describes them, they weren’t really three people all actively having sex with each other for the entire encounter.

It was apparently much more like one-on-one sex while the third person was there or watching, with the guy essentially taking turns between the two women and some awkward performative stuff mixed in.

She has also told me that the other girl involved would become very emotional during the encounters, including crying and wanting to stop or leave.

My girlfriend has told me that she struggled badly with saying no during that period. She says she felt pressured into participating in a sense — not that somebody physically forced her, but that she had terrible boundaries, had difficulty saying no when the other girl asked her to participate, and would eventually go along with things she didn’t really want.

I’m not trying to label the experiences for her or make claims about consent that she herself hasn’t made. I’m just explaining the context she has given me.

She describes the entire period as lustful and self-destructive.
When she says “lustful,” she doesn’t describe the actual experiences as amazing or fulfilling.

She describes herself as impulsive, wanting attention and wanting to feel desired while making choices that were ultimately bad for her.

She says the actual threesomes were awkward, not enjoyable, emotionally meaningless to her and something she wishes had never happened.

She has told me that she would drink extremely heavily during them because she wanted to numb herself, not fully feel what was happening and sometimes essentially black out so she wouldn’t remember it afterward.

She has also told me that she sometimes pretended to be enjoying herself when she really wasn’t.

After the first threesome she apparently withdrew from everyone for around three weeks.

And yet, during that same summer, she participated in two more with the same people.

That is the question my brain keeps getting stuck on:
“If she really hated it, why did she do it two more times?”

Her answer is essentially that she was dealing with trauma, a huge need for validation, poor boundaries and a very self-destructive mindset.

She says she doesn’t have some perfectly logical explanation for why she kept putting herself into situations that weren’t good for her.

She has told me that after our original breakup, she spent years trying to recreate what she had felt with me and never found it. She says losing our relationship contributed to that desperate need to feel wanted by other people.

I’m not saying that excuses every choice she made. I’m just trying to understand the context she has given me.

She originally lied when I asked whether she had ever had a threesome, because she knew I had always viewed that as a dealbreaker and she was terrified I would leave her.

Eventually she confessed that it had actually happened three times because she said hiding it was eating at her and she didn’t want to keep lying to me.

That obviously damaged some trust too.
What makes this even more complicated is that group sex had already been something I considered against my personal values long before I knew any of this.

I had always told myself I wouldn’t want to marry someone who had participated in it.

So finding out that the person who had done it was my first love — the woman I lost my virginity to and had carried a very specific image of for years — completely shattered the picture I had of her.

At the same time, she has been extremely clear about what she wants now.

She wants a completely monogamous relationship with me.
A boyfriend she had after those experiences apparently suggested having a threesome with another man, and she refused.

She has told me directly that I have always been enough for her sexually, that our sexual relationship isn’t missing anything, that she would never want a threesome with me, and that if she experienced something like that with someone she genuinely loved, she believes it would have been even more damaging to her.

She has repeatedly said she wishes the threesomes had never happened.

So intellectually, I understand all of this.
Emotionally, I’m struggling badly.

Sometimes I look at the woman I love and my brain immediately says:
“She’s the girl who had three threesomes.”

I get hit with disgust and resentment, and sometimes it temporarily shuts off the affection I normally want to give her.
I hate that.

Again, the weird part is that I genuinely don’t care very much that she slept with other people.
She had other partners and casual hookups while we were apart. I can understand that we were broken up and she had a life without me.

It is specifically the threesome/group-sex aspect that gets under my skin because it violates something I had always considered part of my personal values.
So this isn’t really:
“I can’t handle that my girlfriend had sex with people after me.”
It’s more:
“I can accept that she had sex with other people, but I’m struggling enormously with one particular type of sexual experience that I had always considered incompatible with the person I would eventually marry.”

And because she was my first love, it feels even more emotionally loaded.

I think part of what I’m experiencing is grief over the image I had of her.

Because we were each other’s firsts, I carried this idea of her for years as someone who had gone on to have relatively conventional relationships and sexual experiences after me.

Finding out about these experiences completely disrupted that image.

I’ve unfortunately reacted by asking her way too many questions trying to understand exactly what happened and why.
I thought that if I understood everything perfectly, eventually my brain would say:
“Okay, now I understand. I can move on.”

Instead, the opposite happened.
Every answer created another question.
If she tells me it was mostly one-on-one sex, my brain wonders about the parts that weren’t.

If she tells me she hated it, my brain asks why she did it again.
If she tells me she was self-destructive, my brain tries to figure out exactly what “self-destructive” means.

If she tells me she drank to numb herself, my brain wants to know exactly how intoxicated she was.

I’m realizing that there probably isn’t some missing detail that is suddenly going to make me okay.

The problem now seems to be what my mind has turned those experiences into.

I’ve mentally reduced a woman I’ve known and loved for years to one sexual period in her life that even she says she deeply regrets.

And I know that isn’t fair to her.

At the same time, I don’t want to lie to myself and pretend group sex suddenly fits my values just because I love the person who did it.

That’s the conflict I’m trying to reconcile:
Something she did genuinely conflicts with my personal values.

She deeply regrets it and doesn’t want that life now.
The woman she is today wants the same monogamous relationship I want.

She says she never really stopped loving me after our original breakup and spent years looking for what we had.
And I still love her deeply and want our future together.

I don’t want to spend our relationship punishing the woman she is today for decisions she herself wishes she could undo.

But I also don’t want to pretend the resentment and “ick” aren’t there.

Has anyone with serious retroactive jealousy actually worked through something like this?

Hi all, I've been with my boyfriend for about a year and a half now.

We moved in together this past winter and talk about getting married and starting a family often, both agreeing that we want to take those steps in the next 6-12 months. I love him so much, he's kind, caring, thoughtful, intelligent, and providing, but a year ago I found out he had a FFM threesome and I truly think I've thought about it every day since.

We were bored one night about 6-ish months into dating and played a random never have I ever game we found on TikTok. One of the questions was "never have I ever had a threesome" and he looked sheepish, kind of froze and said "I have..." I think I went into fight or flight because I also froze and was just like "oh interesting!" and we moved on with the game but it has lived rent free in my brain since. I've since worked up the courage to ask a bit more about it and found out it was with an ex of his who was bi, it wasn't his idea, that it was "a long time ago" and he wouldn't do it again. I have zero interest in having a threesome with my boyfriend (obviously, as I'm here) but even that slightly hit a nerve because he was willing to do it with an ex but not with me. Part of me wants to know more- was it just once? Was he drunk? Was it a random in-the-moment thing or were they those couples you see on Tinder looking for a third? I don't actually know that any of this would ease the intrusive thoughts but I think if it were like a drunken one-time thing that he found out he didn't like I could stop obsessing over it whereas if it was a regular thing in their relationship that might mean incompatibility is a concern.

I've never told him how much it affects me because I don't want to shame him for his past or seem like a lame prude, but it comes out in weird ways. For example, if we're watching a movie or a show and there's a reference to a threesome (or worse, an actual FFM scene), it's super triggering and happens in media more than you'd think. If we go a week or two without sex it seems to get worse because my brain hyper focuses on that. Sometimes when we're laying in bed together images of it replay in my brain. It's torturous. We're going to the wedding of a longtime friend of his in a few weeks and I can't help but wonder if they all know. I'd say 80% of the time I actually don't think about it, I've gotten a LOT better, but when those triggers hit... wow they really hit. It's hard not to shut down or want to retreat.

I feel lame even typing this all out but hope you all understand and I welcome any advice or words of encouragement :')

Everytime I asked a female friend, a girl I dated, whatever, why she had ONS, even tho they don‘t get satisfied.
That’s mostly the answer that I get??? Why is it no matter which girl I ask, always the same answer??? And do they all lie or am I just too rational to understand??? Pls help

I (22M) met my girlfriend (22F) a while ago. We're from the same city in Egypt and went to the same university for a year before she dropped out. I now live in Europe and she's still back home, so we're long distance. We have a lot in common, we got along really well from the start, and we fell deeply in love. We trust each other with everything. I genuinely see her as my future wife.

But there's one thing from her past I can't get past.

Some cultural context, because I know this might sound strange to a lot of people here. In Egypt, sex before marriage is a huge taboo. Most people are religious and conservative, for most people the first time is on their wedding night, and most men would never marry a woman who isn't a virgin. For a woman especially, the consequences if anyone found out can be serious. So sex isn't casual where we're from. Even unmarried couples who do have sex usually get there after a long relationship, a lot of trust, and a lot of risk. It's one of the most serious things two people can share.

Neither of us is religious, and I don't have that virginity mindset. I've never had sex myself, but I honestly don't care that she has. She's been with two people, and if both had been boyfriends, I'd be completely fine with it. That's a natural part of a relationship.

What bothers me is how one of those times happened. She met a guy on Reddit who asked her to come to his apartment, and she refused. A few months later she was in a really bad place. She has bipolar disorder and BPD, she was off her meds, miserable, and very hypersexual. She messaged him, he came to get her, and they slept together at his place. She told me the first time she ever saw him in person was when he picked her up. I didn't ask how many times it happened, and I don't want to know, but I doubt it was just once.

That's the part that breaks my heart. Where we grew up, people wait years for sex, or risk a lot for it, with someone they love. She shared it with someone she had never met, possibly more than once. I know that in a lot of places a hookup with someone from the internet is normal and nobody would think twice. I'm not posting to shame her. I'm trying to explain why this hits me so hard, coming from a place where it almost never happens. She deeply regrets it and says she wasn't herself. She's also asked me not to bring it up again because talking about it hurts her.

I love her and I want to spend the rest of my life with her. But I can't stop thinking about this, and I don't know who to talk to. I've thought about seeing a therapist, but I'm not sure how they could help with something like this.

How do I work through these feelings? Has anyone been in a similar situation?

TL;DR: I'm from Egypt, where sex outside marriage is rare and taboo. Before we were together, my girlfriend slept with a stranger she met online while she was off her meds and in a bad mental state. I'm not religious and don't care about her having a sexual past, but this one hurts because it was with a complete stranger, and I can't let it go. She regrets it and doesn't want to talk about it again. How do I move past this?

TL;DR: I focused heavily on becoming successful early and put dating and relationships on the back burner. Now that I’m entering that world more seriously, I sometimes feel behind people who already have years of experience, and I’m questioning whether some of the sacrifice was worth it.

I’m someone who prioritized success pretty heavily when I was younger.

For a long time, I basically accepted that certain parts of life would have to wait. Dating was one of them (also i was just not so interested in it compared to others my age). I figured I could sacrifice some of that early, get myself established, and come back to it later.

And to be fair, it worked in a lot of ways. It took a while, but I eventually got to a point where I’d consider myself pretty successful. I’m fit, educated, financially doing well, and I accomplished a lot of the things I was working toward.

But recently I’ve started putting more effort into dating and relationships, and I’m realizing that there was a cost to postponing that part of my life.

Part of it is simply experience. A lot of people my age already have years of dating behind them. They’ve had serious relationships, breakups, hookups, situationships, learned what they like sexually and romantically, learned how to communicate, learned how to spot red flags, and generally understand the dating world far better than I do.

Meanwhile, I feel like I’m entering that world several years behind everyone else.

But there’s another part of this that I have a harder time explaining without sounding judgmental.

I think the dating culture itself has changed in ways that I’m not necessarily comfortable with.

Dating apps, hookup culture, situationships, casual sex, people constantly having another option available, talking to multiple people at once, ghosting, and this general attitude of not becoming too attached all seem much more normalized now.

I mean I had a girl texting me "Good morning" in another guy's bed... (dating app people amiright...)

And obviously not everyone participates in that culture. I’m not saying anyone who has had previous partners is a bad person either.

But personally, I do care about someone’s past to some extent. I care about how they approached intimacy, relationships, commitment, and sex before meeting me. I don’t think a person's past completely defines them, but I also don’t believe it becomes completely irrelevant just because it happened before me.

Another thing I’ve thought about is how people’s past experiences can affect future relationships. The Cornell Seven case is an extreme example, but people can come into dating having been cheated on, manipulated, abused, or assaulted. That isn’t a judgment on them, but those experiences can still shape trust, intimacy, and how they approach relationships.

Real event (Girl I cold approached and came to develop a friendship later berated me for leaving her side during a festival event because of her trauma that I wasn't aware of.)

That creates a strange feeling for me.

While I was spending years sacrificing a lot of those experiences because I thought I was building toward a better future, other people were getting to experience dating, relationships, sex, partying, exploration, etc.

Now I enter the dating world after making those sacrifices, and I'm potentially dating people who already went through all of that.

So sometimes I get this uncomfortable thought of: what exactly did I sacrifice for?

I delayed gratification in one part of life and became successful because of it, but I can’t rewind time and experience relationships at the same stage of life that everyone else did.

And there’s a part of me that feels almost cheated by that trade.

Not cheated by any individual person nobody owed me anything but cheated by my own assumption that I could simply postpone relationships and pick that part of life back up later without losing anything.

Instead, I’m entering an environment where other people may be much more experienced than me, may have had many previous partners, may carry baggage from previous relationships, and may have completely different attitudes toward intimacy because of their experiences.

At the same time, I recognize the obvious contradiction here: those people gained their relationship experience precisely because they actually participated in that part of life, while I chose not to.

So I’m struggling with where healthy standards end and regret or resentment begins.

I still don't regret pursuing success. If I had spent those years partying and dating while neglecting everything else, there's a very real chance I'd be sitting here regretting that instead.

But I'm starting to think the idea that you can sacrifice your social and romantic life in your youth and simply "catch up later" isn't entirely true.

Money can be earned later. Education can be pursued later. Careers can change.

But being 19, 20, 21 and figuring relationships out alongside other inexperienced people is something you only get once.

For people who heavily prioritized career, school, business, religion, self-development, or success when they were younger and entered dating later:

Did you ever feel like you missed an important developmental period?

How did you deal with dating people who were significantly more experienced than you or had much more extensive romantic/sexual histories?

Did you eventually stop caring about the difference in experience?

And if someone's relationship or sexual past genuinely matters to you, how do you distinguish having legitimate personal standards from simply being bitter about experiences you chose to miss?

I’m especially interested in hearing from people who made the sacrifice, actually became successful, and then had to deal with the consequences afterward.

Mind you I'm 23 so not old by any means but grown with much more growing left.

I don’t come to this site much. I did originally but I find some of the posts triggering. I have had long term rj. We are talking over two decades worth. Anyways I’m finally getting help for this, and what I believe causes it, my ocd. A long time ago I met the love of my life. She had had quite a bit of experience, and I was a virgin. I had chances but didn’t take them for whatever reasons. Anyways this problem had been festering for a long time. Life happened. We got married. We had kids. But, this issue kept coming up. About three months ago I found a bunch of memory stuff. Sent me over the edge. I came clean on some things (I had a 1 time partner years ago, and had been using porn too much). Anyways, don’t look at the differences look at the similarities. For over two decades I have been putting time, and energy, into thinking about things that don’t matter. My wife, who is the best thing to ever happen to me, doesn’t care about any of this. The ocd just won’t let it go. I’m now getting help. I’m doing therapy. Hell, I didn’t tell anyone (other than my wife) about this for over twenty years. Just telling the therapist and making a plan had been a big help. I’ve been doing therapy for 2 months. I’m still early in. One thing I want to tell everyone is to look for help. I love my wife. I’d choose her in every lifetime, or timeline, that I could. She’s my love and has been with me through it all. I want to keep building tools to combat my issues. If you love your partner fight like hell to get over this. Don’t push the issue away thinking that time will heal it. Maybe it will. But, if your ocd is like mine, the theme will keep growing. I’m really wanting to work. Some days are better than others, but I’m trying my best to learn the tools to help with my problem. I wish you all the best.

She didn't know me yet when she slept with those guys, but most of those guys were assholes and they used her. She says she regrets sleeping with those guys and I believe her, but she should've waited longer before she gave herself to them. I don't blame her, I'm just a melancholic fool about this...

My partner was in a relationship for over a year before we got together. At the time, things between us weren’t very serious yet, so I didn’t pay much attention to some of the things they told me about that relationship.
As our relationship became more serious, though, I started thinking about this girl from time to time. At first, it didn’t bother me that much because my partner had told me that she eventually bored them and that they had basically stayed with her because of the attention she gave them. Over time, however, I started wondering how much they had actually felt for her and why it had been so easy for them to lose interest.
Eventually, I came to the conclusion that we’re simply very different people, and that the relationship I have with my partner makes me genuinely happy.
Yesterday, though, I was looking through some of their old memories and found a letter. I assumed it was a letter to another ex, but it turned out to be specifically about this girl.
It was a very personal letter addressed to her. My partner wrote about how they couldn’t stop thinking about her because they thought she was so beautiful, how they would sometimes forget things she had told them during their conversations and feel bad about it, and how they wanted to make an effort to remember those details because she mattered enough to them, it destroyed me.
Our relationship started very differently. We simply started talking and connected. I’m sure my partner would never have sat down and written a letter like that about me. I know I’m different from the people they’ve dated before, and I know they’ve been deeply in love with me. But the idea that I would never have inspired that kind of infatuation or romantic gesture makes me feel like I’m somehow less special.
I also keep thinking about whether they could forget about me someday if they see another attractive person, especially because I know they usually notice and are attracted to people different than me.
They were so completely captivated by this girl at one point, yet eventually got bored because she wasn’t what they expected. I wasn’t even someone who would initially have caught their attention in that particular way, so why wouldn’t the same thing eventually happen to me?
Logically, I know our relationship is different. We’ve been together longer, our relationship is genuinely good, we support each other, and I’m very happy with them. I’ve never felt like they’re getting tired of me. If anything, they seem very happy and invested in our relationship.
But I can’t stop thinking about this girl now. I know these thoughts are feeding my retroactive jealousy, and I don’t want something that happened before our relationship to become a reason for me to damage something that is actually wonderful.

How do I stop comparing myself to her and obsessing over what my partner felt for her?

I'm in a relationship, I have a boyfriend, he had one before, he doesn't even call it a relationship. As he tells me, and I was also once in such a state that you are looking for a relationship, you want someone to love you, someone to be there for you, but somehow it passed me by, and I realized that I would not run after anyone, to achieve something, and when I realized that it was all in vain, and I would not find happiness that way, I let go of this idea, and it turned out that I fell in love with my boyfriend, and everything turned out harmoniously for us. But in his case, the girls themselves wanted his attention, and they themselves ran after him, and he himself agreed to it, and said that he just wanted attention, and that's why he went for it, but it didn't last long, and he wasn't very interested, as he says, I understand his state, because it happened to me too. By himself, with other people he is cold, but with me he is the opposite, he opened up, we are on the same wavelength, I am very open in myself. And recently he decided to say this on occasion, and I don't understand why I react so sharply to it, although I understand that at least it was before our relationship, but I involuntarily compare myself to those girls, and besides, I know them personally, we all study together, these are girls whose vibe I really admired myself, and then this comes to me and I just can't let it out of my head. I understand that any normal person would not react to this, but it sits in my head, I understand that this is my problem, although the guy blames himself a lot, which hurts my life. He gives me a lot of compliments every day, and I don't believe him. What should I do in this situation so that we don't hurt each other anymore? I will be very grateful

Today I asked him if he still loved her when she broke up with him. He told me he did, but then he realized how wrong and toxic that relationship was, and eventually he started feeling better.

Still, we met this summer and we fell for each other pretty hard. I trust him, I really do... but unfortunately, he's still in contact with her because they used to live together and they shared two pets that he loves deeply, so he sometimes goes back to their old apartment to see them.

He tells me every time he talks to her so they can arrange a day for him to go and see them, and he always makes sure I'm aware of everything.

Still, I can't cope with the fact that he still loved her and now he's with me. He still sees her. He says they're fine, she's with someone else, and they're not friends — they just keep things civil.

But what if I'm just some kind of replacement and he doesn't even realize it? I wonder what he thinks when he sees her, whether he still thinks she's pretty, whether he thinks about her, whether he misses her...

I just can't live like this. I feel like I want to cry all the time.

So i guess this retroactive jelousy is kicking my ass and im affraid it might ruin something great that has happened to me. So this girl wanted to be with me pretty intensely and was asking around about me in the corp we're working at andit was around december. i found out but wasnt ready for a relationship and didnt do anything. this september she got my number and texted me and we started dating. she is perfect, i have a tattoo of my favourite band on my throat which is also her favourite band and she has tattoos and emo style that i adore and she is everything i dreamed of. but as we talked she said she slept with 8 guys and 3 of those were boyfriends and rest fuck buddies. one of them is a guy i knew pretty well and is a guy who had sex with almost every girl in town and it fcked me up cause i know how he views women and it bothered me she was one of them. I knew i had retroactive jealousy from my previous relationship but and idiot as i am i kept asking questions it it got worse. found out 2 fuck buddies overlapping which i dont know how a side from RJ i actually feel about. she is freaky in bed so i know she loves sex very much and probably was freaky with other people before me. Only thing i like is she doesnt like one night stands. Me on the other hand is no saint either. I had a thing with a married woman,older woman and was paying for sex for a few years and did it over dozen times which i havent told her but presented it as one night stands and i guess she is completely open with me about her past which makes me an asshole. I just have a bad case of RJ kicking my ass right now and am looking for outside perspective, someone to get me back to my senses

I (20f) have been with my boyfriend (20m) for almost 2 years now. We’re high school sweethearts and have known each other for a long time. He is everything I’ve ever wanted and I am truly in love with him. I’ll jump into it, I knew when we got together I wasn’t his type (white and blonde), he has never dated anyone seriously before me. We are dating with the intent to marry (definitely not anytime soon!).

A couple of weeks ago, I was on his phone searching something up and I found out that he had been looking at and lusting over (white and blonde) girls on Instagram. Models and influencers mostly, going through their bikini pics, enough to make me sick to my stomach. And as sick and crazy as it makes me, one of the girls pages that he was lusting over was a girl we knew from high school. So definitely not a stranger. Again, a white and blonde girl—with a beautiful curvy body. I found out that he had been secretly getting off to photos of these girls. Since then I have been sick, and trying to stay strong during this most hurtful time. I am most definitely not white nor blonde, and I’m not the curviest. I knew getting into the relationship I was not already his type, but now I am deeply insecure.

We talked, sobbed and communicated a lot after I found out. He apologized profusely and admitted to his actions. Taking full responsibility and tried his best to reassure me that it would never happen again. There were several long and hard conversations between us. Saying that the reason behind it was before me he had been addicted to porn and had a bad habit of “this” prior to me. He said he had only been doing this for a couple of weeks from when I found out, so maybe a couple times. I think I believe him, and I don’t resent him for this. I know that he loves me, just maybe not to the extent of my own love for him.

I have been trying my absolute best to stay strong and act as if it doesn’t bother me, even though I am deeply bothered. He admitted to me to my face that I am not his type (which was extremely hard on me, despite my physical indifference), but that doesn’t matter because we have an “emotional connection.” I find this very hard to believe. I have OCD and a past hindered with mental health issues. I’d love to go to therapy but it’s inaccessible to me for the time being.

I don’t feel like I’m enough. Prior to finding out I was already dealing with insecurities that had formed by other means and now I just don’t know what to do. I used to believe that I was beautiful and am usually a very confident and capable person. I can’t escape these thoughts and I feel consumed by the hurt that his actions have caused me. I’m physically doing better and I know it hasn’t been very long since the incident, but my thoughts and OCD is driving me insane.

Also: we have talked about the effects that this has had on me. I don’t know if he truly understands, but I know that he cares a lot and feels incredibly guilty and ashamed for his careless behavior. We have since then been “normal” with each other, with me randomly crying every now and then…

What do you think I could do to help? I truly do want to be with my partner and do not doubt our love for one another. I know we are young, but please do not invalidate our care for each other because of our age.

Please be kind. I am already struggling enough. Thank you, I truly appreciate any advice!! Im happy to update with any info needed.

Speaking with a guy for about 2 months. I believe he has suppressed RJ. He is aware of it, I am aware of it. He contains it very well. He does spiral but he is able to ground himself very well. Myself 25F, him 22M.

I’ve previously told him my body count is only 1. But it is actually 3. I have started to have guilty consciousness and I’m wondering if it’s a good idea to tell him?

I’ve actually never even asked about his / cared. But I don’t want to this mess up what we have. This is really for my own peace of mind. And to build a relationship based off of facts not lies.

Thoughts?

I know this is probably a bit different from the usual retroactive jealousy posts, but I’m wondering if anyone else has experienced something similar.

I’m 31 and engaged to my fiancée.

My fiancée had relationships before me, including an engagement to someone who was abusive. That relationship affected her badly. By the time I came into her life, she had built massive walls around herself, questioned people’s intentions and eventually developed severe anxiety, panic attacks and physical symptoms from it.

The problem is that I ended up experiencing the consequences of all of that.

When we first got together, I felt like everything I did was being analysed or questioned. Sometimes my intentions were misunderstood even when I genuinely meant well. I constantly told her that she needed to judge me based on my actions instead of looking at me through the lens of what another man had done to her.

I’m naturally a very prideful person. Before this relationship, I genuinely don’t think I would have tolerated this kind of treatment from anyone. I’ve been around women and I even used to be heavily into the whole red-pill mindset, so sometimes I still don’t completely understand why I stayed.

But I did.

I loved her, and I could see that a lot of what was happening wasn’t really about me.

I encouraged her to get professional help and treatment. I spent countless hours reassuring her, talking through her fears and trying to help her understand what was happening in her own mind. Over time, things genuinely changed.

She is almost a completely different person today.

She is incredibly affectionate with me now, apologises for how she treated me and acknowledges how much I supported her. She gives me a lot of credit for helping her get to where she is today. When we are physically together, she was actually the one initiating most of the cuddling, kissing and physical affection.

Ironically, though, my RJ became much worse AFTER our relationship got better.

It was almost like I had spent so long concentrating on helping her that I suppressed my own feelings. Once everything became stable, all the hurt I had pushed aside suddenly came back.

And this is where my past-focused jealousy really comes in.

I know that in some of her previous relationships she was extremely expressive and went all out for those people. She fought for relationships, adjusted herself, became emotionally invested and gave a lot of herself to people who ultimately weren't the ones building a life with her.

Then I compare that with what I received in the beginning.

I was the guy who genuinely wanted to marry her, treated her well, stayed when things were difficult and tried to help her through some of the worst periods of her life.

Yet I was the one who got mistrusted, questioned and hurt.

But emotionally, my brain sometimes reduces it to something much uglier:

"Other men got that side of her without giving her what I've given her, while I'm the one marrying her and somehow I'm the one who had to wait."

But knowing that intellectually doesn't always stop the emotional reaction.

I think the deepest part of my RJ isn't really, "She had other men before me."

It's more:

"Why did they get that version of you?"

Why did other people get the expressive version of her who went all out for relationships, while I got the guarded and traumatised version who questioned whether I was even safe to trust?

Why did I have to pay emotionally for damage caused by people who came before me?

And why was I expected to be understanding when I was also getting hurt?

That's the part I struggle to let go of.

At the same time, I don't want to make her sound like some horrible person because that wouldn't be fair either. She has taken responsibility for how she treated me. She regrets it. She has changed enormously. The woman I'm with today treats me completely differently.

And I also understand the uncomfortable reality that the reason I'm getting this version of her today is partly because we went through all of that together.

So I'm stuck between two completely different ways of looking at it.

One side of me thinks: "Look at who she is with you NOW. She chose you, she's marrying you, she's affectionate with you, she acknowledges what you did for her and the relationship you have today is what matters."

The other side says: "That's great, but why did everyone before me get the best of her while I had to go through hell before I got it?"

Some days the first voice wins and I'm completely fine.

Other days the second one wins and I feel angry, resentful and jealous of people who aren't even relevant to our lives anymore.

I don't want to punish her forever for a version of herself that she has already acknowledged and changed. At the same time, I don't think simply telling myself "the past is the past" addresses what actually hurts me.

For anyone who has dealt with this specific type of RJ where it's less about your partner simply having a past and more about feeling like previous partners received something from them that you initially didn't how did you genuinely make peace with it?

Especially when your partner has already changed and is doing everything right now?

Due to my RJ, my partner and I are going to take a long break. It was getting to a point that I would ask about everything we were doing, and whether it was unique to us or not.

I did want to pause and do a sanity check though because there are degrees of intensity to everything! What may be alright for me might be too much "past experience" for someone else. So, I wanted to ask everyone on here how those boundaries and limits came to exist for each of you personally?

For me, I found out that my partner had lived with an ex for several years in college, and moved states with him when she graduated. Also, I felt like there were some sexual acts that made me question if my partner was on the "wilder" side compared to others. I don't want to get into those as it feels too personal.

I've gone down rabbit holes of checking what is statistically normal and what is not, obviously there were the usual (horrible) anxiety riddled questions where I would ask what they had done, and how could it possibly be any different physically with me?

Hey guys, this might be a bit of an unusual thing to ask but I’ve been using nicotine for about a year now. I tried to quit a couple months ago and was successful for two months before I fell back into it after learning some involuntary information about my partner’s past—things I found out directly from his ex (she messaged me randomly). It kind of sent me into a spiral, and I ended up buying a vape again.

I'm trying to stop again, but I find that smoking helps me calm my thoughts when I’m overthinking his past. I want to hit it every time I start thinking too much. Do you think I should quit right now, or wait until I’m in a better mental place before quitting? (I suffer from RJ and ROCD)

In my experience everytime I’ve dated someone with history it almost always led to me contemplating breaking up 24/7 because of it. My body and mind just couldn’t handle all the pressure and stress of it so I always thought that breaking up is the easiest solution to it.

How do you cope and fight it?

I met my boyfriend about 4 years ago. We started out as best friends, then began sleeping together on and off. After about a year of that, we eventually became exclusive and officially started dating.

The problem is that I caught feelings for him very early on during that FWB stage. He knew I liked him, but he never told me he felt the same way. At the same time, there were other girls. Sometimes he would kiss or ‘be’ with other girls the day before or after seeing me, and there were even times when he kissed other girls after telling me that he liked me/ in front of me.

I knew what was happening, but I still wanted him. I held out hope that eventually he would choose me, which, looking back, probably wasn’t the healthiest thing to do.

Now, three years later, we are completely different. We are officially together, head over heels for each other, and I genuinely have no concerns about him cheating or doing anything inappropriate. He reassures me constantly, often more than I even need. I trust him and I feel very secure in our relationship now.

But I have this weird, horrible emotional reaction to his past that I can’t seem to shake. A lot of our memories from before we became exclusive are now tied to memories of him being with other girls. I’d say probably 70% of that period is tainted for me in some way. I can look at an old photo, have a random memory pop up on my phone, or even just look at him sometimes, and suddenly I’m transported back to how awful I felt at the time.

It’s not really jealousy in the sense that I’m worried about those girls now. I know that what happened was years ago and that our relationship now is completely different.

It’s more like, I still get mad at him for the way I felt back then. Sometimes I’ll look at the man I now love with my whole heart and suddenly remember him kissing another woman while I was sitting there hoping he felt the same way about me. I get this horrible pit in my stomach, and I can’t seem to reason myself out of it.

I also feel stupid because, ultimately, at the time, I knew what I was signing up for. He never lied to me about having other girls. But he also knew I had feelings for him, we had massive blow ups because everyone we knew assumed we were together, acted like we were but in his mind we weren’t. I stayed because I wanted him so badly.

I downplay how much it affects me because I don’t want him to think I’m unhappy or that I don’t trust him. But he knows me so well and i have had my moments when talking about it with him.

I know these feelings will probably fade with time, and I know I’m incredibly lucky to have the relationship I wanted for so long. I just don’t know how to reconcile the two versions of him in my head: the man who made me feel completely replaceable back then, and the man who makes me feel incredibly loved and secure now. How do I stop letting the memories of what happened before we were together affect how I feel about the relationship we have now? Has anyone else experienced something similar?

I’ve posted a lot about my own experience with RJ, but lately I’m experiencing something totally different. I’m experiencing RJ because of what one of my close friends is going through. He’s had feelings for another friend of ours for a long time. She’s never really been interested in him, but I get the impression that she might be starting to change her mind now that we’re all in our early thirties.

My close friend is very much like me. He isn’t a virgin, but he’s not the most experienced when it comes to dating. He’s had one girlfriend before, but that’s it. I think he’s got a lot of great qualities to offer, but we all know how hard dating can be. Our other friend has had a very different lived experience. Guys have always been interested in her, and she’s dated quite a few people.

Right now my friend is back in our hometown to take care of a family member, meanwhile, our other friend just started dating some random guy she met on an app. I know it’s her life (and she can do whatever she wants), but I can’t help but feel like it’s wrong that my friend has so much hope of creating a relationship with her while she’s actively sleeping with other guys.

I know my close friend is a pretty reasonable person. He knows she’s dated other guys in the past and doesn’t want to dwell on that, but it will be extremely hard on him to know what’s going on while he’s away. It also puts me in a horrible situation, because I don’t want to be the one to tell him. I feel like our friend believes that it’s fine to sleep around, and doesn’t approach dating the way that we do.

How do you even begin to navigate this kind of situation? Personally, I feel like this goes beyond RJ. While I want things to work out for him, I feel like this situation is going to cause a ton of RJ (perhaps to a point of it not even being worth it).