AVOID This Retroactive Jealousy Blunder [VIDEO]

Podcast: Play in new window

Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | RSS

In today’s video, I discuss how to avoid a common retroactive jealousy blunder.

Read or watch below to learn more about how to avoid this common retroactive jealousy blunder .

Zachary Stockill: If you’re struggling with retroactive jealousy, it’s likely you’re making some important mistakes.

In today’s free video, I’ll share four tips to help you avoid one of the biggest pitfalls of retroactive jealousy.

I’m Zachary Stockill, and since 2013, I’ve helped thousands of people around the world overcome retroactive jealousy and save their relationships.

If you’re interested in working with me or want more information about what I do, please visit this link.

For those who are new here, retroactive jealousy refers to unwanted, intrusive thoughts, often involving obsessive curiosity and what I call ‘mental movies’ about your partner’s past relationships or sexual history.

One of the most common mistakes many people with retroactive jealousy make is asking countless questions about their partner’s past.

This often includes seeking reassurance and wanting to confirm that they’re the best person their partner has ever been with.

It can also involve asking for very detailed, sometimes even sexual, information about their partner’s past or specific people they were involved with.

This goes far beyond the typical ‘getting to know you’ questions couples usually ask when they first meet, like ‘What was your ex like? What kind of relationships have you been in..?”

This often involves digging into the finer details of their partner’s past relationships or sexual history.

You wouldn’t be wanting to ask more questions, dig for more details, or risk causing more fights and awkward situations.

“So, ask yourself if you’ve done this before and whether it actually worked.

Maybe it worked in the short term—perhaps it made you feel better for an hour, a day, or maybe you had a good week after having a big conversation with your partner about their past.

The point is that it doesn’t lead to lasting freedom, and that’s my focus—achieving long-term peace of mind. I’m not concerned with quick fixes or temporary dopamine boosts.

What truly matters is lasting relief from retroactive jealousy, and asking your partner endless questions about their past won’t bring you that long-term peace.

My third tip in this video is to remember that by doing this repeatedly, you’re reinforcing a habit that needs to change.

Habits are formed gradually, bit by bit, over time.

The more you repeat a behavior and receive some kind of reward for it, the more ingrained that habit becomes.

What is the ‘reward’ when you ask your partner questions about their past? It’s similar to having an itch on your skin.

If you struggle with retroactive jealousy, you’ll know what I mean—it feels like you have this urge, and you want badly to scratch it by asking those questions.

So, you scratch the itch, and for a moment, it feels good.

Let’s say you ask your partner about their ex, and you find out he wasn’t a great guy—maybe a bit of a loser. That gives you a small ego boost and a little dopamine hit.

Wow, that feels good, right? You’re rewarding yourself for behavior that needs to change because you got that little ego boost, that small dopamine hit.

That’s the reward you often get when you ask your partner about their past, or when they give you the answers you want to hear.

That’s a reward. By repeating this behavior over and over, you’re conditioning yourself to keep doing it.

It’s like training a dog to do tricks—how do you do it? You give them a reward every time they perform the trick.

When a dog learns to sit, you give them a treat, and it tastes good. Then, they get a little dopamine boost, a small reward.

They’ll keep doing it again and again because they’re being conditioned by that reward. It might seem odd to compare yourself to a dog, but in some ways, humans aren’t so different.

We make decisions based on incentives.

So, the more you seek that reward or reassurance from your partner, the more you’re reinforcing a behavior needs to change.

My final tip is to stop asking endless questions about their past and instead focus on what actually works.

You might ask, ‘Zach, what actually works when it comes to beating retroactive jealousy?’ Well, I’ve made hundreds of free videos on this topic.

You can find them on my YouTube channel and, of course, on my website, retroactivejealousy.com, where I also offer various products and services.

I’ve shared a lot of information on this topic, and there are many things that actually work for overcoming retroactive jealousy.

These include practices like mindfulness, exercises from cognitive behavioral therapy, and sometimes different types of exposure therapy.

Sometimes it helps to meet with a skilled therapist or coach to talk through the issue. We can also learn a lot from the literature on OCD when tackling retroactive jealousy.

The point is that there are many better solutions for overcoming this problem rather than repeatedly bringing it to your partner.

When you ask your partner endless questions about their past, you’re essentially saying, ‘I have these insecurities and this problem with retroactive jealousy, and I need you to fix it for me.’

It’s like you’re passing them the responsibility, like a hot potato—’ solve this for me.’

But that’s not how it works. I’ve lost count of the number of well-meaning partners of retroactive jealousy sufferers who have reached out to me, offering to pay whatever it takes for coaching.

They ask me to help fix the problem for their partner, but I always turn them down because that’s not how this issue can be solved.

Your partner can’t fix this for you.

The good news is, the problem will start improving once you take full ownership of it.

When you begin focusing on what actually works, instead of asking your partner for endless details about their past, you’ll start making real progress.

If you’d like more information about my work, or you’d like to work with me one on one, please visit this page.

And, be sure you’re subscribed to my YouTube channel as well to be notified of new videos.