r/retroactivejealousy

Hi all,

42M here, second marriage to a 34F! It was love at first sight and we got married very quickly, within a year of being together.

Based on her appearance, I knew she had probably been with many men prior to me. Over the first few months of being together, I was contacted by several of her ex's, sending photos of her and things I should have never seen. I've also seen these same things on her iPhone and iPad. Her parents suggested she had a "wild past" but is really good now.

During all of this, I still chose her while letting her know what I've seen. It was often dismissed, downplayed, or avoided. I've even had to ask her to remove photos and videos from her devices of her past relationships or hookups. She never felt like it was that big of a deal to her and always suggested, "my past is my past and I don't care about yours".

Fast forward 7 months later, I used her phone last night and saw photos that were still not deleted. I feel pretty sick about it. I know a lot of people on here will suggest that I get over it. I would absolutely love to but I feel like I can't unsee some of these photos and videos. With that said, she still has some stuff on her phone that if it was the other way around, she'd be unhappy.

I've scheduled therapy with an LMFT this week. I can't stop ruminating and hyper focusing on it. Being honest, it makes me feel sick thinking about it. I appreciate any suggestions or anyone that has dealt with retroactive jealousy that may still be impacting their relationship.

Thanks all!

I’ve o my ever been sexual with one person before my gf.

She’s made a lot of comments throughout our relationship and recently something happened that’s made me spiral and can’t stop thinking about them.

Our first time having sex I was worried because she had made comments about size preference and I was worried I wouldn’t be up to her standard. she said “you are fine, I’ve had a guy that was way bigger so I prefer this” made me feel odd lol

Said she had loved doing all these sexual things a positions and actions with her past partners but never wants to do them to me(head, touch me, send pics, etc)

She’s started to say that sex disgusts her but she literally has like 7+ bodies and when we were first talking she talked about how much she loved it(relating to her past partners)

I checked her phone recently cause I got nervous (I know, mistake) and found texts with a guy a week before we started dating (we were already talking) and it was her asking to ride him and suck him through his boxers and sending him oiled up t*t pics and whatnot, yet she hates sending me stuff or me sending her stuff, I sent her pics before and she laughed cause I looked funny and didn’t know how to “pose properly”, she never wants to be touchy with me, and I realized the other day, that whenever we do get intimate, she wants me to pleasure her first but then she just says “I’m tired and wanna stop” before doing anything to me. And I don’t wanna force her to do anything but whenever I say I wanna start with her doing stuff to me so i get some pleasure, she coms up with excuses “I don’t have protection” well I do “I’m not really in the mood” ok that’s fine “but can you still finger me(or whatever else)” and usually I’m the one trying to kiss her, or compliment her, or touch her but it’s never reciprocated and I don’t like having to ask cause it feels like she doesn’t want to if I have to ask, and if I don’t, then we stop and then she just goes and watches tv afterwards. So it’s kinda started to feel like I’m just there to get her off. Like in my mind, if we were sexting or being intimate and I was able to O, but she wasn’t, I’d say “did you O?” And she says no, “did you want to?” And if she says no, then cool, and if yes, then cool “do

You want me to pleasure you more?” Like I don’t see what’s hard or bad about that, you should want your partner to feel as good as possible and feel seen and involved, but she just walks away and goes about her stuff, and it’s begun to remind me of her past partners and guys she messaged cause she said “they’re just guys I used to get off from” even then, I’ve never got nudes from you or you telling me how bad you want me or the things you want to do to me, it’s only things you want me to do to you, and whenever I compliment her she just says “I know” never thanks, which I guess go off cause self confidence, but again still hits me the wrong way and it’s never reciprocated.

I M21 have been dating F22 for about 6 months now. Everything in our relationship is pretty good, we’re both about to graduate college and have good degrees lined up. My friends seem to like her and hers as well with me, our family’s are both very supportive and like us together, and is someone that I think fits myself very well. We still have the occasional fight here and there but it normally revolves around one topic and that’s that I either joke about or get upset a little bit of her past.

When I first met her I had assumed she had around 5-7 bodies. We’re both in Greek life at a big SEC school so a few hook ups would be common. However I learned that I was her 12th body. She says that she had 3 in HS (2 bfs one fling) from sophomore year to senior year. And then the rest were in college where she had another boyfriend but claimed most of them were situationships. While I know 12 isn’t anything crazy it bothers me a lot thinking that she was like that before me. I don’t think if you would meet her you would think that but it has really bothered my pride a lot and kinda goes a bit against my morals. While mine isn’t amazing either it’s a few less than hers which also bothers me a bit. I really try not to let it affect me and take a mature position on it not really mattering. But I can’t get it out of my head Espically cause she’s not the most sexual around me (even tho when we do I make her get off but she thinks her meds are messing with her drive.

My question would be am I overthinking this? Should it really bother me or should I just let it go since we have a great thing going on. I don’t wanna lose her but sometimes when I think about it, jt really turns me off. Would love some advice and potentially some reassurance

Hey Reddit, looking for some advice concerning me (31M) and my girlfriend (28F). Overall, we have a genuinely great relationship, but I’m struggling with a certain story from her past that I can’t get over, even with therapy

Background, we both have high body counts. Mine is ~480, and hers is ~50, but I’ve always been private about my past and don’t share those stories. She, on the other hand, is much more open about hers

When we first started dating, she told me about a solo trip she took to Vietnam and Thailand about three years before we met. In Vietnam, she met a very attractive (think jacked, beard, blah blah) Australian guy at a bar, hooked up with him, then canceled her original plans to travel to Thailand with him and his group instead. They spent about a week together camping on beaches, partying, travelling, and sleeping together "on the shore, under the moonlight and stars". She then showed me a photo she took at the bar and she was on his shoulders. That photo is burned into my memory, and she only recently deleted it at my request

Fast forward now, and the issue is that the version of her I got feels very different than the Thailand version of her. By the time we met, she was out of her party phase, on SSRIs/mood stabilizers, lower libido, and emotionally guarded with a ton of walls (has been SA'd numerous times in the past, almost all from drunken ONS, which make up 75%ish of her body count). It took months for her to open up to me. My RJ is stemming from my brain being unable to shake the feeling that she gave this spontaneity, passion, and excitement so easily to a stranger, while things with me have felt more cautious and restrained

A secondary feeling is that I think having ~40 ONS in about 4 years is a red flag. She told me she would just get drunk and let guys fuck her, to feel something (depressed during that time). It makes me sick knowing she let anyone hit, and I am working on fixing my perception of her and accept her past. This has led to me (regretably) calling her a wh*** when I was drunk one night and I saw that photo on her camera roll

I know this is irrational, but the Thailand story really bothers me and gives me the worst RJ I have ever had. How do I stop comparing her now to a version of her from the past, and has anyone dealt with something similar? Thanks in advance!

My wife and I are one of the rare couples on here who lost our virginity to each other. Being a good Christian girl, she had done everything imaginable with other guys that didn't involve penetration. Many people on here obsess about how special that first time is, so I wanted to dive into how that's worked in our relationship.

Was this the best sex we ever had? No, not even close. If you were to ask her, it might be the worst sex she ever had, and that was with me trying to be as gentle as possible and taking a ton of time to prep the battlefield.

Do I reminisce/fantasize about it? Honestly the only time I think about our first time together is when people talk about it on here. Maybe it's because I'm extremely high libido, but I'm much more interested in the next sex we're having than in sex we had decades ago. And if I'm having some solo time, I'm going to choose porn every time over faded memories and thinking about our first time together.

My wife's past happened during a break up we had prior to getting married. A lot of the firsts we shared together she then did with other guys, so this is backwards from how most people experience RJ. You'd think then, based on how most people experience RJ, that I would say well she did this with other guys, but she did it with me first, so our experience was more special. That's not how it's worked.

Lastly, I don't want to gas light anyone. I do remember all our firsts. They are special memories for me. I'm skeptical of people who claim they don't remember them. But again, if I have the choice between thinking about something I did decades ago or doing something fun now, I'm going to choose fun now every time.

Hypothetical situation: she has high body count (5, 10,20, whatever you feel like is high) but most of those bodies are low quality one time things she regrets because she was in manic episode (she's bipolar).

I read something about that which made me wonder, would that be a good excuse? How would my retroactive jealousy behave knowing she did something she wouldn't have done if she wasn't influenced by something she couldn't really control? What do you think, how would you manage your RJ in that situation?

EDIT: There are no chances of her repeating the same behaviour or cheating or anything related to patterns of high body count, she's a 10/10 but with bad past.

Hey, I want to share the story of me and my ex-boyfriend.

We were in a relationship for almost 7 months and knew each other for about 10 months in total. The talking stage started really well I liked him from the beginning. I had talking stages before him but nothing serious. He was also my first boyfriend. He seemed confident and I liked that a lot. We talked about everything and had similar interests. I’m someone who looks for “signs“ and at the time I felt like there were many signs that he was the right person for me.

At the same time I often felt like I wasn’t good enough. He told me that about a month before we started talking he had been in a talking stage with another girl. That made me very jealous because I was already insecure and had doubts.

To be honest I had also been talking to another boy about 6 weeks before him. But it wasn’t serious we never met it was long-distance and I think I liked the attention more than the person. That situation lasted maybe 2–3 months while his lasted around 6 months and they actually met in real life.

I have to admit that I lied to him about that. I told him my last talking stage was 4 months ago. I told him everything else but I made it seem like it was further in the past. I didn’t want him to think I was just replacing someone or not taking him seriously. I wanted to please him. I liked him a lot but I had low self-esteem and wasn’t confident so I lied about things that didn’t even need lying.

In December he confronted me about still having someone from my past on Instagram. We had both said we didn’t like that kind of thing. When he asked who it was I made a big mistake I kept denying it at first even though it was someone I had told him about before. Eight hours later I admitted the truth but then I lied again and said I didn’t know I still had him on Instagram. That wasn’t true. He had actually been a good friend and we had talked shortly before my boyfriend confronted me.

I wanted to be honest about still being on good terms with that person but I was afraid and kept postponing it. When I got confronted I panicked and lied even though I hadn’t actually done anything wrong. I just didn’t want to lose him and wanted him to see me as confident and “perfect.”

For months I kept up that lie. Obviously my ex had doubts and we argued every few weeks. He would get angry but he also wanted to understand me and just wanted the truth. But because I had already lied once it became harder to admit everything later. I was in a really bad mental state.

About a month ago I finally told him everything because I couldn’t carry the guilt anymore. He got very angry and said hurtful things. He was also hurt and wanted to know everything including what happened in Korfu.

A week before we met I had been on vacation in Korfu with my friends. At the beginning of our relationship he said he didn’t care about the past, which made me feel safe. My past wasn’t anything extreme just talking stages and kissing someone once in a club. He knew that.

But I lied about Korfu too. I told him I talked to a guy there and that he wanted to kiss me but I said no. The truth is I said yes and we kissed. I also said I didn’t go to an apartment with two guys but I actually did. At first I told him we just talked there, but in reality I lay in the same bed with one of them and we kissed and touched each other nothing more no sex or anything like that but still more than I admitted.

He told me he couldn’t accept that. I was terrified of losing him because I loved him. I regret those things deeply and I don’t feel like they define me. But the biggest issue wasn’t even what I did it was that I lied, more than once.

In the end he broke up with me because he couldn’t trust me anymore. And honestly that’s fair. I wasn’t being my true self. I lied and acted out of insecurity, just to make him like me more and that’s something I really regret. I was afraid of losing him and so I did big mistakes which lead to really losing him

I 23M have been with my girlfriend 25F for a year and a half. I love her so much and genuinely cannot consider my future without her now. I have always been very jealous of the past guys, but I never really asked much about it before because I figured it’d be better not to know. And I thought I hit the jackpot with a basically untouched angel, but it’s just that she finally decided to take dating seriously when she got with me.

One night I found her talking to guys on Snapchat, and it broke my heart. The girl I thought was innocent, was not. Long story short this opened up a big discussion about her past and I took her back because I love her. She told me she had 7 bodies which I could live with. I have 3 I just sucked it up and said fine, she swears to me she doesn’t hook up with anyone it was all past relationships I just sucked it up.

Then the cracks started to show, I would later find out that she had hooked up with 3 different guys in the past and now her number was 10, she swears over and over again no higher than 10.

With the Snapchat issue in the past, she now allows me access to her Snapchat, I’ve had it for months but randomly got curious last night to download her Snapchat data. Horrendous mistake. I didn’t sleep a single minute last night, scrolling through old chats from years ago. Her being very easy for random guys on Snapchat, even meeting up in person with some of them for sex. Had an account on fetlife that some of the guys mentioned they found her on. She’s talking to a guy from fetlife about how she wants him to pick her up after work and creampie her in his car. I scrolled all night, her talking to at least 100 guys in the past very sexually.

I confronted her and now all of a sudden the body count is 18, with many hookups, which she assured me she does not do.

The girl I thought was an innocent princess for the first year of our relationship has turned into my worst nightmare. And I am so deeply invested in her I cannot imagine my life without her even though I now want to break it off. I highly value body count with mine being only 3, and all being women I had long term relationships with.

I have no idea what to do. I cannot imagine my life without her but I’m disgusted with her now. I have not slept since finding this out I have not slept for 30 hours now. I genuinely feel like this is the worst thing that’s ever happened to me. I miss the life I had before I found out the truth about my innocent princess. What a nightmare.

Me and my girlfriend have been together for quite a bit now. At the beginning, we were completely honest with each other about our pasts. For some reason, recently, I have had retroactive jealousy for the guys that she has had sexual and non-sexual encounters with in the past. I know I shouldn't be that upset because of it (She has only ever ACTUALLY had sex once the rest was oral sex and usage of hands). I know as a guy that I am actually pretty lucky to get someone like this but for some reason I'm so jealous. I think the reason is because I will never be able to make her experience something another guy hasn't. I'm not really sure the thought just really gets to my head. Please help!

I’m opening this thread again. If you have any thoughts, please share them with me—I feel stuck.

First of all, when I met my boyfriend, I was a virgin and had never even kissed anyone. He, on the other hand, has been with 15 people. This includes fuckbuddies and one-night stands, but he says he’s an emotional person, so he developed feelings on his side. I know that he has had sex in places like the shower, the beach, and a car, and knowing these things is what triggers my RJ the most. And after being intimate with him for the first time, I realized how amazing closeness can be. Knowing that he shared these beautiful moments with 15 other women—often in more passionate and exciting settings—makes it harder for me.

After that, I started to feel inadequate, because I don’t feel like I have any chance of being “good” at sex since I’m learning everything with him. I also started thinking that I wouldn’t be able to give him the kind of experiences he had before. Anyway, it’s the classic RJ.

We were in the same country for 2.5 months, and then I returned to my own country. We’ve been doing long distance for 2 months now. And I should also say this: during the first 2.5 months, I was doing better. I wasn’t overthinking this much.Our communication was good, and I shared my fears with him. We talked about how I feel inadequate and how I compare myself probably 15 times. We argued from time to time; he felt judged, and I apologized for that and said it wasn’t my intention. But we ended the relationship because I didn’t want us to hurt each other. He reached out to me again, and we started talking.

I told him that I just don’t know how people view those they once had emotional or physical connections with afterward. He reassured me; he said he knows words alone don’t mean much and that he would show me through his actions.

A week ago, while we were talking on the phone, he asked about someone I follow. I hadn’t met that person because my boyfriend didn’t want me to, and now we’re already in different countries anyway. After that question, I asked something I had always been curious about but never asked: whether he still follows anyone he has slept with before. He said he could remove them immediately, that they mean nothing, and that he doesn’t talk to them.

Unfortunately, now the scenarios in my head have faces. And when we were showing each other celebrities we liked before, the woman he showed me looked like his ex. The features he said he liked were his ex’s features. Now I’ve started comparing myself physically as well.

I’m aware of my lack of self-confidence, and maybe that’s the core issue—I don’t know, but I blame myself. At the same time, I’m also angry at him. I shared my feelings with him many times, and I can’t understand why he kept following people he could remove in a second. He said he had thought this might become an issue one day. But because of my fixation on his past, he didn’t want to take the risk of unfollowing them at the beginning of the relationship, before he was sure whether I saw a future with him.

I feel worthless. I feel like I’ve explained myself over and over again for nothing, and I’ve started wondering if he ever really loved me at all.

Please share your thoughts with me. If you’ve read this, thank you so much.

My wife stated she fucked 35 guys stemming from her traumatic past of sexual abuse. Molestation not rape, not that it matters but she was never fully taken advantage of.

She says she had an emotional abusive boyfriend that she cheated on with his brother several times, then got back with the original abusive boyfriend. I know she picked me, I know we have fantastic sex and she is embarrassed now. But when we got together she was proud of her sex life.

I’m not insecure that I’m not good enough, I just can’t help thinking about who she compared me to, or if she thought about someone else when we had sex when she was still proud of her past.

She won’t give me any more details just 35 guys and names. It might be that I want to know more, what does she enjoy, see if I could learn something to stimulate our sex life.

But I’m just left to fantasize over the details, because she informed me if I ever ask for more she’s won’t acknowledge me, and to respect her trauma I won’t.

Apologies, this is long. I just needed to write this out somewhere

(23 M) I started dating my gf (21 F) about a year ago after hanging out with her consistently for several months. She is the sweetest, goofiest girl that I've heavily enjoyed spending the last year and a half of my life with. She's musical and creative and fun-loving and accommodating and loyal. But she's had a promiscuous past that I've had a hard time grappling with in my mind.

I met her when she came to a house party that me and roommates were throwing (we used to throw a lot of them). She wandered into my room later into the night and we got to chatting; I made a move and she stayed the night. Before seeing her again, my roommate told me that he had hooked up with her the last time she came to our house for a party about a month prior. She literally brought it up the very next time I saw her before we had sex again because she said she felt bad if I didn't know. I said I knew and I didn't care, which was true at the time.

Afterwards, we spent more and more time together and things got serious and I really fell in love with her, and asked her to be my girlfriend. A couple months later, we got to talking about our respective pasts and I told her my body count is 3 (her, a past relationship, and a bad hookup). She told me with some level of shame that hers is 23 (several relationships from high school and the rest in the year and half before we met, mostly hookups she met a parties and such, then me). That number has been stuck on my mind ever since. She's been completely honest with me about whatever I ask, even when I'm particularly nosy, and never seems to have anything to hide.

Her relationships in high school were abusive from what she's told me, and she's been sexually assaulted twice in her mid teens. After leaving a very toxic and possessive relationship at the end of high school, she had a very wild phase with lots of drugs and hookups that she admits was very fun at the time but she also regrets for how shallow and immature it was. A lot of it was certainly in the influence of her friends she was hanging with at the time - with the stories I've heard about them, her past pales in comparison.

Since we've met she's given me absolutely zero indication that she'd cheat on me or that she feels anything for the guys she's been with in the past. She said she was acting stupid and immature and that they were all superficial womanizers that wanted some action. She's been cheated on before and said it was the worst feeling in the world so she would never do that to me. I specifically asked about my roommate she'd been with, who's a good friend of mine, and she said they were both very drunk and it "just kinda happened" and never had any feelings for him beyond that, which I believe because he's a continually promiscuous guy himself and he's never once brought it up since. I have no reason to be upset with it because I didn't even know her at the time.

We've had a very active sex life and discovered a lot with each other, she has no issues with my performance or anything and is always communicative with how she feels, wants to please me etc. In all honestly I don't feel like I'm insecure about how I compare to her past flings.

And yet, despite how wonderful she's been, the heaps of great sex we've had, and the memories we have together, the thought of her actions just plagues my mind. I know full well that the mental image of her together with these other guys is just my mind fucking with me -- the idea of her past "cheating on me" is inherently absurd -- but it bothers me nonetheless.

Her friends and family all say that "you're the first guy she's ever been with that I actually like" and I know it's a compliment but it sounds more like a mark on her and her shitty choices in men at the time. She came from a very rough family with a lot of drug abuse and mental illness and I know that her "bop phase" as she calls it was certainly informed by a very poor upbringing and her assaults in the past, wanting to reclaim her sexuality.

Despite it all, some part of me is waiting for the other shoe to drop, whatever that might be, even if it's just me being unable to get over it. She's expressed jealousy when her friends hit on me or she sees other girls eyeing me at a bar, and some scummy part of me likes that, like she's getting a taste of what I feel.

I'm no angel, I love drinking and drugs and a superficial good time and some part of me knows that if I'd been in her position I'd have the fun too. Since being with her I've wondered if I'd had a bunch of hookups like her that I'd feel any better, like I've "had my fun", or if I'd be jealous just the same.

Without the past, she's the absolute ideal partner. We'd had close to no issues. I've talked about my feelings with her and she's plainly said "there's nothing I can do or change about my past. How you feel about it is up to you." She bared her soul to me and seems fully willing to spend the rest of her life, or at least the foreseeable future, with me and only me. I love her so much, but I feel like my jealousy keeps me from really feeling the same way :(

Any thoughts? Is is just that simple that I've got to get over it or accept that my thoughts won't change? Idk what this post will even accomplish I just want some feedback of some sort these feelings won't go away.

My husband has dated two girls in the past (over 10 years ago). The only sexual(?) thing he has done was made out less than 5 times with his high school girlfriend. He broke up with both of them.

I'm obsessed with his past and asking him endless questions. I'm the first girl he confessed to and he never mentions them unless I ask about them. I know he loves me and I am his first love. But why am I so insecure?

I’m 21 (F) and my boyfriend is 31. We’ve been together for almost 2 years, and I’ve been struggling badly with retroactive jealousy to the point where I think about it every single day and I genuinely cannot get over it.

He is my third boyfriend and third person I’ve ever slept with. Meanwhile he had 2 serious relationships and his body count is 8 including me.

On the surface he can seem like a good person - caring, affectionate, loving, emotionally warm. We are also like best friends, and that makes everything even harder. I feel very close to him, very attached, and that emotional bond makes it so difficult to leave.

But his past really disturbs me and I feel like it completely changed the way I see him.

Before me, he had experiences with prostitutes (he says only twice, and that he never went again because he didn’t like it, if he is telling me the truth). What makes it even worse for me is that they were women of other races, and it makes me feel disgusting because it feels like he specifically wanted to “try” what it’s like to sleep with a woman of another race. That thought really disturbs me. He also had friends with benefits situations and even had a threesome with two girls.

He told me that although the threesome was a good experience, he would not do it again. He said he liked experiencing it at least once in his life. That hurts me because it feels like he does not actually regret it. Now, when I bring it up and get upset, he says he regrets it - but sometimes I feel like he is only saying what I want to hear.

I am not jealous of the women he was actually in relationships with. What hurts me are the one night stands, prostitutes, casual sex and how he talked about it with his friends. I found old messages where he bragged about prostitutes, objectified women, and spoke very disrespectfully about girls he slept with. It honestly made me feel sick.

Another thing that hurt me badly: there was one female friend from his main friend group, and we all hung out together multiple times. I sat there like an idiot, being friendly and completely clueless, not knowing they had slept together before. He introduced me to her and never told me. Apparently everyone else probably knew except me.

It makes me feel disgusting hanging out with him and his friends now, because they all probably know about his past, the prostitutes, the way he talked about women, and I feel like they probably look at me like I’m some naive stupid girl who accepts all of it. Like I’m the fool. I hate them now because after reading those messages I feel disappointed in men in general - not only because of him, but because his friends seem the same. It makes me want to completely shut down, isolate myself, and never have relationships again.

I compare myself to his past women all the time. I compare myself to the prostitutes, to ex situationships and ex girlfriends. I know I am attractive, I get a lot of attention from other men, but none of that seems to matter. I still compare myself to them and feel like I need to be better than them, prettier than them, more desirable than them. I keep asking him for details how they did it, in which positions etc. Sometimes I feel worse than prostitutes because he paid money for them, chose them based on appearance, wanted them so badly-and with me, sometimes I feel rejected.

This is another issue: I’m actually the one with the higher sex drive. I want sex with him more than he wants it with me. I’m very attracted to him, very physically attached, sometimes almost addicted to him. And it hurts my ego because I think: how could he want prostitutes enough to pay for them, but with me sometimes he doesn’t even want sex when I do? It makes me feel unwanted and it destroys my self-esteem.

The confusing part is that closer to our relationship, and during our relationship, I don’t find messages like that anymore. He seems different now - more emotionally attached. It feels like two completely different people and I don’t know which one is real.

At the same time, our relationship has many other issues too: debt, irresponsibility, emotional immaturity, disappearing for hours after drinking, bad influences from friends, chaos. Sometimes I feel like I love him deeply and I’m extremely attached. Other times I feel disgust and think I should leave.

I keep asking myself:

Did he actually change as a person?

Am I being unfair for judging his past?

Is this retroactive jealousy, or is this my intuition telling me I should leave?

I feel like I love him, but at the same time I’m losing respect for myself.

Should I leave or try to get over it?

Me and my boyfriend have been dating for over a year. We’re still relatively young (college age) and we’re both each other’s longest relationship.

However, we’ve both had one serious relationship in the past, mine less so. I dated someone for a little less than a year. He however dated a girl relatively recently (they broke up 4 months before we started dating), and were dating for around a year, but discussed legitimate future things.

I love him so much - I’ve grown so much being with him. But in my past relationship, I never did anything sexual or even kissed. He’s my first kiss and my first sexual encounter. While we both lost our virginities to each other (he said he didn’t want to in his past relationship), he did sexual things with her. Sadly, I know many explicit details (because I asked…) and I just can’t shake it.

I am seeking therapy (it has been helping), but the feeling about this remains. I don’t talk to him about it, because it’s beating a dead horse, but I can’t help but think about the fact that his relationship was so much more serious than my past, both physically and emotionally. I know it’s irrational, and I know it shouldn’t matter to me even if he DID sleep with her.

Any advice or insight is appreciated!

I suppose my newest hurdle is the idea that all of this, what comes with relationships, love, sex, firsts, all of it is ineffable to me. There’s no real way to explain it. Practice vs theory, after all. But to her, she already knows all of it. She could describe her first kiss, sex, etc.

The world sells you the “magical“ shared first time. The books, movies, animes and tv shows. But what about those who won’t get that? That won’t get the fantasy they watched? That its not new & new on both ends, it’s now new to it period vs new person?

I don’t necessarily even care about the ex’s as a person, I actually know nothing about them aside from the fact she doesn’t like them anymore (as in actively dislikes), for valid reasons. But it’s just the idea that I’ll never get that. I’ll never get that feeling, that feeling that’s so glamorized. A good way to put it is a quote I read “I wonder how intimate it was”.

Maybe it isn’t even good, at least having the privilege to decide if it was for myself is what I harp on.

consider this a journal-like entry, since I’m too lazy to write this in my actual journal and it’s 4 am.

When we started dating, she told me that at 17 she was with a 21-year-old. I didn’t think much of it at the time.

But now it’s been stuck in my head and it just feel off. It gives me a weird, uncomfortable feeling and I can’t shake it.

I know it’s in the past and not my place to judge, which makes it even more frustrating that it’s affecting me.

Anyone else dealt with this? How do you get over it?

She was the best thing that happened to you, and you confirmed that many times. Months have passed, yet you still keep watching her stories without interacting, even though you’re not on her followers list anymore.

Do you regret it? Do you realize what you lost? What’s going on in your head? Are you planning to come back?

Please don’t tell me I shouldn’t think about this or that it doesn’t matter—I already know all of that. But I also know what we had just two months ago, and I know it won’t be like that again.

I know about people my girlfriend has kissed before me, and I keep obsessing over how many of them she did more with than just kissing. The uncertainty is what gets me. My mind fills in the blanks and sometimes I feel like imagining is worse than whatever the truth actually is.

Part of me wants to ask because I feel like knowing, even if the number is higher than I hope, might calm me down more than constantly wondering. But I’m also scared it could backfire and give my RJ more material.

I think what makes it hard is that if the number is low, I’d probably feel relief. If it’s high, I worry it could trigger comparison, exclusivity issues, value conflicts, or make me judge her past in ways I don’t want to.

Also, a lot of this happened in one single year, and for some reason that makes my brain latch onto it even more.

For people who deal with retroactive jealousy: did asking for details like this help reduce intrusive thoughts, or did it just feed the obsession? Is wanting to know “the number” a trap in itself?

TL;DR: My RJ keeps fixating on how many people my girlfriend did more than kiss with. I want to ask because uncertainty feels worse than knowing, but I’m worried it could make RJ worse. Has asking helped anyone here?

hello! this got a bit long, my apologies. i’ve been dating this wonderful person for about five months, but before that, we had a kind of rough start.

we found out we were into each other way before we started dating, but for my partner, they liked me more in a friends-with-benefits kind of way. we just kept hooking up and i kept getting more attached until i couldn’t take it anymore, and i asked them to be my partner. they said no at first, and even though i was heartbroken, i stuck around because i was too attached. i was miserable. i didn’t know it, but at that point, my partner was still reeling from some emotional traumas from some past relationships, and wasn’t ready to commit to anything yet. at the time, they didn’t see me as a legit partner—just a hookup. so they’d tell me all these things about past flings, especially sexual ones, and it made me feel so fucking small. they’d openly compare me to other people they had sex with while we were in bed. they’d talk about how heart broken they were that them and their last partner had to break up, how it was proof that nothing lasts forever. they never seemed to put me first, and i was falling apart.

it was only after i decided to end things with them that they realized that they were fumbling big time. after avoiding them for a while, they eventually convinced me to have a talk, and we worked things out. they explained why they had been so distant, and i understood. over time i forgave them, and it was easy because they worked really hard to fix the ways they had mistreated me before (they no longer ignored me, i was treated like a priority, talk of past partners stopped, etc.). i know at this point i haven’t said much to convince you that they are a good partner to me now, but they are seriously one of the most loving, sweet and attentive people i know. it’s a total 180 from the person i hooked up with all those months ago.

but the fact is, they still told me those things. i still know too much about their exes. i don’t even want to know their names, but here i am, stuck with all these details about my partner and their past. i know i can’t change the fact that my partner has a romantic/sexual history—i don’t want to change that, it doesn’t make sense to want that. i have a history, too. but i wish more than anything i could let go of the things they told me back then. the rumination is eating me alive. during classes, during work, when i’m home alone, etc., my brain will wander back to thoughts about my partners exes, and it’ll fester and fester until i feel physically ill. it was worse when we first started dating, so maybe time will help cure me. but when i do get flare ups now, they seem to hit a lot harder.

yesterday i hit a bit of a low. i cried three times over something i can’t change. i couldn’t even look my partner in the eye. i spent most of the day avoiding them, and failing to focus on my tasks for the day. i just can’t seem to let the RJ i feel go, but i really, really want to. i want to be a better partner for them; i want to be stronger and more available. they’ve told me that of the people they’ve dated i mean more to them than anyone else, and that they want a future with me. but the vicious cycle of thinking is killing me. how do i let go? how do i make myself forget?