Author: Tina (20), female, in a committed relationship with her boyfriend (21)
Number of her sexual partners:
1
Number of her boyfriend’s sexual partners:
4
How long have you suffered from retroactive jealousy?
Years. However, I had never been in a relationship before this one, so it never got this bad.
How much time a day do you spend thinking about your partner’s past?
1-3 hours depending on the day
Have you talked to them about your retroactive jealousy and if so what happens?
Yes. He is very understanding and patient. He asks me what he can do to help me, what he can do to not trigger it, and how to make it better. He is absolutely amazing.
I can tell he feels really bad that it causes me so much pain, but I also know he doesn’t regret being with these other people from his past, which almost makes it worse. I wish he did regret it, so that at least if he could erase past events, he would erase them and only be with me.
The fact that he doesn’t regret it makes me unbelievably angry, because I don’t want him to feel that way about anyone else, much less DO anything with anyone else, even if it was in the past.
I wish he regretted it so at least I could have peace that he REALLY truly only wanted and wants me as a sexual/intimate/romantic partner.
Tell us what exactly you’re jealous about in their past?
The intimacy he shared with these other girls. I hate it. Like REALLY hate it.
I hate that he has loved and touched and been intimate with these other girls in his past like he has now been with me.
It makes me feel like I am receiving love and intimacy that isn’t completely mine (because well, it isn’t, it has been shared and given to other people). I feel like if I had past relationships and intimate partners, it wouldn’t be QUITE as bad, but because I was a virgin and he was my first, it feels 100x worse.
What bugs you the most about your partner’s past?
The fact that he’s my first and I’m his fourth. It just makes me feel like I am not very special (as immature as that sounds). I always hoped that I would lose my virginity to another virgin. The fact that he has had others before me and has loved them makes me feel somehow less special.
Have you ever snooped through your partner’s personal belongings off or online?
Yes. And I regret it immensely.
I found an old blog where he details past lovers, how he felt for them, how he made love with them and I wish I never came across it. It has caused me to spiral downward mentally, and I don’t know if I’ll be able to get over it to be honest. It has made me feel unspeakably horrible.
If you could get one image out of your head regarding your partner’s past, what would it be?
Him making love with the two girls he was in a relationship with. The details I read on his blog has ignited this fire in my mind where I can’t stop running those words he wrote through my head with all sorts of disturbing visuals of them being intimate.
It literally makes me want to gouge my eyes out and incinerate my brain so I don’t have any recollection of what I now know. It causes me so much anguish and distress and I wish he was a virgin like I was when we met so I didn’t have to live with the fact that he has been with other people THAT intimately.
Is there anything else you’d like to share? Fire away!
I know I’m not the only one who suffers from this and I wanted to be able to vent my frustrations and mental anguish to a platform for people that suffer like me. It is SO hard to find anyone else who understands (at least to the same degree), so it’s comforting knowing that there are other’s out there feeling the same way. Know you aren’t alone <3
Feel like getting your retroactive jealousy off your chest? Great! Share your story here.
Thanks for setting this up Jeff. It’s helpful to know I’m not alone.
I could not resist commenting here – GET OVER IT!
Your level of ignorance is truly disturbing, Paul. Allow me to educate you.
Retroactive jealousy is a form of OCD, which is not something an individual who suffers from it can simply “get over” like you so helpfully suggested. OCD requires professional treatment by either a psychologist or psychiatrist, depending on what works best for the patient and/or if it is determined they require medication. It is disgusting that you would choose to comment something so disrespectful and ignorant on a forum where a young woman is clearly suffering. This platform is meant to be supportive and empathetic, neither of which you are. Just like all of us, you have had things you’ve had to struggle with, and the advice “get over it” is not only unhelpful, it is disrespectful. Shame on you Paul, and how dare you minimize a mental struggle you clearly know nothing about.
Wow. I feel so much better now that I know I’m not alone in feeling like this. Thank you for creating this story and sharing with the world. Much love
I had very similar experiences. 🙁
I can understand your feeling.
I am feeling the same. My wife is my 1st intimate partner and i am 3rd for her. I saw her picture of kissing her ex.and thats the most painful thing i could see. Coz i can imagine what happned after that kiss.
You have to ask yourslef 1 ques. Do u want to be with him becoz if it is just realtionship then u have options open.
Mine is marriage. And these people who have never waited for anyone will not undestand the value of wait.
I know what wait means 29yrs i have waited to give up myself completley.
Dont give yourself pain . coz he doesnt regret anything tell him this . if he so proud of past ask him to go back with those girls only why he is even with you.see how much efforts he takes.coz realtionship means sacrifices.see how much he can sacrifice.
I can find myself in this story, even if it’s reverse for me, cause I’m guy and she is a girl. I’m still virgin in my 26 years, even if I had something like girlfriend in the past, but I didn’t lose it with her in the end. My girlfriend had already 4 relationships, but that last one cost her virginity. And I just can’t get over it. I fell in love to her, she is woman of my life, still I can’t get over it won’t be first for both of us and it honestly forced our relationship to the verge of breaking up. I decided to not give up, fight myself and try to stop hurting her because of my issue, make her happy and do the same to myself.
Still, exactly, I’m just not okay someone else touched her, someone else she loved and someone else that was able to receive such amazing gift like her virginity. I’d feel even better not knowing it was with the last one, but as we already talked about it, it’s late. RE this type is really torture for mind. I just envy those who can really love unconditionally and don’t care about things like these.
Now that I have encountered this, I feel so much better about the whole situation. My boyfriend has been with 3 lived with 1 and he was my first. I felt the same way but now that I know I am not the only one, I feel so much better. I’ve been obsessing over it since I started to love him but when we first started dating I didn’t care at all. I’ve learned to live with it because I put myself in his situation, if I had been with 3 other guys and then him, I wouldn’t care about the other 3 guys. I really do put myself in his position, like I imagine me being with 3 of my boyfriend’s of the past and how much I loved one of them. I imagine if he had cheated on me and hurt me, I wouldn’t care about him because hes in the past. Also if my current boyfriend cheated on me and lied to me, and in my next relationship I loved again… I wouldn’t care for him or the others.
I am happy that I waited, but at the same time feel like a loser for marrying a non virgin. I am his third. I finally understand that there was nothing special about him for which he was kicked out by his ex’s after they were done using him.
His past disgusts me because he lost it out of frustration and pressure from his brother while I had two stable relationships without sex. I decided to make that guy pay for the emotional damage he caused us. If he doesn’t then my husband has to pay me. We were doing great before. But it was his past which caused a damaging incident. From that I started having the problem.
Hi Tina,
I cannot believe that someone out there can describe the thoughts and feelings that I’m having so closely and similarly..
It’s suffocating to be honest.
I’m not in any relationship but this topic recently came up in my mind and I never knew how badly it would crush me until it did..
This is a personal choice, and everyone is free to choose. I don’t want to judge, I shouldn’t judge and I’m not judging.. but it just hurts so much whenever I think about it..
I’m not religious, but I believe in waiting till marriage. Simply because I want to give all of me to the person in my life, and it would become what we and only we will share..
Unfortunately that’s almost impossible in the society now, and impossible now that I found someone I like and he had a past.
I understand fully that the past is the past, it doesn’t matter and I shouldn’t punish him for his past. As long as he’s willing to wait and respect my choice, it shouldn’t matter if he is virgin or not. I shouldn’t even be treating virginity as a criteria to choose my partner because it won’t be fair to him and myself.
But it’s not even about the fact that he is not virgin, it is knowing that someone I love had been that intimate with someone else before, that he had wanted someone else the same way we would be in future.. Every touch every look every feeling. The thought of it just crashes me.
It hurts knowing he wasn’t someone who felt the same about waiting, and that he won’t ever be able to share that special bond with me anymore.. Something that can’t be erased or rewritten. It’s not that I want to keep thinking about it but I cannot help that it comes up in my head…
I know that my thoughts, though never intended to, will hurt him because he cannot do anything about it.. And I don’t want to be hurting someone I love, so maybe it’s better we don’t start. Maybe I was never meant for anyone, for this era, for this world.
Talking to anyone around me makes me feel even more alone, not because they can’t respect my choice because they would respect it just like I respect the differences in opinions. But it’s because people who never believed in waiting or are already on the other side, will never understand why I even feel tortured because of this difference in thoughts. Never.
And actually, it hurts even more because he belongs on the other side.
🙁
I am one too i am a male and the thought is automatic not something u can control i have not dug into details yet but it hurt, i feel cheated and i feel like a fool.
Im thinking about breaking up with my boyfriend over this. Because, in the past I was able to get over finding out my bf was bi (when in my preference I wouldn’t want to be with that type of guy) in my mind im guessing maybe hes just not the one, because if he was this probably wouldn’t effect me as much, id love him anyways. Ive done snooping on his socials (on his account) and i know information i shouldn’t. I know he took his last gf virginity. And a bad image of him has formed in my mind as him being a cherry popper or virginity snatcher something like that. And the way he talks about current things alarm me. I wanted to masterbate with this item and he’d said to me, i don’t want to have sex with a looser you. And its just unsettling for me. He likes my innocence to a certain degree and at this point its just become awkward to me. I mean i won’t be innocent forever what if he wants to drop me after using me, and hes off to take the next womans.
…
I also have the feelings of not feeling special and i often think with me it won’t be so special to him either because hes already done it before. And when we talk about doing sexual activities he talks about them in detail how he wants it a certain way just letting me know hes done it this way before.
..
Back to what I’d said before, i don’t believe im ready to give myself to him. (Or even if i want to, my unsure feelings are way too strong)
Things are Dawning on me that life is just a repeating circle sometimes things work out and and others do not. I want my perfect moment I want things to work out correctly the first time or nothing at all, I have a repeat of two moods, one of me not minding and a other of me thinking he’s just not the type of guy I wanna be with and id rather just be alone, like see him more as friend quality then relationship.
… I was trying to watch relationship podcast to possibly get over how i feel bc i recognise ppl continue on because the first times dont always work out, but still my mind and heart cant get over it. I just dont want to be touched then think of what ifs later or regret it maybe or even the possibility of him mostly only wanting me because i have a untouched “treasure” :/
I feel the exact same way. Except my fiancé has been with 7 girls. One was off and on for about 9 months and she gave him an STD (the only girl he never used a condom with bc she told him he didn’t need to) which he gave to me the first time we had sex. She had a kid at 12 years old. That’s who disgusts me the most. He lied and said he hadn’t had sex since her which was about 2 months before he took my virginity and I was ok with that. Until I found out he actually had hooked up and been hooking up with a DIFFERENT ex and the last time they had sex was one week to the day of when he took my virginity. Aka the first night we ever hung out he had sex with her hours before he asked me to hangout with him. When we first started doing things he told me to do it like she did, he would say things like “oh well this is how me and ____used to do it” or “___ used to do it like this) (which he admits now is because he was just trying to teach me and had no other comparison because that’s who he was active with the longest, instead of letting me figure it out on my own which made me feel like he wasn’t happy with how I was trying to do it and he wanted me to be like her.) We are engaged now but sometimes I really do not want to be with him because of his past. I’ll spend hours even now questioning him about it, or feeling subpar after he answers. (Even though he swears I’m the best in everything I refuse to believe that.) it’s gotten us into really bad situations because I just can’t let that out of my head. I feel disgusted when we have sex sometimes because I think about how many girls did he look at this way? Or how many of them did he have sex with this good? It disgusts me that he was inside of other girls. Even though he was young and stupid I was never that way at the age he started having sex, I’m two years older. (He started at 15, we got together when he had just turned 17 a month prior. And I was 18, turning 19.) it’s ruined our relationship at some points to the point of breaking up or me getting physical with him because something he says makes my head snap and I get rage angry. I’m desperate for help if anyone has advice I’m begging.
Ughhh it’s the worst feeling in the world. I’ve been dealing with it for months off and on, feeling so alone and fighting myself because I was too nervous to say how I felt to him. I felt stupid for feeling this way but I can’t help but feel torn apart when I think about him being with someone else while he was my first time. From time to time, I would find myself not wanting him to touch me in my head, but never said anything about it. What sucks is I thought he was a virgin and when I found out that he wasnt, he sounded so casual like it it wasn’t a big deal not to be. And I wanted to wait until marriage but I didn’t end up, and no he didn’t pressure me into it, he was so nice, but I felt like what if he was comparing me to his ex since she was his first time. What if I’m not good enough, I mean I’m definitely not as busty as she is so it left me incredibly insecure. What if to him, sex was not as special as it was to me. I mean he obviously didn’t want to wait since he’s already done it. And he’s a guy so of course he wasn’t going to turn down a sec session. Idk, sometimes I feel like he’s sugar coating his past not to hurt me but it hurts me worse because my imagination is left to roam. Maybe it’s my fault for being so incredibly insecure and unhappy with my decision to not wait. But there’s nothing I can do now, I just hope that one day this pain goes away and I never have to worry about it. Listening to all the other stories of similar feelings and experiences does make me feel so much better and less alone, I’m glad I’m not the only one who has been dealing with his thoughts that just plague the mind for what can seem like forever. He’s an amazing guy but I always think to myself it would have been so amazing to have been with a virgin, wed connect and relate more to eachother that way.
I couldn’t relate more. Indeed the worst feeling. I hate it, i despise it, i feel so stupid feeling this way but there is nothing i could do but to accept. Easy to say than done. It still hunts me, i wanted help, if only the pain will go away. I gave my virginity to my boyfriend while he gave his virginity to his ex who cheated him multiple times. I just wish he waited a bit more, why give it to someone who hurt him countless times then i wouldn’t be in so much pain right now. I just hate the thought of him already did it with someone else, who knows what he was doing while doing it to me, who guides me where he wants to be touched cos someone discovered it before, i feel disgusted whenever i thought of it. I feel less special. I feel insecure. He was with that ex of his for 6 years, how come he cherished her chastity/virginity for that hellish years til he gave it to her in the mere end of their relationship. How come me, he touched me in just 2months we’ve been together. I guess i am to blame because i gave in. I didn’t want to think he only wanted to have sex with me cos he missed having sex or because i am an ‘untouched treasure’ (thanks for the right word angel) :(. Also, when we first dated he likes to tell stories about his ex that time until i couldn’t stand it anymore and we fought, seriously he was being so insensitive that time. He fed me stories about her which you cant blame me why i am feeling this way. All those sugar coated words he aimed fire at me, i bet he also said it to her. I bet he wanted to marry her just like he wanted marry me because how many times his ex have cheated, he still goes back to her and forgive her. I love him so much, I just don’t know what to do i hate hurting him because of this issue, my issue. But what else i could do? I already gave it to him, i didn’t care at first when i fell in love with him and when he said he isnt a virgin but hell it is torturing me over the past months and even now! If anyone has advise pls i’m begging
I can’t believe there’s so many people who feel like this as well, Im 20 F virgin and I never thought about this before, I never felt insecure about being a virgin until I started talking to someone online exclusively.
We were friends (kinda complicated but she was heavily into me and kept telling me she had dreams about us together and about us having babies/being married in the future but she was prob joking with the babies thing lol). She was talking about her ex who cheated on her a lot and told me vivid details about her sexual past. It just pissed me off that I had to deal with hearing those things (I liked listening to her talk about her life tho don’t get wrong) meanwhile i’m a virgin with barely no dating history, just the thought that I might lose my virginity to her didn’t sit well with me even though I liked her so much.
it makes me livid and I kinda hate myself for thinking like this and Im also mad at myself for just letting her use me like that.
When we first started talking she had fwb with someone else while telling me these things and I didn’t say anything about it because I knew that it wasn’t my business or right to get mad about but eventually I just left cause my feelings for her were overwhelming (I didn’t tell her I was into her, cause i didn’t want to date her after all that but I still caught feelings). I got pissed off that she was using me emotionally and calling me “wife” AND flirting with me heavily while she was seeing someone else.
It’s making me mad while typing about it lol.
I came back and we started talking about it and started “dating” exclusively but i’ve been distant to her and avoidant of disclosing my true feelings/thoughts to her because they’re not nice thoughts.
I’ve blocked her a few days ago (for other reasons) but I’m thinking of unblocking and telling her how I really feel after reading this blog and the stories here, it’s really helped me learn new things about myself and i feel like something was lifted off my chest a lil bit. Thank you 🙂
Also I feel like i’m painting her as the bad guy but she was very open and honest about what she was doing and herself, It was me who wasn’t communicative or too open with her about my needs/wants and I still feel bad about that but live and learn
Sorry dude I just realised I was replying to your comment, it was meant as a individual comment lol my bad
I was a virgin for before I met my first boyfriend. I do suffer from retroactive jealousy but i did not initially. I always actually took pride of the fact that when I would enter a relationship, the person I am with would be able to be with someone who never had been intimate with someone else. I just thought about how it would make them feel special and like me more, because of that fact. However what I did not realize is that I would be triggered by my partners past. I did not realize this because my partner is more than my first sexual partner, but also my first love, my first real relationship. When I fell in love with him, that’s when I started to become triggered… I never asked about his past, but he would bring it up in comparison of me to his previous ex. When he would compare us, he would always state it as a compliment, that I was better (this was not sexual but completely based off of our connection and how my love felt to him). (This is how it began to become triggered, it didn’t at first but every comparison started to make me curious about his past). But then as we began to have sex, he would want to try things he has done with his previous sexual partners, and then that’s when my retroactive jealousy began to overtake me. I learned about every sexual partner, every relationship, every sexual thing he had done with these partners. I cried on his shoulder, but one mistake I never did was turn on him, or hate him.. what makes dealing with this easier is when you realize this is NOT YOUR PARTNERS PROBLEM BUT OURS ! We feel this only because of the selfish nature of humans. We want something of ours to only be ours and we want to be the best too. I did think of him sometimes of being a someone who has had a lot of sex. I did allow him to do things to me that he did with other people because I wanted to please him in the same way they did but better. My sexual partner however does do things for me previous relationships and sexual partners asked of him but he refused to do. This helped with my retroactive jealousy, because he wanted to please me in ways he never has pleased anyone else before without me even asking while all his previous partners did ask of him. I still suffer now and again but my retroactive jealousy is beginning to go away for these reasons: one I am confident, ive seen his exes and previous partners and I top them all, physically and mentally, I know what I have and am willing to give him (my love) feels way better than what they could ever give him ( so learning about his past did help, because I learned on how badly they treated him and what things they did do for him so I know how to make him feel more loved than ever before). 2: I look for things sexually and romantically to do for him that he has never done before but I also look for things that I want to do myself because you can’t forget this is your first sexual partner so don’t forget that you waited so long for this, have fun think of yourself for once, I know we waited for a long time and now that the wait is over enjoy the sex you waited so long to have with someone who REALLY LOVES YOU. 3. YOUR PARTNERS PAST COULD HAVE ALWAYS BEEN WORSE!!!! My boyfriend has had sex with 8-9 different men, and sometimes that high of body count destroys me. He is an attractive man he could have had sex with way more men, but he only had sex with people he knew and people he trusted except for one time when it was out of revenge (which yes disgusted me but at the same time he was young and still is young and so am I, we make mistakes). 4th I also discovered some of the stuff he said he has never done and then I realize he has never met someone like me who would rock his world in bed, even with me being a virgin. I wanted to type this out in hopes to give you guys some coping methods. Never hurt your partner the person you love because of their past that they would change (they shouldn’t change it, because it what makes them who you fell in love with today). You guys are a team ! A team works and solve these problems together, sometimes I deal with my retroactive jealousy on my own because who wants to keep suffering about the past when they are trying to build a future with you!!! In time your retroactive jealousy will fade as long as you try to take the negative and turn it into a positive way of thinking. Think about how them being with other people benefited your relationship, because they had sex with others they can please you better, they know what others have felt like in comparison to you, so they will never have that “but i want to try more people, a variety.” Phase. I hope this helped in time pain will heal with the reconstruction of the mind. LOVE YOU ALL !!!!
OMG I identify SO MUCH with it!!! I’m male, 21. But I feel it NOT JUST in “real life”, I feel it while reading too, it hurts, always! (Sometimes physically, my heart hurts… literally!) even reading a romance, for example, where BOTH characters has a sexual/romantic past, or, WORSE!, Just one has some sexual/romantic past and the other’s a virgin! I know it may sounds crazy but it feels (to me) like… cheating, treason, betrayal and even filthy and nasty … What’s the name for this? I feel like I’m the only one who feels that way, even while reading… I know it sounds crazy but I can’t help it… Most of my experience with… “That”, is while I read cuz I’m a very introverted n withdraw person… But probably I would feel that way in a real relationship too… I feel so bad for that girl, I understand her anguish, I would also feel horrible about that awful blog…
Literally agree wholeheartedly
I thought I was all alone with this. I had a friend who I eventually fell in love with. I was eighteen and she was sixteen. There was always a romantic pull between her and I. Except she was currently in an abusive narcissistic relationship. And constantly pushed me out if her life. She never had sex with the narcissist and I wanted to be the first person that she ever had sex with. I wanted the gift of virginity. two years later when I was twenty and she was eighteen she came back in contact with me after shutting me out of her life more than a few times, and throughout those two years, she had broken up with the narcissist. Except this time I got her to open up to me sexually. However she didn’t have any romantic interest in me at the time, she only opened up to me because she was nervous. To find out months later that she told me that she was just lonely and was using me because she knew I would comfort her because I’ve always loved her. She then pushed me out of her life, again before a month later I make some bullshit excuse about becoming fwb (friends with benefits) in order to get into her life again and fall in love with her. She told me that she had lost her virginity to someone else and this person was someone who admitted to her that he had used her for sex. This broke me completely. But i still swallowed my pride and still stuck with her. Eventually we got into an argument about how she’s treated me throughout the time we knew each other (pushing me away and what not) She cried saying that she didn’t know she was hurting me and that was most likely because she thought that was a normal way to treat people given her past. I got her to open up to emotionally which was something she had never done before. Then we made eye contact during sex, and then we made love. She told me that she had never felt that way before. Then she read my letter that I wrote to her from when I first met her. And she started to cry and said to me, “Imagine where I’d be if I never met you.” and realized that right then and there, she loved me. We were in a relationship for three months, she really was sorry about how she treated me and she really did love me and was doing everything in her power to make things right with me. She wrote me a letter as well and told me that she regretted what she did and wished I was the first one to touch her. But ultimately the reason why we broke up was because of what happened. I couldn’t live with it. I wish I could though. It just felt like it’s impossible to work out because of what she did, like I can’t think of a love story has ever gone down that way.
Dude, i’m F 20 and still a virgin and I kind of want to lose it to a lady older than me but not someone that’s even 1 year younger than me. I was talking exclusively to a girl who’s 19 and had a body count of 16 and that really irked me. Im not shaming her for whtever she does but it really irked me, the thought of having my firsts with someone who’s done it so many times (to me) makes me livid and salty, I wish i didn’t think like this.
The weird thing is tho, I think i don’t mind it as much to lose it to someone who’s older and experienced opposed to someone who’s younger and experienced.
Maybe it’s a ego thing? Idk
Also I didn’t mention this but, we were friends before we became exclusive and it would just make me mad when I’d think about her with other people.. I’d get this heavy feeling in my chest and I’d just feel like shit
Also I didn’t mention this but, we were friends before we became exclusive and it would just make me mad when I’d think about her with other people.. I’d get this heavy feeling in my chest and I’d just feel like shit
I wish we could talk in depth. There are tons of similarities between us. I am a husband, Lost virginity to my wife to great struggle. I know her past lovers were able to just “walk right in” as compared to me begging her.
It makes me feel very un-special. I wish I had someone to talk to. But she makes me feel very alone and we only wind up fighting when I bring it up.
This is exactly how I felt when I had my first boyfriend. He was my first everything.
Now that I’m older and have experienced many things, I know that my retroactive jealousy is real and it still haunts me to this day.
I’m here to chat if anyone needs to talk. Despite the fact that i may not be in the same boat as most of the people here, I could still use some advice.
I’m a 22 years old straight man who never kissed, never had sex, and never had a relationship. I’m not religious, by the way. This was initially (13-15 yo) because I was kinda shy, and after some time this ended up being a choice of mine and I accepted myself this way.
However, I’m currently suffering some self emotional pressure to find someone like me, and it seems it gets harder to find other virgins as you get older. I have a strong feeling that I would suffer a lot (like others described) if I end up passionate about someone who’s not virgin like me.
P.S. Also, I’ve read that people who are more sociosexually unrestricted (i.e. have more casual sex) are more likely to cheat you.