The challenges of retroactive jealousy exposure

Exposure and Response Prevention (ERP) is really helpful for people with all kinds of OCD-type struggles. But when the thoughts revolve around another person – i.e. your partner – coming up with useful exposures can be tricky.

It’s not like touching the object with the germs or going to the scary place. We need to come up with ways to deliberately provoke the thoughts and uncertainties, and even the judgement or disgust, without having to get our partner involved.

And with retroactive jealousy, when the focus is on our partner’s sexual past, it’s even more tricky.

Partners of people with retroactive jealousy have had enough of their past being dragged up all the time. Partners can be supportive but we have to be respectful in how we go about ‘using’ their past for exposure therapy.

ERP exposures vs compulsions

Looking at an old photo of our partner with their ex, in order to activate the feelings, might be considered an effective exposure.

But it’s possible that we’re doing that already, as a compulsion.

You know, my mind has been locked onto her past all day, and now I’m on her Instagram looking through her past to try to get some relief…

These are the things we’re trying to stop doing. Exposure and Response Prevention is exposing ourselves to the trigger and having the thoughts – and then letting the feeling pass without doing anything to try to stop the thoughts or make it better.

Not looking up the past or asking about the past or replaying the past in our minds. Being able to leave it alone, let it pass.

Imaginal exposures are useful here

Retroactive jealousy has us using (or misusing) our imagination to keep replaying scenarios about our partner’s past. We can use our imagination to recover from the obsession too.

You can go anywhere in your imagination, as you’ve probably found – right into the details. We’ll do some of that, deliberately and therapeutically.

Example exposure: her ex at the dinner party

Here’s an example of the kind of exposure we might come up with.

In therapy, I create these with my clients, making sure it’s sufficiently triggering but not too triggering. And we can learn to do this ourselves too.

It’s like a script, a story, and it’s all in the present tense.

I’m going to a dinner party with my girlfriend and some of her friends. And her ex is coming along. Well I call him an ex – they had this hot casual relationship before we met. They’re all part of a friend group, they’ve all known each other for years.

We arrive at the party and sit at the dinner table, and he’s sat right opposite me. And my girlfriend is right next to me.

I can’t swap seats or get away, and it’s a small group and I need to stay cool and calm. He’s good looking and funny and confident, and he seems really comfortable with being at the party single, available.

He chats and smiles, and jokes with me and my girlfriend. And she seems happy to see him. I wonder what connection they had and might still have.

And all her other friends around the table can see this play out; they all know how sexually compatible they were, all the fun they had together.

Whoah what do you think? Would this press a RJ button for you? And just to make sure…

This reminds me that I’ll never really know what they had, or what future social events he might come along to.

Now all this might be realistic or not, but that’s not the point. It just needs to be realistic enough to give us the feeling, the discomfort.

These friends probably wouldn’t set up this seating plan, they might not even invite him. But for our purposes, they do.

Other kinds of scripts we might come up with could be:

I go to the hairdresser and my husband’s ex works there now and she does my hair. She’s really pretty and funny. She asks me how he is and when I tell him about it later he seems to light up…

Or I’m out with my girlfriend and I notice she’s on Snapchat and she’s smiling at something and then she puts her phone face down. And I’ll never know for sure who or what she was just looking at…

How to engage with imaginal exposure scripts

So I read this script. I go there in my imagination and what am I not going to do? Compulsions.

No asking for assurance or talking to my girlfriend about it. And not ruminating on it. Not thinking about this guy or telling myself any further stories about him or my girlfriend’s past.

And if I notice I’ve triggered the back and forth of rumination: ‘she did it’ – ‘but it doesn’t matter’ – ‘but she did it, does she still like him’ etc, then I get my attention back to the here and now.

I’m accepting the thought and the feeling but I’m not pursuing it. That’s what I’m practising here. It’s response prevention and there are mindful ways to help us do this.

So we’re following little scripts: where I am, who I’m with, what I’m doing. And we make it juicy, with some details that tap into the uncertainty or the reality of our partner’s past.

We can make it as detailed as we like, and leave it open at the end. I realise I’ll never fully know everything about their past. Which is fundamentally true for all relationships.

And the practice is to read it a couple of times a day, taking my time to really picture it and feel whatever I feel. Discomfort, uncertainty, frustration, judgement, anger.

Top tip: record and listen back

You’ve most probably got a recording app on your phone. Read the script slowly and clearly into the app, maybe a couple of times.

Then listen to it every day for a week. Listen to it at different times, in different places. Thoughts can pop up anywhere so it’s good practice. Incorporate this into your day-to-day.

You can record yourself a voice message on WhatsApp and listen to it back – just make sure you send it to yourself. Go careful with this!

Guidelines for effective ERP exposure

It’s possible to do exposures the wrong way, or not effectively. So here are some guidelines for getting the most benefit.

Make the scenario sufficiently provocative

We want to make sure the scenario presses our retroactive jealousy buttons. It provokes the uncertainty we have about our partner’s past.

And we start light, with a scene that gives us a bit of that feeling. Maybe a 4/10 on the discomfort scale. And we work our way up, practising having the feeling and not reacting to it.

If it’s too much too soon, no problem. We pick something lighter and slightly less provoking.

Gradually increase the intensity

We might work up to a ‘worst case scenario’ script.

For example: I discover that my partner had more sexual partners than I thought, and they all live in our town.

We may exaggerate it deliberately, ramping up the uncertainty: I know I’ll spend the rest of my life not knowing…

Remember: we’re not doing this to be cruel to ourselves. It can sound counter-intuitive at first, I know.

But the aim is to get our sensitivity to these thoughts and imaginings down. To get the sense of panic down. And we do this through gradual exposure, learning how to pass the time so the panic peaks and subsides by itself.

Allow sufficient time for feelings to subside

We want to do the exposures for long enough. Maybe listen and envisage for 10 minutes, or keep listening for longer.

Exposure isn’t a quick, white-knuckle dip in and out again. We want to do it for long enough to have the feeling and then feel it start to subside. And that might take a while, especially at first.

Treat exposure as a positive learning experience

With retroactive jealousy, it’s very natural to want to avoid these intrusive thoughts, to push them away. And leaning in can feel scary – what if I trigger myself for the rest of the day? What if I have a big reaction?

This is all part of the exposure. Embracing this uncertainty, realising that we can tolerate it long enough to pass.

Do exposures consistently and frequently

Repetition is key here, taking time to do the exposure every day.

Think of it like one of those listening courses for learning a new language. You do it every day, you make time for it. And it’s repetitive. Once the novelty wears off, it’s a bit of a grind. You don’t always feel like doing it, but you keep it up because you know it stretches you.

Stick with a script, every day for a week or two. Then determine whether you’ve been able to alleviate compulsions.

It can get boring, and that’s actually a positive. That’s the anxious arousal coming down. It gets old, it gets boring. My intrusive thoughts can be boring – I don’t need to engage with them.

No get-out clauses

In the script, we don’t want any get-out clauses or softeners. No ‘and then I felt fine’ or ‘then my girlfriend told me everything was good’.

That’s either false comfort or it opens up rumination. ‘But why did she say that?’ etc.

It doesn’t need to be perfect

We want to hit the spot, to sufficiently press the button. But we don’t need to get this 100% right.

Perfectionism and ‘is this working?’ can start to creep in. Every exposure session is a chance to practise, it’s not a challenge.

Just like that language course, you learn from your mistakes. If you didn’t do compulsions, that’s great. If you did a different compulsion or you did ruminate on it, OK that’s an insight. You’ve learned something for next time.

Accept having the feelings

The goal isn’t to get to the point where you can think about your partner’s past and feel completely neutral.

You can still feel uncertain or insecure or judgemental or whatever you feel. But it’s fleeting; you feel it more temporarily.

And if you do an exposure enough and consistently for a week or two, you’ll start getting that shift. It feels good to observe this.

Is it best to do exposures with the guidance of a therapist?

Yes, therapists bring their experience and help keep exposure sessions on track. But we can absolutely learn how to do this as self-help too.

Is there more to overcoming RJ than doing imaginal exposures?

Yes, we do some preparatory work. We get clear on the themes and the underlying feelings that keep coming up for you.

We see if there are other factors such as depression or trauma that we should address. We’re not going to embark on intense ERP exposures if we’re feeling depressed.

Exposure is the most active ingredient of retroactive jealousy therapy, but not the only ingredient.

Developing an attitude towards RJ thoughts and feelings

The insights of doing exposure response prevention stick with us. It’s not a ‘one and done’ treatment, it’s a new attitude towards thoughts and feelings to adopt and maintain.

We continue to lean in to the uncertainties of our lives, of our relationships. By not pushing back on retroactive jealousy thoughts, we’re much less pushed around by them in return.

I hope this gives you some useful insight into imaginal exposures for retroactive jealousy, and how to get the most from them.