“My husband won’t let go of my past…”

Mike’s wife got in touch with me.

“Can you have a chat with my husband about this obsession he’s got with my past? When he gets something stuck in his mind he just won’t leave it alone. But it’s all in the past. I slept with a few different men, and it was years ago. I’m this close to moving out if he doesn’t drop it…”

A week later, Mike is sitting in my therapy room.

“I know—it’s me,” he said. “But I don’t think there’s any ‘therapy’ for this.”

“Why’s that?” I asked.

“Because I latch onto things. I always have. Maybe it’s perfectionism—I need things in my life to feel right, to be right. But my wife’s past doesn’t feel right, and I know I can’t change it.”

His eyes softened a little. “I don’t know… I reckon we’ll need to separate.”

I paused. “How long have you two been together?”

“Eight years,” he replied.

“So it hasn’t felt right for eight years?”

“Well, it’s got worse,” he admitted. “I always knew about her past, those men. But it didn’t used to bother me quite so much. I love my wife—I always have—but I can’t gloss over it now. Her past offends me. I can’t live with it.”

He looked at me. “You must have seen this before—this perfectionism or whatever it is? My wife says I’ve got OCD about her past. Whatever this is, I can’t change how my mind works. I’ve tried.”

A tough therapy challenge for sure.

Retroactive Jealousy and the “sticky mind”

Mike was onto something with the perfectionism. I hear a lot of “it doesn’t feel right, and it needs to be put right” thinking in people who struggle with their partner’s past.

People with retroactive jealousy (RJ) are most definitely thinkers. Problem-solvers. Their minds latch onto things and won’t let go—a trait sometimes called sticky mind.

This often shows up in other areas of life:

• Overworking and difficulty delegating
• A powerful sense of responsibility
• High personal standards and self-criticism
• A deep frustration at their own inability to “let things go”

Many RJ sufferers are high achievers. They succeed at work because their attention to detail and work ethic serve them well. But in relationships, this tendency becomes a huge source of distress.

Is perfectionism the cause of Retroactive Jealousy?

If you recognise some of these traits in yourself, it can be a helpful insight. But what do you do with it?

Should you simply tell yourself to stop being such a perfectionist?

That won’t work. And here’s why: perfectionism doesn’t cause RJ—or any other form of obsessive thinking.

Consider these examples:

• If I’m worried I have a serious health issue, I’ll research symptoms obsessively, seek second opinions, and fixate on the problem.
• If I think my car might have a dangerous fault, I’ll take it to the garage repeatedly and remain hyper-vigilant while driving.
• If I worry that my relationship is fundamentally flawed, I’ll analyse it endlessly, trying to “solve” an unsolvable problem.

In all these cases, the behaviour looks like perfectionism, but it’s really a reaction to a perceived problem. The real issue is how we arrived at that problem in the first place.

How Retroactive Jealousy takes root

Mike didn’t always struggle with his wife’s past. For years, it wasn’t a major issue. So what changed? Did his perfectionism suddenly notice and latch onto it?

No. Something triggered a shift.

Maybe he read something online that made him rethink things. Maybe a friend’s offhand comment planted a seed of doubt. Or maybe a low point in his self-esteem made him feel more vulnerable, causing his mind to start pattern-matching.

RJ works like this:

1. Something shifts our perspective – a new piece of information, a moment of insecurity, an intrusive thought.
2. The brain starts looking for evidence – analysing memories, imagining scenarios, fixating on details.
3. We get emotionally hooked – the more we analyse, the stronger the emotional response.
4. It feels urgent – we need to “solve” it, leading to compulsive thinking and rumination.

Perfectionism doesn’t cause RJ, but it amplifies the response once the doubt has taken root.

The key to overcoming RJ

To move past RJ, we don’t need to debate the logic of the thoughts (“It was years ago, let it go” rarely helps). Instead, we need to understand how we reasoned our way into the problem.

This is why exposure work and cognitive approaches are so effective:

• Instead of arguing with the thoughts, we examine how we arrived at them.
• Instead of trying to “solve” the problem, we accept uncertainty.
• Instead of engaging in reassurance-seeking, we disrupt the compulsive thought loops.

With Mike, I was careful not to dispute his RJ thoughts outright. Telling him “It’s in the past, she’s done nothing wrong” wouldn’t have helped. Instead, we worked on:

1. Understanding the mental process behind his RJ – how his mind had latched onto a perceived problem and run with it.
2. Gradually reducing the emotional charge – using exposure techniques to normalise the thoughts rather than fight them.
3. Letting go of “perfectionism” as the issue – seeing RJ for what it really was: an emotional fixation, not a need to make the past perfect.

And it worked. Over time, Mike’s wife’s past started to matter less. He was able to see the intrusive thoughts for what they were—just thoughts—and disengage from them.

True story (though names and details have been changed, of course).

Final thoughts

RJ can be intense, frustrating, and exhausting. But it’s treatable too. You don’t need to change your personality or stop being a deep thinker. You just need to understand the reasoning traps that fuel RJ—and learn to step out of them.

If this resonated with you, I encourage you to explore cognitive and exposure-based approaches to RJ. There’s a way through this, and it’s not about fixing your tendencies—it’s about changing your relationship with those RJ thoughts.