An Intro to Retroactive Jealousy
Does "being there first" hold a great deal of weight in relationships?
I used to write a lot about why men do what they do. I analyzed them to a point of unconsciousness, thinking if I break them down diligently, I would somehow instigate a shift in dubious behaviors. Men don’t bother me as of late. I understand why they do what they do. It makes sense to me, even their shittiest actions. I understand their logic behind it, even if they do me no well.
Women bother me as of late. I feel betrayed by every silly, illogical, insecure, hateful action women do. Men can’t hurt me. Women can. The way they treat their fellow women is one of the most crushing facts I have had the misfortune to witness.
It’s breaking my heart.
The fact men stick to each other in such brotherly ways, throughout their entire lives, makes me jealous. I want to experience that, if only for one day.
The line I’ve read somewhere made me sad, at first - “All men are the same age”, but then after it marinated a bit, it made me envious. They are all the same, all the same age, feeling an eternal sense of comradeship toward one another.
Why can’t we do it? My entire life, I tried to be that to women around me, who in return mauled me with their bullshit. Unimportant, silly, unfair bullshit. I’m taller? My hair is better? It’s insane what women find to be offended by or insecure about.
I got blamed for their break-ups if I was at the same event as their significant other a few days prior. Without even checking what happened, they would mobilize our entire friend group to ignore me, hate me, remove me.
My entire life I’m some woman’s scapegoat for something. Your husband bought my Playboy, back then? He might have wanked a few times on my pic when he was younger? Completely disregarding the fact - I’m a decent fucking human being and I’m good to you.
I’m not flirtatious when in the company of your men, I’m behaving like a tomboy, and I would never give your man a reason to disrespect you, on my account. In fact, I’d probably call him out on it, if he would do it in front of me.
Doesn’t matter? My legs are longer?
We want society to treat us with respect, yet we’re so infantile. We fight about boys, clothes, jewelry, bags yet we want to be taken seriously?
What’s most defeating to me is the fact that the quality of a woman as a human being rarely matters. You will betray a decent female friend just because you think she has something of value, which you don’t have - disregarding her character. You’ll pick your girlfriends not based on character, but on who’s the least threatening to you.
I had women love-bomb me in the beginning, barging into my life with all these ideas about how we can make it better, all up until the day their male friends gave me a dash more attention, or they realized my social currency is higher than theirs (who cares, if I’m good, you’ll be good), or they realized I have boundaries I don’t want crossed.
Always the same, exact, tiring scenario.
You don’t think I’ve ever met a woman that was more interesting or prettier than me? I did. Plenty. In fact, I had a friend so beautiful and mesmerizing, no one even looked my way when out together. But she was a decent, nice fucking person, and I had no heart to leave her home, not to suck up all the attention.
We all feel the feels of incompetence, comparison, I do on most days; this article is not to shame you for feeling it, it’s to make us all understand we can’t always selfishly act on it.
If I would ever decide to treat any woman less than the goodness of her heart, regardless of her having something I possibly don’t - it would sign my utter failure as a woman and a human being.
What I’m banging on with this?
It’s the recent examples of this I see in society that make my skin crawl. Women leaving hateful comments on other women’s social media. Having all these discussions that are none of your business. You are offended with Madonna’s face? But only because you are actually a good girl-scout who supports women and supports Madonna, and wish her well actually, you aren’t hateful, you just wish she could age gracefully - give me a fucking break. It’s not your business how someone ages. You aren’t nice. You are condescending, and acting superior; leaving women alone if they want to age gracefully or fill themselves with a bunch of fillers - both scenarios actually mean not being sexist or ageist.
Get it through your skull; not everyone wants a picket fence and a family, some women just want to fuck young hot boys until they can stand, and let this woman be. Let her photoshop her face if that’s her game, why does she need to age gracefully?
She can age in debauchery if that’s what she wants!
Her face has nothing to do with you, and isn’t it beautiful, to have so many versions of us?
The recent Hailey Bieber hateful rhetoric towards Selena Gomez, like, you are married to this guy and you STILL are banging on about his former love? There are so many records of this woman’s retroactive jealousy, I don’t have the time or the space to feature them all here, plus, I’m not 12.
The woman who used to be a fan, almost a stalker of Justin, can’t seem to let go, even after years of him expressing his love for her, publicly or otherwise.
Why are we like this?
Pamela Anderson’s documentary. After decades of abuse this woman suffered at the hands of men, media, society, and finally was able to tell her story - it should be a triumph for all of us, collectively. We are ALL women. We could be all women. And we should understand all women.
Instead, Brittany Furlan; Tommy Lee’s current wife found offense at Pam releasing her story, and went on a hateful tangent against her. Is a woman not allowed to tell her past, just because her past is part of your present?
The fucking audacity.
Brittany’s course of actions after the documentary was released started with subtle digs and ended with a full-on armageddon:
First, she tweeted: “You know what’s good for your mental health? Living in the present.”
Then she addressed the public on TikTok letting her 16 followers know she was doing ok amidst another woman telling her life story.
Then she recorded a video, in Pam’s 90’s Filter on TikTok mocking Pam while insinuating she would be happy if Brittany died.
And finally, she leaked Pam’s messages to Tommy to a TikTok gossiper who made it public.
All followed with the not so cryptic messages like - “Guys, making jokes is how I cope”, and “If you guys know what I know…”
Woman, we all know what you know. You didn’t discover a key to a holy grail of woman’s wisdom - you could be Pamela in a decade, she could have been you at some point in life with some other guy, I could be you, you can be ALL women. Precisely why we should understand and not judge or hate ANY woman.
Unless they are Marjorie Taylor Greene.
Retroactive jealousy is one of the life subjects I’ve become to be most fascinated about.
I’m trying to understand the psychology behind it. Why does it happen? Why are women jealous of their partner’s exes? I don’t get the conundrum: if your ex or his ex still wanted to be with him/her - you wouldn’t be here.
The fact you are here clearly means - you are supposed to be here, regardless of how fun it is for you.
You are here. With him.
If you are following a huge, epic, publicly known, paparazzi followed relationship people loved and adored, you must know what you’re following up. And I totally understand if not everyone’s up for it, but then you just don’t do it. Don’t date a man who was in that kind of relationship, if you can’t follow that. Or handle it.
What is the point of deciding to be with a man whose past you can’t handle, but making everyone’s life miserable?
A super successful friend of mine told me once, he met a young 20-something girl (he’s well in his 50s), and she told him she wasn’t comfortable with him talking to his ex-wife. Erm, you are dating a 50-something-year-old, you don’t think he comes with something or someone in his past? Was he raised in the woods or a monastery?
He explained to her he has a huge million-dollar company, world known, that he founded with his ex-wife who he divorced 20 years ago. The ex-wife is the CEO of their company. She also has a partner. So he explained to his new 20-something-year-old girlfriend that not talking to his ex-wife is simply impossible - they are business partners.
His 20-something girlfriend responded that she understands that, but she just doesn’t want her boyfriend to talk to his ex-wife. They split up.
Can you erase the past?
Why would you want to?
Why can’t someone’s past be respected, as the present and the possibility of a future?
You can be any woman. You are any woman. You are a young girl, you are an older woman, you are an old woman, you are depending on someone and you are independent, you are ALL women.
Tides can turn, and probably will; you will at some point in your life be what you despised or disapproved of once. You will probably be someone’s ex and you’ll wish to have your past respected.
I had a huge epic 8-year relationship that everyone loved and adored, which was followed in media heavily. We had a very amicable break-up that was cooking for a long time; I didn’t like his lifestyle and habits and saw him more as a friend by the long end of the relationship. There were no scenes or any drama, so we stayed pretty good friends after the breakup. I still liked him as a human being. It was easy for us.
When he met his new girlfriend, he told me that the first thing she asked him to do it throw away the boxes full of magazines with us in them.
It was so foreign to me, I thought he was joking when he told me “she just doesn't like you”. She has never met me.
This is the conundrum that gets me, the audacity: when we were together, it was my doing that got him the manager and later the agents that helped him get his first roles; and after the breakup, I helped him get the biggest acting role of his life where he made tons of money. This wasn’t an accidental course of action, it was planned, working on it daily, while I neglected my own career, to get him to the point of having that Hollywood life, residency, and the ability to be where he wouldn’t otherwise be.
His new girlfriend, later wife got to enjoy the life he has because of my logistics, my contacts, my doing. You don’t like me, but ya like the life?
She forbade him to talk to me. She got someone to erase the information about our relationship from Wikipedia. He told me she told him how she’s pissed I got to be with him in his prime, and not her.
This all seemed like a movie to me, and not real life.
I don’t want to be with him. You do. Is this mental gymnastics really needed?
He told me he saw my car outside of the store once and he wanted to go in to say hi to me, and introduce us; she didn’t want to, he didn’t insist probably for the fact he would have to explain how he knows my car I bought after we broke up.
I would have loved to meet her. In fact, I can meet them both for lunch, and feed their three kids chicken fingers.
Why can’t the past AND the present be equally respected?
What is wrong with us women?
You hate me, yet you never met me, and you can easily be me in years to come.
He’s not an easy person to live with, and I’m the only other person on this planet who knows exactly what she’s possibly dealing with, at times. I would think, that could connect us, and not divide us.
I don’t want him to be unhappy, I was glad he found someone that’s more similar in lifestyle to him.
A friend once told me I’m too American and too detached to understand this feeling.
Or maybe I’m just too Sagittarius.
So this is me trying to.
It’s the theory and logic behind retroactive jealousy that fascinates me. Why does it develop? Is it founded on actual fear, or is it just instinctive?
Do these women really fear losing this guy? Makes no sense to me, because if someone wanted to stay with a guy, a new woman wouldn’t be there. Doesn’t this realization solve the issue? Or that’s exactly what’s making them insecure?
An interesting article popped out in The Cut, as I was dwelling on this subject. “A Love Letter to All My Exes’ Exes’ Instagram Accounts” by author Morgan Sullivan, giving her account as to why she can’t stop looking at her exes’ exes’ Instagram accounts.
This might give some insight:
“I’d first found these accounts when I was dating our now-mutual exes. Sometimes I’d click out of visceral jealousy, other times out of curiosity. No matter: They were all, in their own ways, the woman I wanted to be. These women could’ve been anyone, but because of my exes, I had more stake in their game and more reason to compare myself to them. Gutted by my jealous, irrational early-20-something feelings, they were the center of every fiction story I’d write in my mind, where I’d grant myself the answer to questions like, Did they make my ex happier? Was the sex better? — always in their favor. It didn’t matter if they were funny and bedazzling or edgy and aloof. Come to think of it, they were all so different but had something in common; something both my self-doubt and the Hollywood Industrial Complex fooled me into thinking held a great deal of weight in relationships: They were there first.”
“There were there first”.
All this because someone was somewhere first?
Someone is always going to be somewhere first. But why should the first bother us? First doesn’t mean the best compatibility. It’s just first. In my opinion, being first doesn’t have a great deal of weight.
I might be wrong.
Also, it’s probably not the first the first, but the first that mattered.
I often wonder how my situation would play out if my ex and I had kids. To even think how much damage some women can do to someone’s kids because they don’t like “someone being there first”.
A friend of mine told me a crushing story the other day, after she read my article on Pamela’s Documentary, where I introduced this subject. She was a top model, one of the most beautiful creatures I laid my eyes on. Still is. She was married to a famous athlete. They have 2 kids together. It was one of those public, famous relationships. They split up and both have new partners and another child with those new partners.
I would say perfect, amazing story, one big happy family, everyone found someone that maybe fits them better, all are happy, what more can we ask from life?
Except it’s not all happy. Except, my friend’s ex-husband's new wife is interfering in her life, meddling; as a result the ex-husband is not talking to his teenage daughter and is trying to turn the younger child against her, even filling reports of her not being a good mother to her third child she has with someone else.
I can not in my right mind understand it, condone it - how someone’s past can threaten your present so damn much the children need to suffer as a result?
Egos > lives?
We must do better.
And as Morgan Sullivan concludes in her The Cut article -
“It took years of maturing and one healthy relationship to realize my exes’ feelings for them had no bearing on me; I was never up against these women. But while that pinchy feeling is gone, my nosiness remains. The routine is almost instinctual now, like itching a scratch.”
You are NEVER up against any women. Only women fully understand what you are and will be going through.
I sometimes dream about my ex’s new wife finding my number and calling me so I can tell her - don’t abandon your career for him. Cheer him on, but do YOU too.
I want to tell her the things I know, and she yet has to discover, hoping she doesn’t discover it way too late.
👏🏻