What Causes Retroactive Jealousy On A Psychological Level

Let’s Find Out About Retroactive Jealousy

Afshara
3 min readOct 18, 2022
Photo by Morgan Sessions on Unsplash

“Retroactive jealousy” is when a person becomes jealous over a partner’s past romantic relationships with other people and not just their present ones.

According to clinical psychologist Dr Romanoff, retroactive jealousy can lead the partner to feel jealous about things like:

  • How their partner spent time with their ex, or what kind of challenges they experienced together during their relationship
  • How intense their relationship was with their former partner
  • How was their physical intimacy

What Are The Causes of Retroactive Jealousy?

Dr Romanoff pointed out some possible reasons behind this kind of jealousy are:

I) Insecurity

Insecurity is one of the common reasons. Whenever any partner feels threatened and doesn’t feel safe in the relationship, he/she is most likely to experience retroactive jealousy. Also, this jealousy can happen if their partner is dishonest and behaves distantly in the relationship.

ii) Lack of fulfilment

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Afshara

Ph.D. (Management)| Educator | Content Writer | Writing about things that intrigue my curious mind | https://beacons.ai/afshara17