r/retroactivejealousy

I'm kind of posting this as somewhat of an open discussion post since I've noticed a lot of things that surprised me as I've been on here.

The main thing I've noticed is that there seems to be a very even gender split in those experiencing Retroactive Jealousy. This surprised me for a couple reasons. Firstly, much of media tends to put guys as being jealous of their girlfriend's past, and seems to discount the fact that women experience these issues as well.

I have also noticed a massive disconnect in this on other subreddits. I've noticed that, usually when posted about in other relationship subs, that it's mostly men how are getting absolutely slammed in their posts about RJ, mostly because they are predominantly the ones posting about it.

I just think how its interesting how this sub has such an even gender split in those experiencing RJ, whereas in almost all other parts of media it would seem like it's almost entirely men

My daughter is marring her partner early next year. Because the wedding will be girl - girl she wants only guests that have supported her life style choices and are truly happy for her.

For some background , a few years before I met my wife she was in a relationship with, now follow me here, her sister's husband's brother or her sister's brother in law. This guy is what I call an obnoxious intellectual. He wants everyone to know how smart he is. Imagine if you had to see one of your wife's exes at every family event held by her sister. I've tolerated him to keep the peace.

He has kids my daughter's age and they'll be invited. Because he fits into the parameters of her invite list, supportive of her lifestyle, he's invited too.

I've expressed my displeasure over this to my wife and she agreed with me and said she would explain to my daughter. He would be the only person invited that's not a relative per se and, in my opinion had a too distant connection.

My RJ is on high alert right now . I'm literally spiraling over something that will happen seven months from now,

I'm in a no win situation , the invitations haven't gone out yet but my wife got his address for my daughter to send one and he's not one to skip a party. He'll probably act like the FOB.

I know it's her special day and all this crap and I'm trying to minimalize the situation but man, I feel disrespected by my wife at the very least for not fighting for me. She definitely knows I suffer with RJ and I feel she's deliberately putting me in the cross hairs.

I wwnt enjoy my daughters wedding but I'm afraid the biggest memory of it will be my wife's ex being there against my wishes.

Someone talk me down .

This is a long one - bear with me. I have spent years struggling with RJ over a specific partner/event in my wife’s past, though only recently found out the name for it, as it came up during ongoing treatment for my diagnosed OCD.

I went several years without it cropping up or bothering me but now feel blindsided by its recurrence - the obsessive thoughts, replaying in my mind not only the event that causes the RJ but also some of the arguments that came after the fact. It’s causing friction between my wife and I and I am struggling with how to handle it.

Background:

My wife and I are in our late 30s and have been happily married for nearly 10 years. Several years before we met, my wife met and had sex/essentially a one night stand with a prominent celebrity. She was single at the time. Our values are not misaligned - we both dated around in our single years and I admit that given the opportunity to have a one night stand with an attractive celebrity I would have likely done the same.

I reacted to the information very badly. Part of the reason was how I found out. All of my wife’s friends knew that it had happened, and one of them made an oblique reference to it in front of me just a month or two after we started dating. It was enough that I was able to surmise what happened, but I didn’t say anything to her about it for a while.

Over the next 6-8 months, I tried to ignore my suspicion, hoping that I had misinterpreted a joke and that what I feared hadn’t actually happened. However, during that same time frame, other oblique references were made to this celebrity. I finally asked my wife point blank if she had hooked up with him and she readily told me that yes, she had.

That’s when things got really bad. First, I told her how upset I was that I was left in the dark about it when seemingly everyone else in her life knew and joked about it often. A couple people, as mentioned, made jokes right in front of me. It made me feel like I was the butt of the joke. Even her teenage brother made a stupid reference to the celeb the first time we met (“hey sis, how is that celeb doing??”) which pissed me off - why tf did her little brother know about it?

It got worse - I snooped through her phones and emails and found her original text exchanges with the celebrity. I found her texting and email a bunch of friends about meeting him, how excited she was for the prospect of him calling her, how awesome her night with him was, saying that they had fantastic sex. Predictably, seeking out more info blew up in my face and I felt terrible both about myself and about what had happened in her past.

She tried her best to reassure me: that it was in the past, that she cared about me now, that it wasn’t important to her anymore, etc. She said the reasons she didn’t tell me until I asked were because a) she was embarrassed and b) she was afraid how I’d react, which given how I DID react felt justified. And rationally, I believed her. I have never questioned her love for me, and I am fully aware she did nothing wrong.

But I couldn’t let it go for a long time. I grilled her about it. Asked things like how could you do this, would you have thrown yourself at this guy if he wasn’t famous, how can you possibly not be comparing me to him, etc. I made her feel very bad about herself.

Eventually I got over the worst of it. It cropped up from time to time, like when a friend would unknowingly mention him (not because my wife hooked up with him, but because he was a celeb) or when I would see him on TV. But I never went back to belittling her over it or asking for more details.

We got married, things have been great for years.

Then a couple weeks ago, seemingly out of nowhere, it all came rushing back to me. The night itself, imagining them having sex, remembering all the excited texts and emails she sent her friends about it and about him and how hot he was. As a guy in my late-30s who looks it, I started obsessing again over whether she could possibly enjoy sex with me having this athletic, hot celebrity sexual experience in her past. I kept this all to myself for several weeks and eventually told my long time therapist about it (though I’d never brought the situation up to him before).

Last week my wife asked me what had been bothering me, since it was apparent I was struggling. So I told her - just a very simple statement: I’ve been struggling a lot with the celebrity situation lately. I left it at that.

In the moment she got upset, told me that she felt like a slt about it when it happened and feels like a slt about it now. We went to bed tense.

The next morning she told me she was angry and we’d talk later. I waited anxiously all day for that conversation. When it happened, she unloaded on me. Told me that she wasn’t going to be slt-shamed in her own house, that my obsessive issues over it were the cause of all her anxiety, that she didnt ever want to hear me upset about this situation ever again. Even if I saw the celebrity dancing naked on TV, she wanted me to paste a smile on my face and tell her everything is great, suffer in silence because she can’t deal with it anymore. She told me that years ago when I first handled it so badly, she had considered ending the relationship but obviously decided I was worth it. All this despite the fact that I didn’t rehash anything, didn’t ask for more information or reassurance, didn’t do anything like slt-shaming her, simply told her it was on my mind. And I told her that I was trying to address the situation the right way, with a therapist, after handling things so poorly years ago.

Over the next couple days I started feeling a little better about the situation, smoothed things over with her, didn’t rehash the specifics of our fight.

But again, all the obsessions have rushed back. I’m thinking again about texts and emails she sent 17 years ago. Replaying their sexual encounter in my mind. Comparing my body to his. Feeling like I was the only person not in on this huge joke and that it was at my expense. All driving me crazy, but I’m working with my therapist on it.

What I don’t know how to handle is conversations with my wife. Part of me wants to tell her that I was simply trying to communicate with her because she knew something was bothering me, that I wasn’t slt-shaming her, that I wasn’t rehashing the original fight. And to stand up for myself and tell her that it’s not fair of her to tell me to suffer in silence and put on a happy face, especially using language that she should have known I’d find triggering (the comment about him being naked on TV). I think I’m entitled to my feelings, to being upset, especially if I’m not asking for her reassurance. But now I’m afraid to talk to her. I feel that her comment about once considering ending the relationship was an implicit threat that if I don’t hide my feelings from her sufficiently, she’ll start considering ending it now. And on top of that, I feel like her telling me to fight the obsessions and put on a happy face are counterproductive and will make things worse.

I don’t even know what kind of feedback I’m looking for. I just feel like shit and I’m lost. I know I need to continue working with my therapist on the OCD and on making the memories less impactful to me. But how can I break down the wall that I feel like I’m responsible for building between me and my wife?

me (f19) and my man (m22) have been together for almost four months now. we have been on and off because since he got to know about my past, he can’t deal with it. i have only been in one contact before him which was online, only thing that happened was sending a picture.

the picture was in only a bra, cropped to only upper body, without face, majority of skin covered by hair. nothing visible on the picture wouldn’t be visible with clothing on. yet he still can’t let go of it. we have a really strong connection, understand each other and everything would be amazing between us, but he can’t fight his thoughts.

in the previous contact i was in, there were no feelings from my side and my man now is my first love. i’ve experienced my first things with him. all the time im explaining things to him very deeply, trying to ease his overthinking. he brings up my past pretty often but every time im dealing with it with patience and the will to understand him.

we had a lot of fights over that, he reacts with aggression and even though he loves me, he’s trying to make me leave because he can’t handle his thoughts.

we’re trying to save it but he says he tried everything and the thoughts aren’t going away. we talked it out many times but the situation remains the same. i want to do anything to help him get through it, it’s the only thing keeping us from being fully happy.

what can i do to help him? or what else can he try to beat those thoughts?

Been doing pretty good lately. I keep all of my RJ to myself nowadays but today i genuinely feel like ending my relationship over my RJ. It rarely gets like this anymore but everything feels like a duplicate of her past experiences and I genuinely cant take it anymore. i dont know what to do. For reference ive now realize ive posted not one but two ALMOST identical photos of her doing the same thing in the same place as her ex has posted. Or identical photos in the SAME exact spots. These are things like doing the same pose with her sisters dog in the same spot or at the neighbors pool at their vacation home. I did not realize her ex had posted these until AFTERWARDS obviously i would never intentionally make myself look dumb. It feels so embarrasing for me. Maybe the embarrasment is whats crushing me. I never feel special or unique, ever. She also is just so dishonest about her experiences that i never take comfort in her words.

I know everyone will just say i need to grow up and be alone and trust me i have considered this and still am but genuinely dumping her would destroy her and uproot her life which feels unfair because its MY problem. I do love her a lot but I also never feel good anymore because of my own mind really. I think being in a relationship is just so miserable for me. The highs are so high and the lows are so low i feel like i could run through a wall

might i add that i have significant trauma from people leaving me/ terrible childhood etc. so my brain is just generally a nightmare

I'm talking to this girl and her past had a bigger penis both girth and length bigger while I have an average size which is (5.1-5.5 inches in length and 4.5 - 4.7 inches in girth), She finished almost every time with her ex off penetration and didn't have any pain and this was for 3 years, I get it most women can't finish off penetration but I'm talking about this scenario, l know foreplay important as well which I do that. When I asked her if she felt a noticeable difference between me and her ex she said she did we didn't have proper sex yet like I mean not more than a minute. Is it even a good chance I can make her finish off my dick cause her own words she finished almost if not every time through penetration with her ex. Can I even make her finish off penetration? I don’t wanna hear toys or or that other stuff because we both don’t like toys and two I do a lot of foreplay I’m just so worried I can’t make her finish with my average size because maybe she used to bigger and that’s what better for her idk anymore it’s messing with me. Is it possible for me as well to make her finish almost every time as well when we have sex? And even if I do make her finish is the bigger one always going to feel better for her and give her a better orgasm?

girls whose bfs came from long term relationships, how do you guys fight retroactive jealousy?

HELP A GIRL OUT

hi, I really need an outside perspective because I genuinely don’t trust my own judgment right now.
I was with my ex for about 3 years. I loved him deeply and for a long time he felt like home to me. I was the one who eventually ended the relationship, but not because I stopped loving him. I was exhausted. We kept having the same conversations, hurting each other over the same things, and I felt like I had tried for a long time to fix it until I just couldn’t anymore.About a month after we broke up, I started dating someone new.Looking back, I think I made a really stupid assumption: I genuinely liked this new person, I was excited about him and wanted to be with him, so I thought that automatically meant I had gotten over my ex.
I basically thought, “If I can have feelings for someone else, obviously I’ve moved on.”Now I’m realizing those two things apparently aren’t the same.I’ve been with my current boyfriend for about a month now and my feelings for him ARE real. I’m attracted to him, I care about him, he treats me well, respects me, gives me attention, we have great conversations and the physical chemistry is insane. I don’t think I consciously used him as a rebound or replacement.
There are complications: there is a significant age gap, we’re coworkers, and my family strongly disapproves of the relationship, which has put an enormous amount of stress on me. But the actual relationship between us has been good.Then my ex started talking to another woman, and seeing him potentially move on affected me way more than I expected. I became jealous and started obsessing over the idea that somebody else could take the place I had in his life.Eventually my ex and I had a very emotional conversation and he told me that he wanted us to get back together.That should have been easy to reject considering I have a boyfriend.It wasn’t.I actually started considering it.
And that’s when I realized I may not have processed our breakup at all.Something else happened yesterday that made this even clearer to me.My ex and I were talking and he basically told me that there aren’t really “his people” and “my people” anymore — after three years together, a lot of them are just people we both know now.We started naming people and eventually I mentioned a particular girl I used to be EXTREMELY jealous of while we were together. I had been so insecure about her that I once made him promise me that nothing would ever happen between them.
The conversation triggered me, I hung up on him, and then — probably not my finest moment — I contacted her.
Except something completely unexpected happened.
She and I ended up talking for around TWO HOURS.
And I found out that there was literally nothing going on between them.From what came out of that conversation, it seems like my ex had actually been deliberately playing into my jealousy / making things sound a certain way because he knew it would get a reaction out of me. Meanwhile, when I actually spoke to the woman I had spent so much time being threatened by, reality was nowhere near what I had built up in my head.That really messed with me because it made me question how much of my jealousy right now is based on reality and how much is me panicking because I feel like I’m losing him.There is another woman he is currently talking to, and I’ve been jealous of her too. They talk frequently and have discussed traveling together. I even found myself wanting to contact her and tell her that my ex asked me to get back together.Part of me thinks she deserves to know. But if I’m completely honest, part of me also just wants her gone.
I don’t like admitting that.At the same time, I’m angry at my ex because I feel like he knows exactly what makes me jealous and sometimes deliberately pushes those buttons. So now I’m stuck wondering whether I’m reacting to an actual threat of losing him, whether he is provoking me because he still has feelings too, or whether we’re both just falling back into unhealthy patterns from our old relationship.And underneath ALL of this is the actual problem: I still have feelings for my ex.
When I imagine losing my current boyfriend, it hurts. I would miss him, his personality, our conversations, the physical connection and having him in my life. He genuinely matters to me.But when I imagine my ex permanently disappearing from my life — never hugging him again, hearing his laugh, having our stupid conversations, or eventually watching him build a life with someone else — it hits somewhere completely different.I miss him as a person. I miss his presence. I miss the familiarity and safety. He still feels like “home” to me. I also still love him. I also want that future with him.But I also don’t completely trust him when he says he wants me back.I don’t know whether he genuinely wants to rebuild our relationship or whether he misses me, is jealous himself, or likes knowing he can still get a reaction out of me. And the fact that he apparently still knows exactly how to trigger my jealousy makes me even more cautious.Most importantly, the problems that made me leave him didn’t magically disappear just because we miss each other.I also feel horrible toward my current boyfriend. He didn’t sign up to be part of some unfinished love story between me and my ex. My feelings for him are genuine and I don’t want to cheat on him or keep him around as a backup while I decide whether I want my ex.When I asked myself, “If neither man would be hurt and nobody would judge me, who would I instinctively choose?” my answer was probably my ex.
But when I imagined being with NEITHER of them for a while — just being single, properly ending one chapter and figuring out what I actually feel without either man pulling me in a direction — I felt relief.And now I’m wondering if that’s the answer I’m avoiding.Maybe getting into another relationship only a month after a three-year relationship ended was way too fast. Maybe liking someone new convinced me I had healed when really I had just moved forward without processing the loss.
I genuinely don’t know.
What would you do?
Would you stay with the current boyfriend and accept that missing/grieving an ex doesn’t mean you should go back?
Would you end the current relationship, stay single for a while, and only later decide whether the relationship with the ex deserves another chance?
And how much weight would you give to the fact that, underneath all the jealousy and chaos, if I imagine having to permanently choose one person, I still instinctively lean toward my ex?
Please be brutally honest. I know I’ve behaved irrationally in parts of this and I’m not looking for people to tell me I’m right. I genuinely want an outside perspective because right now I can’t tell the difference between love, grief, jealousy, nostalgia and fear of losing someone.

Me and my girlfriend have been together for a year and a half,she is my first one and I’m not hers.

Because of this i have RJ and that is mostly in sex,I don’t enjoy sex with her.I try to avoid even talking about it,for example last month we did it only once,and we live together so we cold have done it every night.

She tells me a lot of times that she is bored of this,that she enjoys it,but i dont wanna change a single thing about this,and i wont.

What would you do?

My gf has a body count of 2 while im virgin, I asked her foolishly how many times she had sex she said 3 times with her ex and 1 time with the other ex ,I always had a view that sex is something that should be done after marriage , so her having body of 2 is messing up my mind. She is perfect caring, loving all the qualities, but I genuinely find myself imagining her doing it with her exes whenever I try to sleep ending up in not being able to sleep.

my gf (28f) and i (24f) have been dating for one year. she has been in a couple of long term relationships with men but i am her first woman. i've only ever been in situationships so this is my first healthy long term relationship. everything feels great with her and she checks most of my boxes when it comes to being in a long term relationship. i recently have been incredibly caught up with my obsessive thinking about her and her most recent ex.

they dated for nearly 3 years, a lot of which was long distance, but eventually moved in together. they ended on good terms due to a difference in what they wanted out of life. they share a cat, which she still owns. they were following each other on social media until this week, when i expressed that it made me uncomfortable and helped fuel my RJ.

during their time as a long distance couple, she visited him in Japan a couple of times - once for a week or two, and again for 5 weeks. she talks about how much she misses it there and is dying to go back. i went there in november with a friend and had a great time. i would like to go back as well, but can't help and think about her and her ex living their lives together there. i've told her about my fears and she's been really good at reassuring me that she loves Japan for it's culture, food, etc. but I still can't shake the thought.

i have made the great mistake of stalking her social media pages and finding old pictures of them as a happy couple. i went into full on crazy mode and ended up finding her ex's page, his family, etc. where i found even more pictures. now i find that these images run through my head almost daily. this extremity has amplified over the past month or so and i can't seem to get it under control. i even find myself thinking about how he got to see all of her various facial expressions and emotions the same way i get to see them and it makes it feel less special or like it's not solely ours.

i am seeing a new therapist in a couple of days but i am starting to lose hope and fear that i am going to ruin our relationship because of this. i feel terrible for her because it is affecting me daily, and she can't do anything about it.

any advice/friendly reminders would be GREATLY appreciated.

i’ve been talking to a girl (27 f) for about 5 months now exclusively. We have honestly gotten really close especially the past 2 months and i’ve grown to really like this girls. It’s been about 3 years since my last relationship but i’ve never really had a “bachelor phase” since that’s not really my thing. she has told me she has her secrets that she hasn’t been fully revealing to me since she doesn’t want me to see her differently, but sometimes still drops stories/bombs on me from her past seggual experiences that honestly doesn’t have me feeling super comfortable.

2 nights ago i found her old OF content that she had done many years ago. the time she had created OF content was during the period she was highly addicted to drugs and mentally unstable. I can see that she has grown significantly since then. I still do value the time spent together but Idk how to approach this fully. I know this will likely be in the back of my mind for a little bit since it’s constantly been on my find since i’ve discovered it. I know it’s not a big deal for some people but this hurts a bit for me. i don’t want to come off as judgemental and make her feel worse about her past but right now i don’t feel to well about it either

Should i end things? Should i have been told this instead of stumbling across it on the internet? Am i the asshole since finding something about her past is really affecting me this hard?

I really don’t know anymore but I will talk to her about it tonight

I currently am in a three year long relationship that is also my first relationship I have ever been in. I am 18 and she is 20.
She has been in a prior relationship that was extremely abusive, but even with that I can’t shake the fact that she was all of my firsts and I was none of her firsts. I think about this more than I would like to admit and I’ve tried to talk to her about it, but she tells me that it’s just how it is and she can’t change it. For some reason, this eats me alive and I’ve had multiple anxiety attacks over it. The person she was with before was truly nothing short of evil so I know it’s stupid for me to be jealous about this all.
I truly do love this girl with all of my heart, but I find myself wondering about experiencing more before tying myself into a long term relationship. I think to myself that if we were to get married, I would not have gotten to experience as many things as she has and that I may want that.
While she only had one relationship before me, she also had a few sexual encounters which I never did have. She doesn’t speak fondly of any of these things and she constantly reminds me that she wishes she could go back in time and undo them all so I could’ve been her first for everything. How do I get myself to stop thinking about her with that other person? And how do I know I don’t want to experience other people or other things? This has been eating me alive for the past few months. I would truly appreciate some advice.

Guys sorry for asking this type of question again but im just hit a rock bottom. My gf and i been dating for 4 months and it was good tbh. I knew beforehand that she had 2 exes, one of which whom she slept with. But i just found out recently from her that she kissed 7 other guys during her 3 university years one of which was kissing at the club with a guy she never met before and other one was at playtime. What concerns me the most was every time i talked about these type of stuff, she denied or got really defensive and hid everything from me because according to her “did not want to lose me”. Me myself, only did stuff when i got into serious relationship like 1 year minimum together. Am i being too anxious or is it that bad? I sometimes imagine guys she were intimate with talking behind my back like, oh thats the girl i kissed at the bar etc. Btw we are 22m and 21f

As much as I want to try and help out here, it feels impossible to do so when a post is just a huge wall of text.

There's nothing wrong with a long, detailed post. But it takes way too much time to actually address any problems when I need to spend the majority of the time looking for the problems in the post.

I see so many posts here with 0 comments because of this reason.

I’m a 20-year-old woman, and I’ve been with my 21-year-old boyfriend for six months. Our relationship is oriented towards long term.

Our relationship is honestly great. He’s kind, honest, communicates with me, and we’re both experiencing our first serious relationship.

The thing is, I had no sexual history before him. He knew that sex was something very meaningful to me and that I wanted my first time to be with someone I genuinely loved and felt safe with. Before we started dating, he was completely honest and told me that he had a sexual past, and even told me to think about whether I was comfortable being with someone who had that history.

He had three sexual partners before me, but they were all one-time hookups. I only learned his exact body count recently (because I was curious and started asking questions), and for some reason, it made me feel insecure and jealous.

I think part of me struggles because I’ve never experienced casual sex. I find myself thinking, If I had a sexual past too, maybe I wouldn’t care about this so much.

He has reassured me multiple times that those experiences meant nothing to him emotionally and that he doesn’t think about those women anymore.

I think my biggest insecurity is honestly the idea that someone who has been comfortable having casual sex before might have a harder time seeing sex as something serious or meaningful in a relationship. I know that isn’t necessarily rational, especially because his actions toward me have shown me the opposite, and he told me that he did a lot of work on himself.

I feel kind of stupid because everything is going well, and he has given me no reason not to trust him. I think I’m struggling more with the fact that I can’t relate to his past than with the past itself.
Has anyone else experienced this, especially being with someone whose sexual history is different from yours? How did you get past the insecurity?

So, ive been seeing this girl for about 5 months. We talked about making it official a month ago where i said I am ready and she said she is sure she wants to be with me but needs a little more time due to personal reasons which I was fine with.
In the beginning she always talked about this one guy who she dated in the past and how he treated her bad and all but one day she brought up that he reached out to her on instagram and called apologizing. She didnt reply or answer the call but I was surprised that she still had him on social media. I didnt think of it much at the time as our thing was still new but suggested she should remove him given the history and she agreed.
Few months later when things started to get more serious we became exclusive I told her one thing about me is I would not like my partner to be connected with ex partners or hookups she agreed and said thats not a problem.
That guy was still on her instagram at that time.
A month later this came up again in our conversation and I asked if he is still on instagram with her she told me he is and probably noticed from my face that i didnt like that and asked me if i was upset and that she didnt think of it much, i said no its okay of she dont want to remove him. Few hours later she texted that she removed him and for her she never thought it was a big deal having him on instagramas she doesnt use it a lot.
Around the same time i noticed she had hinge (where we met) on her phone. It was kind of odd for me so i asked her she said she has her profile on pause and its been on pause since we met and that she didnt realize the app itself was on her phone.
A few weeks later i picked her up from her college friends re union kind of thing where a guy she used to hookup was present as well along with one other friend . She told me he was there once i picked her up and it made me feel weird.
Sometime after that we had a conversation about each other’s boundaries and what we expect from each other. And i told her the same thing again which she said is reasonable to ask and agreed.
Recently she had another get together with the same group of friends . And after they met i asked if that guy was there she said yes. My thing is she couldve just told me he is going to be there. I am not the kind of person that will stop her from going as it was a group thing but just giving me a heads up wouldve been nice and even after the get together she didnt tell me until I asked. Her reasoning was that she didnt know that he was going to come but the way i see it she knew of the possibility as its the same group.
She again agreed and said maybe because she has not been in a relationship in a long time these things are not clicking for her and she will change that.
Other than that she is great and puts in equal amount of effort.
Please tell me if I am asking for too much or overthinking this or being controlling.
I don’t like to tell anyone what to do but I feel like I am doing too much of that here, she is saying that I am not and she will let me know if she feels like it.
I do like her but i also feel like maybe we have different boundaries and expectations. I dont have anyone yo discuss this with so thought of posting it here, any advice is appreciated.

TL;DR
Girl i am seeing for 5 months (exclusive) had ex on instagram until i expressed i dont like that three times and also mentioned they staying connected to ex partners or hookups is something that i dont like during out boundaries talk and she agreed.

Had hinge (paused) on her phone 4 months in, said she didnt realize she had it on her phone.

Met ex hookup with one other college friend, it older i didnt like that she said thats reasonable, met him again in a group setting not telling me he was going to be there or after that he was there until i asked.

Upon asking she said she has not been in a relationship in a while so maybe thats why these things are not clicking.

Other than this she is great.

Am I thinking and asking for too much or being controlling?

Update - Hey! I greatly appreciate your input. I just had a conversation and conveyed exactly what youve mentioned.

She was apologetic and stated that she is not perfect and sometimes does not realize these things thats why needed more time to make it official and that I just need to be communicative if anything makes me feel uncomfortable.

I told her that ive been communicative since the beginning about these boundaries but the problem arise when you ignore it and I have to repeat the same thing and question everything which is not the healthy thing to do.

She said she understands and will take the accountability and work on it. Also her reasoning was if she didnt respect me or wanted to do something that i wasnt gonna like she couldve just lied (which i agree, she has been honest with these things as far as i know).

She is great in all other regards.

We ended the convo without a conclusion and said we will talk more later. I still kind of feel weird about everything. I know i am asking for advice from a stranger on internet but who cares, how would you go about it?

im dating a girl for some time and everything is perfect except she had one boyfriened in the past and one bc, ever since she told me about that i have been thinking about images of them doing it etc. am i overreactin or should i dump her because i want to stay with her for long not just have fling with her

hii reddit, me 20F and my boyfriend 21M have been together officially for about 4+ months, but we’ve been talking for 8+ months.

A month into us talking, he told me about his past, he has had 2 romantic relationships and then 2 sexual partners after the second relationship ended. At that time, he said he changed and would never go back to his old ways. 8 months later he has been treating me well, but theres the gut wrenching feeling that hits me every on and off. Whenever we’re happy together, it just hits randomly. The fact that he’s had his first everything and im just another girl, while he’s literally my first everything, as i have not had any boyfriends nor sexual partners before.

Ive been seeing so much about this on tiktok. Some women say the feeling never leaves and they just suffer with it in silence, some have even chose to end the relationship because it got too bad. Im stuck and reading more and more replies from women on TikTok just scares me even more.

Girls, does it ever get better? Or are there things you do to help you get over it? Thank you to those who read <3