The Zachary Stockill Podcast

In today’s video, I’m going to talk about one vicious cycle of retroactive jealousy and how it can impact relationships.

Read or watch below to learn more about the vicious cycle of retroactive jealousy.

Zachary Stockill: One common mistake many people with retroactive jealousy make is asking their partner a lot of questions about their past relationships and experiences.

As a regular viewer, you’re likely aware that I believe asking your partner about their past is a mistake. In this video, I’ll share three helpful tips on breaking this habit.

My name is Zachary Stockill, and since 2013, I’ve been helping men and women from all over the world overcome retroactive jealousy and save their relationships.

If you’d like more information about my work or want to work with me one-on-one, please visit this link.

For those here for the first time, the term ‘retroactive jealousy‘ refers to unwanted, intrusive thoughts, often obsessive curiosity, and what I call ‘mental movies’ about your partner’s past relationships or dating/sexual history.

I am a former sufferer of retroactive jealousy. I’ve been free of it for a very long time now.

However, when I was struggling with this bizarre issue, I made one of the worst mistakes you can make for many reasons: I asked my then-girlfriend a million questions about her past.

I am still ashamed to admit that today. When I think about how I used to act, the questions I would ask, and the way I behaved, I am not proud of it.

Needless to say, it did not help the relationship; it made things much worse. It caused my then-partner a lot of pain and did not solve my retroactive jealousy.

I can promise you that.

Over the years, I’ve received thousands of emails from retroactive jealousy sufferers around the world.

And when I say thousands, I mean thousands.

Not one person has ever told me, ‘You know what, Zach, I sat my partner down and asked her four million questions about her past, and that solved my issue.’



That has not happened even once in my entire decade-plus of doing this work. So, all this is to say, if you want to ask your partner eight million questions about their past to solve this problem, stop.

It’s not going to work.

The solution is far deeper than that. But of course, if you’re asking your partner eight million questions about their past, or even just a lot of questions, you might wonder, how do I stop?

I remember it very well because this can be a difficult habit to break. Sometimes, you get an answer that makes you feel good or boosts your ego, and you think, ‘Oh, well, that solved the problem.’

Or maybe you ask them about something relatively important to you, like, ‘Did you do X?’ or ‘Did you do this?’ or whatever.

They give you the answer you think you want,