Jan 07 2025 7 mins 1
In today’s video, I discuss how to handle retroactive jealousy with an oversharing partner.
Read or watch below to learn strategies for dealing with retroactive jealousy with an oversharing partner.
Zachary Stockill: As you know, if you’ve been watching my channel for a while, many retroactive jealousy sufferers ask their partners many, many, many questions about their partner’s past.
But this is by no means all retroactive jealousy sufferers.
In fact, many, many other retroactive jealousy sufferers don’t want to know anything about their partner’s past.
Sometimes, it seems like their partner can’t stop talking about their past. In today’s video, I’ll share some strategies for dealing with retroactive jealousy and what we might call oversharing partners.
My name is Zachary Stockill, and since 2013, I have helped thousands of men and women from around 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 click here.
For those here for the first time, the term ‘retroactive jealousy’ refers to unwanted intrusive thoughts, often obsessive curiosity, and what I like to call ‘mental movies’ about a partner’s past relationships or sexual history.
Retroactive jealousy can involve some or all of those symptoms.
However, many sufferers don’t have any curiosity about their partner’s past; they don’t want to know about it, talk about it, or hear more details.
They don’t want to know about their partner’s past, but thoughts of it still torment them.
To make matters worse, their partner is an oversharer who doesn’t filter what they say about themselves or their past.
So, how do you deal with retroactive jealousy if you have a partner who talks too much or overshares?
First, it’s basic advice, but often overlooked: never neglect the fine art of changing the subject.
If your partner or anyone else brings up a topic you’d rather not discuss, steer the conversation differently.
Get creative with changing the subject. There are subtle and tactful ways to do this without making it obvious that you don’t want to discuss a certain topic. Simply try changing the subject.
You can do this in several ways. One effective strategy is to ask them a question about something else. Everyone loves talking about themselves, so asking good questions can easily shift the conversation.
For example, if your partner starts talking about her past, you might say, ‘Oh, that’s interesting. Are there any good movies on this week? I saw a commercial for a movie I really want to see.’
Sometimes, depending on the follow-up question, it might be a bit obvious that you’d rather not discuss her past.
This isn’t always a bad thing. If this pattern repeats,
