Retroactive Jealousy (from a DSO Live Stream event)

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So, Andrew, I would presume that what you're saying with retroactive jealousy is your partner, who I assume would be a woman— I typically attract hetero dudes to my material and hetero women— she had a relationship in the past and there's something about it that makes you feel icky. So what is it exactly, Andrew? I'll put you on the spot here. Maybe you want to flesh out a little bit more, you know, but you're not necessarily saying this is your suggestion or your situation, rather. But I'm assuming this has touched you on a personal level. That's why you're bringing it up. This is not unusual. It's, it's labeled by a lot of people as kind of an insecure thing, and they're not wrong. I guess it's very situation dependent. If I'm talking to some guy and he says, "My wife used to be a prostitute," or some kind of sex worker or something like that, and I have some real problems thinking about the hundreds and hundreds of men that she has slept with. I say, "Well, you have every right to feel a little weird about that. I think most people would." And then there are some people that say, "Ah, you're just being insecure. Let it go, dude." I say, "He has every right to feel weird about it, right?" But if it's just, hey, they were with a person, And, you know, like most adults used to be with other people, to marry somebody or get with somebody who is a— what do they say— a full-fledged virgin, that's highly unusual, very rare, and it's not necessarily the best thing for a sexual relationship. What do I mean by that? If you are with somebody who has never ever been physical with another human being before, more specifically never had sexual intercourse before, they probably don't know themselves sexually. Very well. Case can be made that, um, it's a good thing. You're more conservative types say that's a good thing. You want them to learn with you. You want them to grow and mature with you sexually and get to know that part of themselves with you. While the case could also be made that, um, how are they going to know what it is they like? How are they going to know who they are sexually unless they have past experience? Um, but there's a dividing line, isn't there? There's a tipping point where it goes from good, healthy past sexual experience to like I mentioned before, what if they were a sex worker, a prostitute, and they were with hundreds of individuals? Most of us say, oh God, that's a little much. So where's the tipping point there? And but back to your original question, what do you do about retroactive jealousy? Oh, here you followed up with some additional information. Says it's a tough one. Before me, it turned out that she had some pretty, quote, easy encounters, not hundreds, but she was so easy for them. And it really bothers me. Well, How do you know that, Andrew? Did you come upon some information? This is something that I did a little— maybe the video you're talking about, where thanks to the internet these days, some people flat out didn't believe that this was the thing. Some people were saying I just made this up. But I think, Andrew, you can attest to this. Thanks to the internet, thanks to people publishing or putting out photos blogs used to be a big thing, not so much anymore, like LiveJournal and so forth. So when I'm talking to 40, 50-some-year-olds, they say, I found some old blog, online diary of my wife or my girlfriend, and I discovered, holy shit, this person used to be all kinds of sexual. Sure would like to see that side of them, and I don't ever see it, and it bothers me. Frankly, rightfully so. You'd have to be kind of— I don't know, be kind of weird for it not to bother you a little bit. But then again, people have chapters in their life. Maybe they were more free and open and experimental in their 20s, but then they settled down and became less so. Men and women both go through phases like this for sure. It's just that if you're a person who is highly sexual and you're looking for some of that, oh, physical validation and so forth from your partner, and you found out they used to give it in spades to previous partners but not you, of course that's going to make you feel a little weird. Maybe that's what you're talking about here, Andrew, that they used to be very open sexually, easy encounters, um, and you aren't getting that, right? And it bothers you. You're comparing. Like, uh, this taps into something that is very, um, uncomfortable to get into for a lot of people. But let's try to be mature and talk it through here, right? There's no judgment here. Um, in the world of, of, um, sexual intimacy for men, typically— not always— for most of us, there's some work behind it. Let's say you see a pretty girl across the room. Gotta get up the nerve, gotta have the balls to walk over to her. That's some work, you know? You gotta have some charisma about you, some chutzpah, as they say. You gotta have some game, as the kids say. Then you walk over and you say, "Hey, I'm Ralph Brewer Brewer." "What's your name?" And you get to know them. Gotta put in the work. "Let me buy you a drink." Spend a few bucks. It shows what? That you're a person of status, that you're able to afford a drink. "Hey, you know what? Why don't you give me your number? I'd like to take you out to dinner sometime." Right away, you're taking out to dinner. That's, you know, from the male perspective, that's some work, some investment. You're investing money, time, you're being very vulnerable emotionally, all this other stuff, putting yourself out there. You're putting in work and you're putting in time. And it may be 3, 4, 5, 10 dates later to get to the finish line, so to speak, of real sexual intimacy. She feels safe enough with you. Gets to know you, uh, falls in love, all this other stuff, and then you're able to do the deed. And as crass as that seems, that's kind of why we're all kind of doing this song and dance, right? To propagate the species, to do the deed. So anyway, what if you go through all of that and, um, you really fall in love with this person and you had to go through all this song and dance to get to the end, but then you found out that your partner actually was with a lot of people prior to you, and they didn't have to put in as much, quote, work to get the deed done. All they had to say was, hey pretty, what's your name? And away they go, right? That would make you feel like you were a, quote, loser compared to the other guys. The other guys got to the finish line that much easier than what you did. That sounds very crass. It sounds, you know, we can— oh, we can mold that to say that's somewhat of a misogynistic, quote, red pill or whatever nonsense, you know, internet nonsense you come up with. But that's Human Sexuality 101. That's the mating dance. The mating dance is typically, hey, you know, I'm a male, am I worthy of your time, woman? Let me put in some work to show you that I'm worthy, and voilà, you become my mate. We see that all throughout the animal kingdom. You ever watch those nature programs where the big bird does a little dance in front of the, you know, the male bird does a dance from the female bird? Why is it that across the animal kingdom, it's always the males that have the big ornamental feathers, fur, the colors and everything else? Because we're trying to win the female. So when we do that, we discover that this guy didn't even have to fluff his feathers. All he did was just walk up to her and he got it. Well, he's the winner. I'm the loser. That's how a lot of men look at that. So that's, I think, the crux of a lot of your question there is, man, dude was the winner. I wasn't. I had to put in all this work. And people label that as insecure, and they got a point. There is some insecurity in that. You know, you can look at that and say, you know, like, my partner went through a phase, they were young, experimental. Maybe those guys have something I don't. Hey, good for those guys. Maybe we're not a great match in that way. Maybe I should let you go. Maybe, um, maybe you need to find somebody that pushes your buttons in that way. And I'm not that person. You know, shake hands and go about your separate ways. I don't— I'm not going to shame you or call you insecure, Andrew, or others for thinking that way. It's a perfectly valid way of thinking, whether it's a man or a woman. And something I've mentioned, not to go down this rabbit hole of past promiscuity, it's not a strictly female thing in terms of it possibly being a— having a negative impact or a negative factor on a long-term monogamous relationship. I have seen— or spoken to, rather. A lot of men who have, um, a promiscuous past, the former players, right? And then they're like, I'm gonna settle down. I'm tired of screwing around with all these dozens of women, and it was fun while it lasted, but none of these women are relationship material. I'm going to settle with this one. It— I'm getting my needs met sexually, we're really clicking that way, but intellectually and emotionally, I finally found the one. And they settle. And then the relationship becomes serious, they become secure, they become comfortable with each other, familiar with each other, then they have kids, and the sex naturally dissipates and goes down. And here's Mr. Former Playboy, Mr. Player Guy, saying, I used to get it like 3 times a week on average with 3 different women, and now I'm, I find myself kind of begging a woman for once or twice a month. Those men, and I've talked to those men, tend to sleep around a lot, cheat. They don't settle for scraps. And so I tell women, be careful. If you're with Mr. Playboy, used to, has a roster of women in his wake, to say he's going to settle down for one and one only, oof, good luck with that. So we could flip the genders and the case could be made the other way as well. Um, I'm gonna stick with Andrew here. I'm jumping over some other comments. Uh, Andrew fleshes out this further and he says, yeah, he'd— he being her past, your, your partner's past partner— uh, he'd basically pick her up, do her in the car down a nearby dirt track, even pick her up dinner hour and do her in the car on an industrial estate and then drop her back off. How do you know all this, Andrew? Kind of like the price for me is lifelong commitment, but the price for him wasn't even worth the petrol to drive her home to a bed. She required nothing from him for him to get that from her. You know, Andrew, you're, you are just, you're doing an excellent job of describing what I was talking about. This is relatively common sentiment from a lot of men. It's retroactive jealousy thing, I guess. It bothered me for so long. Yet for me, after giving her everything in life, I get thrown a bone every couple of weeks. So what you're saying is totally how I feel. Yeah, I'm sorry to hear that, buddy. So I mean, there's different ways of looking at this, right? He has tools in his toolbox, the other dude, let's call him John. John, the ex-boyfriend, he was able to get out of her, um, hypersexual, yeah, hypersexual state of mind, the state of being, and You have to jump through a lot of hoops to get less. So you do these 12 things to get a fraction of what John got for not doing anything, and that makes you feel like shit. Okay, so why is that, right? Well, I don't know. Yeah, maybe John's Mr. Loverboy. Maybe John, as far as your spouse or partner is concerned, really had that sexual it. He really had it going on. He had, you know, the— he checked some boxes that really got her going. That's, that's what you don't want to hear, right, Andrew? And guys in your, in your position, you're like, Ralph, I don't want to hear that. That just makes me feel worse. That could very well be it. Is there anything necessarily wrong with that? No. I've talked to men who are like, I was with this crazy woman who had, you know, borderline personality disorder, and she ended up, you know, chasing after me a knife but I tell you what, we had the hottest sex imaginable, man. It was holy crap, 3 times a day, middle of the night. She would, you know, do me in the parking lot of the local Kroger or whatever it may be. We just had the most awesome, over-the-top, hot, sexy, whatever. And I can't seem to get that from my wife. So it's somewhat similar to what you're talking about with the genders flipped. So that's— you don't want to hear that, that could very well be it. Or like I alluded to earlier, People have chapters in their lives. What if, honest to God, your wife says, I was experimental, free, open, and a lot of things I did with John, I look back on and I go, God, I would not do that again. I, you know, again, I was young, experimental, I was very insecure, and that's why I did a lot of those things. And looking back on it, I wish I didn't. And here's you saying— I don't know if you verbalize this to her or not— yeah, can you do those things with me? And she's like, I really don't want to. I don't like that chapter of my life. I'm not that person anymore. Could very well be the case. Um, don't know. Uh, does it bother you enough to end the relationship with the Mrs.? That's the question. Is there a, um, is there a hypersexual girlfriend out there waiting for you? Maybe she used to be, maybe she never was. As you can see, these are pretty complicated situations. I'm not one to do what a lot of people do which is, um, you know, throw you under the bus and call you an insecure little man baby. You need to get over it. She doesn't want to do those things anymore. She doesn't have to. No, I completely empathize with where you're coming from. This is— your emotions and your feelings in this are completely valid, and you, um, you're not a bad person for feeling that. So don't ever, you know, think that you're a little weakling for thinking those things. I think anybody in their right mind would go down that, that path, you know, thought-wise. So, um, yeah, something to talk about further. If you'd like to, you can always chat with me one-on-one, dadstartingover.com, and go to coaching. You can join our men's club.