It’s 2am and I’m home alone and falling down an online rabbit hole. On my phone is the Instagram profile of a new man I’m meeting, and I’m forensically combing through it for evidence of his past love life.
There are holiday photos, party photos, weekend getaway photos. And in all these cases, I’m chasing ‘her’ – the one before me… and the ones before that. My thumb hovers over each one, making sure I don’t accidentally hit the ‘Like’ button that would alert him to my nightly prowling.
When I was younger, and people were less careful about what they shared online, there would be years of these images to torture myself with, as my new boyfriend sat smiling with his arm around another woman.
Now that I’m in my 30s, and most have become somewhat aware of the wisdom of documenting every moment of our lives on social media, I have to look harder for evidence of girlfriends’ pasts. They might be within a group photo, or silhouetted in the distance – who’s cycling in front of them? – but they will still be there.
Lucy Holden talks to a psychoanalyst about what’s behind her obsessive Instagram scrolling to find out more about her new husband’s exes
Armie Hammer, left, and Lily James in the film Rebecca. The term Rebecca Syndrome is derived from the 1938 novel by Daphne du Maurier on which the film is based
Lily James as Mrs. de Winter in the film Rebecca, which tells the story of a woman who marries a widower, only to find her new home haunted by the memory of his dead wife
I’m rational enough (even when I do something so irrational) to know that comparing myself to past girlfriends is completely pointless. But when you know next to nothing about his exes, it’s natural to wonder what’s not being said.
Was the previous “me” a Heidi Klum type who started her own charity and ran ultra-marathons for fun? Maybe she was a philanthropist-physician who had no qualms about drinking only on weekends.
Whoever they were, or rather, they, I can’t help but imagine that it’s all more impressive than what I have to offer. So I turn to social media in search of concrete evidence that I hope will validate me in some way.
Now this habit has a catchy new name: Rebecca Syndrome.
The term, also known as retroactive jealousy, comes from Daphne du Maurier’s 1938 novel, in which a young woman marries a widower, but soon discovers that her new home is haunted by the memory of his late wife, Rebecca . The second Mrs. de Winter becomes obsessed with the continued presence of her predecessor.
How much worse is it now, in the age of social media. These days, all a new lover and his ex need is public Instagram accounts to make a wealth of information available. And once you find her account, it’s impossible not to compare yourself to her.
Psychoanalyst Toby Ingham has written a book about the phenomenon: Retroactive Jealousy, Making Sense of It. He says: ‘Why would anyone want to think that their partner has had previous partners?
‘Rebecca Syndrome is an obsessive problem and I believe it is caused by attachment issues that predate the current love relationship and are being revived.’
That got me thinking. I’m pretty sure my feelings of doubt in relationships stem from the fact that I don’t expect any of these relationships to last. But why? I’ve been in many relationships, but I’ve left them as many times as I’ve been left behind.
Maybe it’s because I don’t know what I want, so I’m looking for an excuse to blow it off. Or maybe my attachment issues are related to the fact that we moved around when I was very young and I got used to people I liked staying behind. Better to leave first, huh?
The film Rebecca, starring Armie Hammer and Lily James, tells the story of how a young woman becomes obsessed with the persistent presence of her husband’s first wife.
Obsessively scrolling to find out about a new guy’s exes could be caused by attachment issues from one’s past being resurrected in the present
But there could be more recent explanations for my “retroactive jealousy.” When I was 26, I saw a married man who claimed to be divorcing his wife and told me that he had already moved out of the family home. That turned out to be a lie – and part of me still wonders why I didn’t try harder to discover it. Why didn’t I do my homework online?
Maybe his (still) wife feels the same way, because not too long ago I woke up to find that she had asked to follow me on Instagram – probably a dreaded finger swipe while she was on my profile very late at night, because when I opened the account, the request had already been canceled. Shrink. But it can happen to any of us.
The problem is that you can’t win no matter what you think. I once found explicit photos from a previous relationship on a friend’s computer – and what first made me feel so sick was that the girl wasn’t terribly attractive. If she had been much more attractive than me, I would have felt terrible, so why did I also feel terrible because she was less attractive? Maybe it’s a sign that I’m not that attractive either?
Rebecca syndrome ruins a new relationship in many subtle ways. Holiday photos are a special low point; you know you don’t want to go to Malta or the Amalfi Coast when he’s already had a great time there. Then you realize that you’re watching a wedding they went to together in 2017 and you suddenly feel quite nauseous. Did they ever think they were getting married? Does he wish they had?
I know this digital detective work sounds extreme. But for those of us who have lived a significant portion of our lives online, this is par for the course – not to mention far less fraught than subjecting your new boyfriend to a verbal interrogation about his past loves.
As common as Rebecca syndrome is, it is still unhealthy, Ingham points out.
‘We never see the kind of emotional uncertainty that dating brings coming, and that is of course made all the worse by modern technology where we can see on social media what our partner ‘likes’ or whether he or she is still friends with an ex.
“Before they know it, people with obsessive problems become trapped in an introspective loop.”
“Cyberstalking is the spice,” agrees my friend Lottie, 34. “Not only does it make you feel like a psychopath, it ruins the start of any relationship.
‘I don’t feel jealous, so why can’t I resist looking at someone’s past online? Even my sister, who now has a child and is married, does it.’
Another friend is more extreme: “If men weren’t so unreliable, the pressure wouldn’t be on us to try to do due diligence,” she says.
‘There’s nothing worse than being surprised with an ‘I’m getting back with my ex’ chat. And if someone’s Instagram is full of recent photos of them together, that’s a huge red flag to me.”
Of course, I’ve dated enough jealous men to know that cyberstalking is a man’s problem, too — and it can easily lead to something much more toxic. I’ve had controlling boyfriends who have hacked into my email, stolen my phone, and made me go through my entire relationship history to “make them feel better” (which of course never happens).
Adding fuel to the fire is the fact that we tend to document only our best moments on social media, putting together an enviable version of a relationship that in reality can be far from perfect.
At the end of Du Maurier’s novel, the illusions collapse. We discover that the glamorous, captivating Rebecca was actually terrible. Evil, ‘wicked’ and adulterous, she died pregnant with another man’s child.
It’s a denouement I’ll try to remember the next time I stare at a man’s amorous messages with his ex. After all, they broke up, right?