It’s pretty much internet law that, if you go searching online, you’ll probably find something to confirm your worst suspicions. Your ear might be sore because you went swimming yesterday, but it could also mean you’re going deaf or have a brain tumor. There’s always something to send us into a doom spiral.
“Rebecca Syndrome” is, in many ways, a product of this 21st-century affliction. The psychological phenomenon—which has been around for years but is currently seeing a surge of interest on social media—was named after Daphne du Maurier’s 1938 novel, Rebecca, in which the heroine develops an obsession with her husband’s dead first wife and imagines that she’ll never live up to her. Psychologists define it as pathological jealousy, with sufferers constantly comparing themselves to their partner’s ex.
Sound familiar? It’s something we’ve probably all done to some extent—that is, spending time thinking about, maybe even worrying about, a partner’s ex. Rare is the person who doesn’t want to know anything at all about the person who came before them, and if you really want to know, you can just google it. A quick search, or 20, can reveal where they live, work, go on holiday, and, of course, how they look. And then, having found this all out, we naturally tend to feel discombobulated by it. Are they more successful? More attractive? Fundamentally better than us?
It’s easy to spiral. Before you know it, you might find yourself looking up the female colleague your partner always seems to mention, the girl they had an unrequited crush on in college, their first kiss. And if you discover that your partner is still liking their pictures or commenting on their posts… well, then what? Your brain wants to jump to the worst conclusion, the same way it did about that earache.
Here’s what worries me: the mindlessness of my reactions online. Could I tell you the last thing I liked on social media? Absolutely not. Do I know whether it was posted by a man, woman, or someone I think is attractive? Nope. I click and comment on all sorts of things that I like or agree with. I rarely consider how they could look if someone (my husband) were to look at them out of context or search for “patterns.”
Actually, I’m not sure he’d care—and he already knows how I feel about Jamie Dornan—but I know others do. “How do I get over this? It’s exhausting,” reads a comment underneath a TikTok on Rebecca Syndrome. “I’m in the healthiest relationship I’ve ever known and I still have these tendencies,” says another.
When the topic came up in the Vogue office? Let’s just say the debate was heated. Some thought it was completely inappropriate for people in heterosexual relationships to engage with posts from anyone of the opposite sex on social media, full stop. Others thought it was fine to like or comment on a celebrity’s post but not a “real” person’s, while still others thought setting limits around a partner’s online behavior was worryingly controlling. I’m inclined to agree with the latter group. Unless someone is giving an enthusiastic thumbs up to everything Andrew Tate has ever posted, I don’t think it’s a good idea to police your partner’s behavior online. There’s a fine line between curiosity and cyber-snooping, however romantic “Rebecca Syndrome” might sound.
Why is this such a divisive topic among women? Perhaps because we think it’s deeply uncool to be jealous. Historically, it’s been an unflattering stereotype—that we’re crazy, psycho bitches for even thinking this stuff—something used to keep us down and allow men to get away with bad behavior. It touches a part of us that’s been wrapped up in self-loathing for centuries and provokes a defensive reaction. (Needless to say, if your partner is giving you reason to be insecure offline and then obsessively likes their ex’s bikini shots on Instagram, that doesn’t make you crazy or “hysterical.” It’s also not Rebecca Syndrome.)
For the rest of us, it’s complicated. We inhabit a world of double standards, in which we google our exes but then get upset if we find out our partner has done the same. One in which we insist that our exes no longer mean anything to us, but don’t delete old photos of them from our social media profiles. It’s hardly a shocker that pictures of you looking longingly into the eyes of a former lover, left online for all the world to see, might just make your partner feel a teensy bit upset. To me, that stuff should fall under Marie Kondo’s rule of decluttering. Does it still spark joy? No, you broke up. Get rid.
According to one psychologist, Rebecca Syndrome has worsened because—while so many of our relationships now spill over into the digital world—we’ve still got analogue brains that can’t cope with the emotional implications of that. Which might be a polite way of saying: Put your phone down and step away from your partner’s social media. Yes, you’ll have to find something else to do, but, as Du Maurier’s Rebecca herself put it, “boredom is a pleasing antidote to fear.”