Currently watching an episode of Good Luck Charlie. PJ says that a girl he's dating told him that her mom used to know his dad. PJ tells his parents this and Bob says she was the last girl he dated before Amy. Amy gets upset for absolutely no accountable reason. He hasn't been talking to this woman or even thinking about her, much less doing anything romantic with her. How dare he have dated other girls before Amy. How dare he not have just waited around for her his whole life. How dare the women he dated not retroactively disappear from existence. To be fair this is Amy Duncan, the irrational drama queen. Sidenote, I'm pretty sure the actress is MAGA and currently does conservative kids shows.

I agree completely. If that happens in real life, it should be a huge fucking red flag.

I have been thinking about this one (and actually a bunch of other similar BS tropes) recently.. I have remembered a bunch of times people in real life have taken these tropes in as "life rules" and started to behave by them after seeing these on tv or movies. It is really, really weird. Not just this dating thing, but like anything from wearing same or even just similar clothes for two days in row, that's no way an issue in real life with sane people. But some people see a character react that way in a made-up tv show and suddenly start repeating it in real life?

It's almost like we're social mammals and learn all our behaviors by watching, copying, and reacting to each other...

Sure but maybe we should learn from somewhere else than tv shows mixed with advertisements.

Sounds reasonable. But that is probably the problem with your take. 😉

Yeah, that's one of the idiot plot tools that bothers me too. It happens in real life, but hopefully not in people who have entered adulthood.

Not wanting to hear about it? That's fine.
Irrational feelings of retroactive possessiveness or jealousy? Also fine.
Wanting some relationship reassurance? Also totally fine.

The key part is being mature and recognizing that it's about your needs, and not the other person's behavior. Being upset with someone else because of the above is unreasonable. Letting them know you'd like a reassurance isn't.

People be silly sometimes though.

Yeah, "retroactive jealousy" is a very dumb trope that should seldom if ever be used in a story, IMO. Tropes aren't inherently bad, most stories are full of them. But some of them are weak sauce, and this is one of them. I tried to find an entry for it on tvropes.org and couldn't find one, which is surprising. It's a fairly common trope, and they have a lot of jealousy-themed tropes in their database. Could be a skill issue on my part and I just didn't find it.

I honestly don't recall ever seeing this trope but its likely in shows and I just gloss over it.

It's actually kind of fitting that someone who is against abortion played a mother of five children