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My wife has admitted to once experimenting with a threesome, but how do I stop myself from obsessing about what she did years ago? I’m in love with a wonderful woman. Our sex life is healthy but she told me (quite flippantly) she had experimented with a threesome before we met, and it’s really troubling me. I wonder about the gory details. It makes me feel incredibly uncomfortable and I wish she had never told me. She said she wasn’t ashamed of it, it was years ago, and that she loves me and would never do anything to hurt me. Initially she suggested a threesome with me, gauged my reaction, then never mentioned it again. How do I put this irrelevant stuff out of my mind? Or is it irrelevant? My level-headed self tells me that it is. It is not uncommon for a person to find threesomes highly erotic. At some level you know this was nothing to do with you, but you are battling with two aspects of your psyche. First, jealously is a natural human emotion and we are wired to feel uncomfortable about the idea of a lover being with someone else against our wishes. Second, there is an obsessional part of your brain that gets locked into thinking about this subject. This requires urgent attention, so I recommend this thought-stopping technique: whenever the subject enters your mind, 1) notice it, 2) interrupt that thought and 3) replace it with something more positive and realistic – such as “I love her, and the past is unimportant”. Some people wear an elastic bracelet they can snap to jolt them into awareness. Eradicate these negative thoughts before they sabotage your relationship. • Pamela Stephenson Connolly is a clinical psychologist and psychotherapist who specialises in treating sexual disorders. • Email your problem to private.lives@guardian.co.uk Sex Relationships Pamela Stephenson Connolly guardian.co.uk