Sounds like there's something going wrong with your installation or profile. You might try resetting it.

But I also realized I would never notice any of what you're talking about, because I pretty much exclusively use alt-left arrow for back and alt-right arrow for forward. You might try that for a while to see if it sticks in your muscle memory.

(Though it's likely that other things are mangled in your setup if something like the back button is misbehaving.)