Dear Reader,
I always say that a little bit of jealousy is healthy; it can be a small form of reassurance but it should never be the foundation of which we use to reassure our partners. The essence of the foundation we use to let our partners know we still love them is built on consistent love, care, compassion, and all of the things that keep us from doubting the stability of our relationship. To me, there are appears to be four categories of jealousy and whether or not your feelings are valid:
A) Your partner’s a careless POS that has already done enough damage to give you a valid reason to be jealous. To which you can either stay in and continue to always wonder if they’re actually working late or if they’re sleeping with their secretary. Valid? Yes.
B) You use jealousy as a way to be possessive of your partner and the relationship. You don’t actually care about your partner’s feelings, but more so being in control of the relationship. You begin to cut off their close friends and family so that all they have is you, to the point where you’re the only one they can “depend” on. You love the power. Valid? No. Fuck you, you’re not ready for a relationship, and you need to go to therapy.
C) Your partner and you will make the occasional joke or comment about someone being checked out. Maybe they’ll bring up a past lover or potential lover they feel a little threatened by but not in an aggressive or rude way. You can tell their comment might come from a place of small insecurity but not enough to turn into Type B. Because hey, we all get jealous and that’s a normal feeling. Valid? Totally. Sometimes this can even turn into some passionate sex after a fun night out. Giving your partner an extra bit of love that night might remind them of why you chose them.
D) Your partner is loyal but maybe because of traumatic experiences from previous relationships or friendships, you never fully trust your partner even if you want or are trying to. You feel threatened by friends or acquaintances of theirs because you’ve created this guard for yourself and your relationship. You want to prevent it from happening before it ever gets there. However, when the jealousy begins to create a judgemental environment where a partner’s loyalty is questioned without reason, it goes to show that no matter how loyal your partner is or if there was perhaps a different partner, the issues stem from your insecurities and something that you need to heal within yourself. Valid? Yes & No. It’s okay that you feel this way because feeling insecure and jealous is normal, but only to a certain extent. Once you begin acting out these jealous feelings and ignoring all the things your partner does to show the love and care they have for you; you begin to ruin the foundation of the relationship, which is built on trust. You’ll soon realize you’re pushing them away because they can’t do anything more to prove that they love you, they constantly wonder what they’re doing wrong, and you’ll never feel fully satisfied with their love either.
So what you can do is work on yourself. Don’t worry, you don’t have to leave the relationship, you can do this while still being with your partner! There have been moments where I’ve ever worked through this with my partner. I’ve shared with him what past experiences I’ve been through that have created this anxiety of being left or possibly cheated on. I made sure to tell him that sometimes I pull away or get too clingy and it’s something I need to work on but would love for them to always gently reassure me versus attack me for the way I feel. But as I previously said, we can’t permanently depend on them to reassure us because their reassurance comes from what they’re already doing: choosing you, dating you, and loving you.
Every time I find myself having a jealous episode, usually triggered by past relationships, I try to rationalize the situation. “I am with my boyfriend because he’s chosen me. He wouldn’t be with me if he didn’t want to date me. He hasn’t given me any reason to doubt his love or this relationship, these feelings come from past lovers who hurt me. My boyfriend is not my ex.”
For the sake of your attention span, I’ll stop here but just know I’ll come back to this topic eventually to further discuss the girl/guy best friend insecurity. With that, I leave you with the question: Can guys and girls be best friends with the opposite sex without wanting to have sex? For boyfriends does this mean that you know all of your girlfriend's guy friends want to fuck her? Does that mean you want to fuck all your girlfriends or do double standards come into play?
K