Are you in a relationship? Are you jealous in your relationship? Is this normal? As humans we experience a wide array of emotions, including jealousy and insecurity. These are natural. However, a healthy relationship should not be the source of these emotions. A healthy relationship makes you feel safe and secure. In other words, insecurity and jealously are the ingredients that will poison your relationship.
It is important to note that insecurity and jealousy have causes. They can’t seep into a happy relationship just like that. And they don’t come alone because they result in anger, anxiety, and depression. Insecurity is a feeling of inadequacy where you think that your position in the relationship is threatened or being usurped by someone else. Regardless of the reasons of your jealousy, severe insecurity deprives you of peace and ruins the relationship too. Therefore, it is a necessity to understand the reason for that any jealous feelings and address it in a mature manner. Read more below about ways to cope with jealousy in a relationship.
1. Find the Root Cause
Sometimes jealousy is justified, but it is more often irrational. Ask yourself, “Why am I feeling this way?” Does your response align with the situation? Is it stemming from a past hurt or traumatic experience? Remember that correlation does not always mean causation. Sometimes the cause of jealousy is not your partner but rather a past experience that you have not dealt with.
For example, if you have been betrayed in the past, it makes sense that you might carry those jealousy-triggering feelings into your new relationship and project them onto your partner. While your partner can reassure you and help you feel at ease if you experience jealousy within the relationship, it is your job to continue to explore your own internal issues and understand how they get triggered. The longer you prolong this work, the longer it takes to heal. It would be very helpful to visit a therapist and seek therapy to look deeper into the causes of these jealous feelings. There is always online therapy available at a time that works for you and a day that work for you. Schedule a session online at www. Gateway2counseling.com.
2. Don’t Compare Yourself
The tendency to compare ourselves to others is as human as any other emotion. But it is our responsibility to step back and evaluate how comparison often hinders more than it helps. Comparing your relationship to others adds no meaning or fulfillment to your own life; it only distracts from it. Some forms of comparisons lead to thoughts like, “How could he love me? I’m not as attractive as his ex.” Or, “I’m not as successful as she is, and once she realizes this, she will leave me.” These are really painful thoughts, but they have nothing to do with your partner and everything to do with your feelings about yourself. Comparison puts the focus on the wrong person. You can control one life, yours. By comparing yourself to others, you are wasting precious time and energy on other people when you could be focusing on what you need to feel more whole. Like I mentioned before, if you are struggling with these thought processes, it is very important to seek help and change the way you are thinking. Many therapists at www.gateway2counseling.com use different types of therapeutic approaches that may best fit your need.
3. Discuss Boundaries
Some of us don’t mind our partners being in touch with their ex-partners or being friends with the opposite sex. However, some of us do care and it affects us. There is nothing wrong with you feeling this way. Maybe when you see your partner’s ex, you start to imagine their physical relationship in the past when you were not around. This makes you feel uncomfortable. What will you do about it? Will you sit there quiet and not tell your partner about how you feel?
Communication is the only way to deal with these issues and to make sure you’re on the same page. It may be tempting to dodge this conversation, but withholding your feelings will only lead to passive-aggressive behavior. It may be tempting to peek at your partner’s text messages or emails. But trust me, this will lead nowhere good. Talk openly and directly with your partner about your feelings. Try hard to withhold any judgment about how your partner feels, which may be very different from how you feel. They are entitled to their own feelings and may not have the same insecurities you do. This is not about right versus wrong, but about finding common ground and setting limits that work for you both.
Once you know what your boundaries are, what upsets you, what makes you jealous and uncomfortable, you can know where to draw lines and then work through any issues that arise. You can’t say your partner is insensitive, disrespectful, or “should know better” if you’ve never communicated where your boundaries are. Your partner is not a mind reader. It is unwise to assume that they think in the same way you do.
4. Explore it and Let it go
When we can name our feelings and truly own our experience, we can move from a place of shame to a place of empowerment. It is completely normal to feel jealous; you’re only human after all. The good and hard news is that jealousy gives us an opportunity to take a deeper look at ourselves to find what we need to feel safe and supported. We can use our jealous feelings in ways that help us grow and become more secure in ourselves. We can recognize that jealousy is a distraction from something deeper happening internally. It is calling for our attention to be worked on. It takes practice and a willingness to explore our pain.
Once we can do this, we put ourselves in a better position to let it go. What I mean by “let it go” is that you can acknowledge your experience, understand it for what it’s really about, and move through it in a way that brings more ease and peace to your life. As mentioned before, you can always seek therapy and find a nonjudgmental therapist to address your conflicts and needs.
Feeling jealous?