Jealousy & Relationships

In my last post I began to explain how my partner’s lies effected me in different ways…one of them being subconscious insecurity. I have always been a very secure woman, especially in relationships. To be honest, in relationships I probably verged on cocky and egotistical, I had the mindset of how lucky THEY were to have ME.

My mindset definitely changed once I fell in love, it wasn’t just about me – it was about we. WE were partners, WE were blessed to have each other, WE both brought such value to the table. But because this man had lied to me on two different occasions and involved a third party both times, I now questioned if I was enough for HIM? These were feelings I had never experienced before.

I refused to let it make me a jealous girlfriend or have an effect on our relationship, so in a sense I lived in denial. I denied that it effected me in any way so that I could just “let go” and move forward. The truth is – I allowed it to create a different kind of jealousy in our relationship, a kind that I created. On certain occasions I felt myself intentionally trying to make my partner jealous, I wanted him to “see” what he had – and to not just see it – but appreciate it. More than anything, I wanted to show him that I too had the option of betraying his trust – but chose not to.

Part of me enjoyed this because it made me feel good about myself for some reason, but I really just wanted to see if he would react to it – would he even care? This is completely unhealthy, immature and something I look back at now and feel embarrassed of. This isn’t how you treat someone you love, nor is it the way you handle issues in an adult relationship.

Because of my pride I wasn’t able to verbalize “you hurt me,” so I dealt with it passive aggressively. This wasn’t an every week occurrence, but it did happen a couple times throughout our relationship.

I remember a specific moment in the beginning of our relationship, I flirted with someone at a bar intentionally in front of him. I had absolutely no interest in this man and was using him purely for reaction – which I received later on that night. We got in a huge fight and I finally confessed to him that I didn’t feel like he was physically attracted to me because he never complimented me in that way or made me feel wanted in that way.

Instead of being an adult and sitting down to explain to my partner how I felt, I took a completely immature approach because of my pride. My ego was hurt, and so as I always say, hurt people hurt people.

I believe that jealousy is always rooted out of insecurity. However, it’s not always presented in the stereotypic ways that we expect it to look. Sometimes we’re the ones intentionally doing it because of a subconscious insecurity we’re not admitting to ourselves – or our partner.

Writing this post and thinking about jealousy and relationships caused me to also ask myself if there’s such a thing as a “healthy” jealous. I think we all want to know to some degree that our partner would care if someone else was interested in us. Does it need to be an explosive reaction? Obviously not. But yes, I would want some sort of reaction.

“A little jealousy in a relationship is healthy. It’s always nice to know someone’s afraid to lose you.”

Please take note of the word little, “a little jealousy.” I can very much admit that most jealousy in relationships is not healthy. It’s insecure, controlling, and grows from lack of trust. Please keep in mind as with all situations, what you allow will continue.