How To Deal With A Jealous Boyfriend
It's not you, it's him.
weheartit When I was growing up dreaming of finding the man of my dreams that somehow always morphed into the idea of getting a boyfriend who could kick somebody's behind.
Sure, I could have a gentle and sensitive lover who saw into my very soul, but what fun was that when I could have a guy who got so mad at another man for even looking at me that he challenged him to fisticuffs right there in the town square?
Now that I'm older and not so much wiser as I am less interested in drama for the same of drama, I'm here to tell you this:
Having a jealous boyfriend isn't romantic.
Him peeking at your phone whenever you're in the bathroom or getting in a bad mood when you wear a dress that makes you look extra amazing isn't him having so much love for you that he can't contain himself.
That's him being a jealous boyfriend, and, while it isn't always deadly, jealousy in a relationship is never healthy.
You want a relationship so steady and firm in its roots that the two of your can have a foundation that makes everyone else stand up and take notice. You don't want a foundation based on insecurity, fear, and half truths because that stuff is gonna come right down at the first sign of a storm.
When your boyfriend is jealous it can be easy to lose perspective, to think you are the only one to blame, and to consider your relationship doomed. None of these things have to the way things go, especially if you're both willing to tackle the problem of jealousy head on.
When a person is a jealous, it isn't because they inherently don't trust you. In fact, I would say that most of the time a person's jealous has a whole lot more to do with them and their own particular brand of issues than it ever has to do with you.
In fact, when your boyfriend is jealous and you're trying to get to the heart of the matter I think it can be super helpful to remove the word "jealous" and replace it with the word "insecure." When your boyfriend is jealous it's evidence of his own insecurity within the relationship.
Did you cheat on your boyfriend and now he's jealous?
Did your boyfriend become jealous after you admitted to cheating?
Cheating sucks. I mean that literally, it sucks away all of the trust and intimacy that two people had built between them like the least sexy kind of succubus. If you cheated on your boyfriend, you have admitted to him that you lied to him, deceived him, and violated the terms of your proverbial relationship agreement.
Now, this doesn't mean he gets to punish you forever or be a jealous jerk forever, but it does explain why all of the sudden you tell him you're getting a haircut and he's like "Oh yeah? SO YOU CAN CHEAT ON ME?"
He's lost his trust in you and that takes awhile to build back up. The key here, is talking about his fears. When he acts irrationally you have to be the voice of reason and let him vent all of his hurt and frustration.
That doesn't mean this is how your relationship is going to be from here on out (again, see that whole part about how he doesn't get to punish you for the rest of your relationship), but tackling this stuff head on together as a team can really help build back up that trust and nip that honest right in the bud.
Has your boyfriend cheated in the past?
Ironically, it is sometimes men who themselves have a history of cheating who get the biggest case of jealousy surrounding new girlfriend's.
Maybe they can't believe they were so lucky to find you. Maybe they have never been in a relationship where somebody didn't cheat. Maybe you're too good to be true. Whatever the reason, this guy is setting himself up for sabotage by getting into a mindset where he assumes that every time you leave the house it's to do hand stuff with the mailman.
While human beings can learn a lot about the different ways in which people behave, something we can't do is read each other's minds.
He might be positive that you're going to cheat, but the truth of the matter is that unless you're planning on cheating and you told him so, he has no way of knowing that you ever will. Hell, that's half of the leap required to start a real, solid relationship.
Good relationships are a leap of faith. If he can't get over the idea that you might one day cheat on him, he's as good as saying that he doesn't trust you.
Being in a relationship with someone who is incapable of trust is no way to live. It's like trying to ice a cake right over of the oven, sure that stuff all tastes pretty sweet initially but all you're going to end up with a pile of hot, greasy, crumbs.
When is jealousy unhealthy and a serious problem?
Sometimes jealous is a marker of insecurity; sometimes jealousy is a marker of immaturity. These are two things that are, in a sense, curable, provided that the jealous boyfriend is willing to learn and grow in order to make yours a relationship that stands the test of time.
But there are some times when jealousy can be a psychosis and red flag of abusive behavior down the line. If a man explodes with anger at you, makes false accusations, seems paranoid, makes threats, or engages in any other behavior that makes you feel unsafe, you don't owe him a thing.
Instead, the best thing to do for both of you is to remove yourself from his orbit and contact a crisis center for help and intervention.
Not every guy who gets a little bit jealous is going to become a perpetrator of domestic violence, but be aware that irrational jealousy is one of the signs that indicates you could be in a potentially abusive relationship.
Are you caught in a cycle?
In relationships it's normal to find yourself and your boyfriend hitting the same issue over and over again. This can often be the undoing on a partnership, particularly if those involved aren't prepared to do the real heavy lifting of addressing their issues head on.
When your boyfriend is jealous, does he come out of it, admit his mistake, promise to do better ... only to start the whole cycle all over again? This could be a sign that you might require the intervention of an objective third party (that's me beating around the bush but trying to say therapist, y'all) to help you guys mediate your conversations.
You don't need to being going through a crisis or a breakdown to ask for help. At one point or another in our lives we could all benefit from having someone with the right education and tools help us better understand the emotional reasoning behind our bad relationship patterns so that we can dismantle them and get back to being sexy and awesome.
Rebecca Jane Stokes is a writer living in Brooklyn, New York with her cats, Batman and Margot. She's the Senior Editor of Pop Culture at Newsweek