5 Reasons Your Current Partner May (Still) Be Jealous Of Your Ex
Is your partner's jealousy of your ex driving you nuts?
getty So here you are, in a new relationship, happy as can be, but there's an issue. A big issue.
Your person, in spite of their happiness, is still jealous of your ex.
Instead of appreciating that you love them completely, they think constantly about your ex.
They compare themselves to your ex. They question you endlessly about your past relationship. And they live in constant fear that you're going to leave them.
Is this jealousy destroying your relationship? I bet it is.
Here are 5 reasons why your current partner is jealous of your ex, despite your relationship.
1. You still talk about your ex.
Be honest. How much time do you spend talking about your ex?
Do you find yourself telling the story of when you went camping? Do you pick up something in the grocery store and remark about how it was their favorite?
When a song comes up on Spotify and it reminds you of them, do you mention it?
Do you ever suggest that your new person do something that might make them more like your old person, not even knowing that you are doing so?
You may feel like these little mentions are innocent, but they aren’t. No one wants to hear about their person’s ex.
Little asides like these can be painful. If you do them frequently, the pain you are causing will only grow and jealousy will rear its ugly head.
So, take a good honest look at how much you talk about your ex. Might it be the reason why your person talks about them, too?
2. You have baggage.
I am a 56-year-old divorced woman. I date other 50ish divorced men.
We are no longer 22 and starting out on the journey to find love. We are people whose hearts have been through the wringer and we are very lucky to have come out the other side.
We have a lot of baggage. Heavy baggage.
For many of us, our exes have cheated on us — emotionally, physically, or both. As a result, we find it very hard to trust people of the opposite sex.
We look for signs that our people are cheating and we think who could be easier to cheat with than their ex.
It’s not just the old folks who have baggage. Plenty of 20-somethings do, too.
Whether your ex cheated on you, left you after promising to love you forever, or lied to you about anything, you're going to have baggage that you might bring into the next relationship.
And unless you're aware of it, that baggage could destroy your new relationship and maybe other relationships after that.
So, if your person might still be jealous of your ex, it could be because they have been hurt in the past.
If this is the case, it's important to discuss what happened and work together to make sure they know that you're not that person, that you will do things differently.
And if you know what kind of baggage your person has, you are more likely to be able to help them carry it and lighten their load.
3. They have insecurities.
I have a client who has real body issues. She also isn’t really wild about the color of her hair. She has always been this way and she has made peace with it... or so she thought.
She met a guy a few months back and he had just gotten out of a long relationship. As a result, pictures of his ex were still on his social media and she had the chance one day to look at her.
And she looked exactly like my client had always wanted to look. Skinny and tiny with blonde hair.
So, what did this do to my client? It made her feel incredibly insecure.
If her partner had dated someone who looked like her own ideal, how could he ever be happy with tall redheaded her? Obviously, she wasn’t his type and he was going to leave her someday.
The ex magnified the insecurities that she brought into the relationship. It was only by becoming aware of it that she was able to understand that that person was his ex, not his ideal.
He loved her now and had left his ex behind. There was no reason for her to be jealous.
4. There's instability in the relationship.
Are you a few months into a relationship and are things getting a little dicey?
Are you past the initial honeymoon phase and is real life, with friends, family, careers, and hobbies invading the space that you had previously so carefully protected?
Is this invasion causing your relationship to be a little bit off-kilter?
For many of my clients, when a relationship starts to founder, whether in ways small or large, their first instinct is to blame someone else, not to look at what might be happening in their relationship.
I have a client whose partner is overseas. Their relationship has been foundering in a big way since his deployment and, instead of taking a good look at why it might be, she is assuming that he has reconnected with an ex who is also overseas.
By thinking that there's someone else, she can shift her focus from the difficult matter at hand (what is wrong in their relationship) to the existence of someone else and that being the cause of the relationship instability.
Is your relationship unstable right now? In big ways or small? That might be what is causing your person's jealousy of your ex.
5. It’s something else completely.
This is one of the big paradoxes of human beings — the tendency to focus on one thing as the source of misery (like their romantic lives) instead of examining the big picture.
A client of mine has been going through a really hard time. She has been struggling at work. She doesn’t like her job and it’s making her feel bad about herself.
She should be looking for another one, but she just can’t deal. Instead of looking inwards to fix herself, she is looking out for something else to blame her moods on.
And that something else is right there at her fingertips — her person’s ex.
Your person’s ex is a tangible thing — something that you know that you can be jealous of without seeming crazy (because everyone is jealous of their partner’s ex, right?).
And it’s easy when you're feeling bad about yourself to think that someone else’s life is better and that your person would be much happier with that person than they are with you.
So, ask yourself: Are you really jealous of your person’s ex or are you unhappy somewhere else or, perhaps, even with yourself?
Knowing the difference will help you start to take the steps to deal with what needs to be dealt with so that you can feel good about yourself again and be happy.
Jealousy of your ex is frustrating for everyone.
Being in a happy relationship and, at the same time, having a partner is who still jealous of your ex is extremely frustrating.
You know that you're done with your ex and you just don’t get where your person is coming from and you are worried that this might be the beginning of the end. It doesn’t have to be.
Take a look at the reasons why your person might be jealous of your ex and take the time to talk to them about it. Perhaps together, you can fix it!
And you can live happily ever after!
Mitzi Bockmann is an NYC-based, certified life and love coach. Let her help you find, and keep, love in this crazy world in which we live. Email her at mitzi@letyourdreamsbegin.com and get started!