Most jealous boyfriend ever...

Visitor's Question from a 16-20 year old Male
My girlfriend and I have been dating for 3 and a half years. For the entire first year, things were perfect. We never fought and neither of us were jealous at all. Then she was placed in a awful situation and kissed another guy. Ever since that, our relationship has been pretty rough. I get jealous about everything. I'm in college and she's still in highschool, so we aren't around each other very much at all. I sincerely believe that she loves me, but my jealousy still gets in the way of me seeing that sometimes. I get jealous when she sits next to guys at lunch, talks to other guys, admits that another guy is hot, etc... It is tearing apart our relationship. I want to change, I want things like this to not bother me, but I don't know how to change what I feel. I think that it's impossible. For example, she is at the beach with a couple of her female friends right now, and the only thoughts consuming my mind are of guys checking her out and her checking them out. She is a very attractive girl and it just bothers me so much to think of other guys checking her out. I know that this shouldn't bother me, but it does. I don't know how to get over this jealousy!!

RomanceClass.com Advice
Excessive jealousy is stupid just like excessive anger.

Both are very normal human reactions but need to be controlled. At the root of jealousy is lack of self-worth and lack of trust. You are afraid of losing her. Mix in a bit of embarrassment too if she does something in public. You might also feel like she is trying to hurt you.

All of this adds up to a lot of pain and causes trouble for your relationship.

Try to work through all the angles of jealousy and fight them one by one. When you are jealous, immediately tell yourself that you are the person she loves and cares about. This is the self-worth issuel. For building up trust, see this webpage: http://www.coping.org/growth/trust.htm read it carefully until you can see how lack of trust is an element of jealousy and how to deal with it better. The embarrassment you might feel is not very easy to handle. About the best you can do is realize that nobody else but you is paying much attention to what she is doing and that you are hypervigilent. Finally, try to identify some small thing that you could ask her to change... or even take the worst jealousy cause and ask her to change that.

Reduce the pain by thinking of activities that could distract you like running, biking, working out, playing a video game. It is hard to stay jealous while doing other things.

Hope some of this helps.

Good luck! George

-- from George
One of Your Friendly Advisors at RomanceClass.com

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