Dealing with Jealousy in your Relationship

The Green Eyed Monster is bound to rear its ugly head at some point in time during most relationships. Whether there’s an actual reason for it or not, it does happen from time to time. In some relationships, jealousy is present too much of the time and makes for a stressful connection between the partners in these relationships. The question surrounding jealousy is more about how to deal with it than anything else.

The first thing in dealing with jealousy in your relationship is to try to get to the root cause of it. Why is there distrust that can cause jealousy? Typically, it’s because the partner with the jealousy problem has been mistreated in a relationship in the past. This is usually because an ex has cheated on this partner and fidelity is something that he or she no longer takes for granted in a relationship.

Oddly enough, it can also come from the partner that cheated. The belief here is that if he or she is capable of cheating, then their partner could also be capable of it. Anytime there are trust issues of any kind in a relationship, there’s a huge probability that there will be jealousy within that relationship.

Insecurity is also another major root cause for a partner to be jealous. This insecurity can come from an assortment of past issues. Sometimes a person may pass through an “ugly duckling” phase before blossoming into their present day swan. Many times these people can’t move past the fact that they were once grossly overweight or had acne that covered their face. Even though they may now sport clear skin and a killer body, they look in the mirror and still see that fat, acne faced person that others used to make fun of.

Insecurity can come from other reasons, too. Nearly everyone starts out with the innocence of believing everything they’re told. This is particularly true in a relationship. Until you learn that people can and do lie, it’s easy to live in a cloud of happiness. Then one day, you catch your partner cheating on you, or you find out that he or she has been lying to you all along. That’s the beginning of the undoing of most people. They’ve learned that they trusted when they shouldn’t have. That can bring about a permanent insecurity that will be the cause of jealousy in all future relationships.

Once you learn the root cause of your jealousy, then you can begin to go about finding a way to deal with it. For example, if you’ve been cheated on in the past, look at your suspicious nature in your present relationship.  Unless your partner has given you any reason to feel that he or she has been unfaithful to you, there’s no real reason to get upset if you see them noticing an attractive individual. On the other hand, if your partner is openly staring and gawking while out with you, there’s every reason for anger, rather than jealousy.

If you find that you simply cannot move past jealous feelings even though you have no reason for it, you may want to get some counseling to help you deal with these feelings.