How to Stop Being Jealous When My Girlfriend Is Talking To Other Guys
Jealousy makes is hard for any relationship. It’s a feeling that is sometimes very difficult to avoid. Nevertheless, it is worth making an effort to control it because it can become an obsession, and stops you from enjoying social interactions, and leave you asking yourself question ‘why my girlfriend is talking to other guys’ instead of simply cherish social interactions altogether.
Jealousy usually exists when we feel that somebody is superior to us. When we see our girlfriend talking with another guy, it can be hard to not get jealous. We subconsciously compare ourselves with the other man who is approaching our woman. But we SHOULD NOT!
If she wanted to be with the other man she would have been with him. And as any living human being she has full right to talk to whoever she wants too.
If we feel less attractive than him at any point or just annoyed by him, then we can get jealous. Usually, it isn’t an indicator of the truth or the health of our relationship, but more often with our low self-esteem.
In a relationship, this is especially dangerous because it reveals a lack of trust and can lead to fights. You don’t want to be a controlling the partner.
If the relationship is dominated by insecurity and irrational suspicions, it is usually started down a slippery slope to break up. Jealousy is not congenital. It is a behavioral pattern we acquire. It’s definitely worth it to control these feelings for the sake of any relationship and our own state of minds.
1. It’s only in your head
If you have low self-esteem and you see your partner smiling and chatting with someone else, you might start to project things on their interactions that simply don’t exist.
Your jealousy can influence what you see. If your girlfriend is pretty, guys will want to talk to her. You cannot hide her in a cage. Is she only having a polite conversation with other guys without touching them, flipping her hair, or making eyes at them? Don’t panic and don’t try to see sexual tension where it is not. Observe your emotion, cause jealous like any other emotion is an information your mind wants to tell you. Oftentimes it tells more about you and your own mental condition than the real situation!
Even if your girlfriend wants to talk to another man, it doesn’t mean that she doesn’t love you. Women want to know that they are attractive to other men. If they approach her, even with romantic intentions, it doesn’t mean that she will cheat on you with another guy. Do you have a low opinion on her? Do you really think that you are not enough for her? I don’t think so! Relax and play it cool.
2. Take responsibility
Let’s make it clear: Unjustified jealousy is your problem, not your partner’s. Don’t make it a problem for both of you. You cannot control the whole world and every single move of the people you love. You are even less able to control other people approaching your girlfriend. If you feel that your envy is sometimes irrational, it probably is. Then it is time to focus on your feelings and not on your partner’s actions.
3. Understand your feelings
Try to kind of observe your own feelings like you would another person’s., When you know what you feel, keep an objective distance. Fear is usually the source of the majority of our negative emotions. If you truly love her, then there is no place for fear.
Look objectively if your partner is doing something wrong. Don’t try to own a person. These types of feelings come from insecurity, not from love. Give your girlfriend freedom and don’t manipulate her.
4. Accept your feelings
We’re not robots, but as human beings, we have to deal not only with positive feelings but with the unwanted ones too. If there are suspicions, jealousy, or fears, we start to feel something unpleasant or embarrassed by our own behaviors.
Checking somebody’s phone, stalking them on Facebook, writing pathetic or painful comments – is this the type of behavior you want? Accept that sometimes you feel a bit jealous when some nice guy is talking to your girlfriend. Don’t make a problem of it. Focus on you. Keep yourself busy, but also talk to someone. I’m sure the girl will be back in a few minutes when she will see you talking with some other girl!
5. Be honest to yourself
Make a list of values you are bringing to the relationship. Ask yourself honestly if you would like to be with someone like you? Are you a valuable partner? If you would keep the answers honest you will see your self esteem. If it’s low this is a crucial thing to work on. You don’t feel you are handsome enough?
So don’t be jealous of a more attractive man and just do more sports, go on diet ect. You thing that other guys have more to say than you? So start doing something interesting! Find a hobby and follow your passions. Do whatever is needed to think of you as an attractive person everyone would love to be.
Are You Jealous about Her Sexual Past?
Oftentimes we are jealous not only about the present but also about the past! Yeah, I know it’s crazy. We are all humans and only NOW matters. Worrying about the future or grieving about the past makes no sense. It only counts what is happening NOW. But we all know that taming our own mind is the hardest, but also the most important thing we can do.
So how about being jealous of your girlfriend’s past? You have it in mind not only when your girlfriend is talking to other guys but also in regular situations.
A as a broad generalization, men tend to feel threatened by the people their partner once had casual sex with — the one-night-stands, threesomes, “friends with benefits” and so on. Women on the other hand, tend to feel threatened by the people their partner was once in love with during a relationship. There are evolutionary reasons for this but, suffice it to say, neither form of retroactive jealousy is much fun.
3 Simple Techniques To Stop Being Jealous Of Your Girlfriend’s Sexual History
Have you ever suffered from what’s known as “retroactive jealousy” in a relationship? It’s just like normal jealousy except, rather than thinking about people your wife or girlfriend may sleep with in the present, it’s characterized by over-thinking about people she actually slept with in the past.
These thoughts invariably come accompanied with a whole host of overwhelming emotions. As well as feelings of jealousy, the sufferer may experience a number of different sensations, ranging from fear to judgment, anger to disgust, and other negative emotions.
All of this is made doubly hard to shake because intellectually it obviously makes little sense to be worried about the past. “It’s been and gone” as friends and online forum users are keen to point out, along with other cliches such as “the past has made her who she is today”. Unfortunately, as well-meaning as these words are, they’re of little comfort to someone hung up on their wife or girlfriend’s past.
I used to be constantly plagued by repetitive thoughts and emotions involving my girlfriend and the four guys she had no-strings sex with during the six months before we met. This lasted for months until I was able to finally beat retroactive jealousy by myself and without resorting to therapy, pills or breaking off the relationship, and in this post I’d like to share some of the techniques I used to do it.
1. Learn About The Evolutionary Root Causes Of Retroactive Jealousy
All negative emotions like jealousy, anger, fear, etc. have a common root cause that’s been implanted in all of us since the very beginning of humankind — the ego. Our egos have evolved to protect us from harm, and so when it’s confronted by the fact that a partner was once physically close to someone else, it feels threatened and overreacts.
In essence, when we feel jealous about our wife or girlfriend’s past, it’s just our ego saying “Whoa, hold on… are you sure you want to be with someone who might suddenly have random sex with another man?” Even though these guys in the past probably pose no threat whatsoever to your current relationship, your ego can’t tell the difference between the past and present and so is seeing them as a threat anyway.
The single best way to calm the anxiety generated by the ego is to shine a light on it by learning as much about how it works as possible. Start by reading everything you can by Eckhart Tolle and Alan Watts — the two best teachers I’ve come across on the nature of the ego.
Look into meditation and how it calm the mind and separate you from your judgmental egoic self, and your “true self” that witnesses thoughts without becoming emotionally attached to them. To suffer from retroactive jealousy is, after all, merely a state of anxiety generated by thoughts which actually can’t harm you.
In short, the more you understand about where your fear and judgment about your wife or girlfriend’s sexual history is coming from, the better. Granted, this can be difficult as society has things engineered in such a way as to suggest that it’s okay for a guy to sleep with as many women as he pleases but a woman is called a “slut” if she’s been with more than ten guys.
However, start looking into the root causes of retroactive jealousy — how the brain works, the amygdala gland, free will, the “Madonna-whore complex” and so on — and it should offer some relief.
2. Go Cold Turkey On Three Activities
If you’re doing any of the following three activities, then it’d be a good idea to cut them out straight away. Doing this will help tremendously in your fight against retroactive jealousy as it will mean you’ve broken the cycle that’s keeping it in the forefront of your mind.
Perhaps the most common activity sufferers of retroactive jealousy indulge in is to constantly quiz their partners about the past. However, this is not a good idea. By asking questions we want to hear something that’s going to make the anxiety go away. The trouble is, the more we hear about a partner’s past (even if it’s negative) the worse our anxiety becomes, because more information simply leads to the past feeling more present.
Also, all quizzing does is make us appear insecure and unattractive, and this can actually destabilize a relationship because invariably it leads to arguments.
Another activity to cut out straight away is snooping through a partner’s personal space. Going through their phone, email, Facebook account and so on, is really something that is just a signal that you’re still being controlled by your ego. You may find the urge to delve irresistible; you may feel like knowing all there is to know about some dude she once “had a thing with”, but do so at your own peril.
The chances are you’ll end up discovering things you wish you hadn’t and will end up being hurled back into a chasm of anxiety and jealousy. “Abandon all hope, ye who enter here” as Dante once said. Okay, maybe it’s not that bad, but you get the picture.
Finally, quit trawling the internet looking for the answer as to how to beat retroactive jealousy. Spending hours on online forums, reading story after story about people’s experiences with retroactive jealousy is really not doing you any good at all. Mostly the comments and advice offered is below par, and again all it’s doing is keeping you fixed in a state of anxiety.
Go cold turkey on all three activities, starting today. Or if this is too difficult, make a commitment to yourself that you’re not going to do any of them for the next week, or next month. Every time you feel like quizzing your partner, bite your tongue and just let it go. Every time you feel like snooping through her photo collection, remember that you won’t be able to get any “bad” images out your head for a long time. Every time you want to indulge in another research session on Google, put away your laptop and go do something you actually enjoy.
Simply put, whenever you find yourself overwhelmed by the desire to do one of these three things, make a conscious effort to direct your mind onto something else that interests or excites you. Watch a funny movie, go shopping, play the drums, dance around the room to your favorite song — whatever it takes to get your mind off your wife or girlfriend’s past will do the trick.
3. Work On Your Self Confidence
I’m yet to come across a single person who suffers from retroactive jealousy who’s not insecure in some way or another. This is because a lack of self-confidence and retroactive jealousy are basically two peas in a pod. It’s more or less impossible for a guy who’s super-confident in himself to become consumed by events in his partner’s sexual past. However, when we lack a certain sense of self-worth and maybe deep down wonder why our partner is with us in the first place, then unfortunately we’re far more likely to suffer from these kind of negative thoughts and emotions.
To be jealous, fearful and anxious about guys from the past means you’re comparing yourself to them and coming off second best. If you look at a guy from the past and think they’re better looking than you, smarter than you, sexier than you, or “better” in some way, then it’s no wonder you’re suffering from retroactive jealousy.
This is because you (or should I say, your ego) fears your partner may leave you for someone like them, or want to sleep with someone like them again. (Like I said, the ego has a hard time differentiating past from present.) So have a think about what you could do to work on your self-confidence and how you could change your perception of yourself from someone who’s lucky to be with your partner, to someone who your partner is lucky to be with.
After some time working on your self-esteem, you’ll find that if you compare yourself to your partner’s ex-lovers they’ll no longer appear as threatening and your retroactive jealousy will begin to fade.
