I can't stop being jealous of my girlfriend

[schwenndo]

Hi all,

first of all I want to apologize about any language problems that may occure, I live from germany, so I am not a native english speaker.

My problem might not be as extreme as the ones from other people, but honestly I don’t know who else to talk to right now.

I’ve been in a relationship with my girlfriend for about 8 and a half years now. I like our relationship. Of course, like with everyone else, we had our ups and downs and our own individual problems, but we managed to deal with everything and worked on ourselves.

Throughout the years of our relationship, she was not really the person of high self-esteem. She didn’t have many friends and she experienced a lot of betrayals of ex-friends in past. She herself has to deal with her own depression, mostly because of her insecurities because of her body and appearance. This led to the problem, that she was a very jealous person. And honestly, I had my problems to deal with this in the beginning of our relationship. I remember her being angry at me for hanging out with girls from my school at that time, and it took me a while to realize, that her jealousy is not really my fault.

I myself wasn’t really jealous at all, not because I thought that no one would like her, but because she always gave me the feeling of being her absolute number 1, no matter what guys she would meet. This led to the point, that we spent almost every second together and all the friends we had were friends of the both of us, and mostly we remained on our own. In contrast to other relationships, I really liked that characteristic of our relationship. We became best friends and loved each others as partners, but we didn’t have many friends. I was happy at that point and my girlfriend was too, but not completely. She always wanted to have a best friend to talk to besides me, for example when we would be fighting, and I totally understood that.

At this point it is important to mention, that her mental health wasn’t really in a good spot, inferiority complex, feeling ugly and being afraid of being lonely were her big problems. And I always tried to have an ear for her, knowing that my advices wouldn’t help her to the level she would need to be unrestrictedly happy.

Since the outbreak of the pandemic and the waves of lockdowns, we are living together in her parents house, which never was a problem for us or her parents.

I today have finished university and I work in a bank near our town on a 9 to 5 basis. My girlfriend (because of bad decisions in the past) still goes to school, but on the evenings, from 5 to 10. This means, that we only see each other for about 2 hours a day and on the weekends. This is pretty hard for us, and especially it is for her.

Because she doesn’t go to work in the mornings, she used to try to pass the time in different ways. For the last few months, she started being active on twitch in the chat of a particular streamer. This is one of the first things in her life (besides our relationship of course) that has consistency. The community more and more accepted her and she has become a part of it. At first I was really happy for her, because I saw her being happy more often, and if I couldn’t be the one to help her enough, the help of friends was as good for me.

Until then, everything was fine for me. Things became strange when she started having more contact with one particular member of the community. It started with random messaging on discord, later being together in voice chat, hanging out together online. Now don’t get me wrong, I wasn’t trying to observe her, but unfortunately our PC’s are built up next to each other, so I was able to listen to the words she was saying, even though that wasn’t my intention. They shared phone numbers, instagram, snapchat…the full program. Honestly guys, it sounded like she was totally in love with him. The tone of her voice, her way she was laughing, the things they were talking about… the kind of happiness I saw in her eyes. This was the point were my feelings freaked out and I almost instantly started crying because of anxiety and jealousy. I thought I was losing her to this guy, this random guy from the internet. And i instantly confronted her with this (and not in the best way). I screamed and shouted at her, blamed her for being in love with him and so on. I was panicking very extremely and started crying. She was frightened, because she couldn’t understand why I would react like that. She was trying to ensure me, that she was not in love with him and that she would still love me. And for the moment it was okay for me and we went to bed.

Then the next day was probably the worst day in my life. I couldn’t last a single second not thinking about the two of them, having contact the whole day, talking to each other in ways wouldn’t like, having intimate and personal conversation and so on. I was freaking out. Because of my despair at that moment, I reached out to an old friend of mine from university and asked him for advice. We had a longer conversation, but mainly he told me to ask her to stop having contact with him, because otherwise she would fall in love with him in the long run. I didn’t know if this was good or bad, but I was so heartbroken, that actually tried that. I picked her up from school in the evening and we instantly started talking about this problem, with me wishing for her to stop talking to him. And because of that, we had a very big fight while driving. We both were crying very badly and she tried to tell me why she had so much contact to him. She said, that for the first time in her life she didn’t act to help others, but to help herself and that this friendship really helps her getting better mentally. And I started realising, that taking this away from her would be the badest wish you could have as her boyfriend. So I tolerated it and said that we could master this situation together and that everything would turn out fine in the end.

The day after and every other day until now, I couldn’t stop thinking of her being with him and being extremely jealous. I mean really extremely, being able to cry at every single second of the day. That burdens me very hard, because at the same time I don’t want her to be worrying about me, because she has to deal with her own problems. But knowing that the two of them are having this close contact to each other, planning to visit each other and pretty much voice chatting every day drives me so crazy…I really can’t handle it.

I know that she is talking to him in ways that I wouldn’t like or would misinterpret, and she tries to avoid texting him while I am around, because she knows it would hurt me.

Just for the info, she doesn’t see what she is doing as a mistake, so she doesn’t blame herself for doing anything wrong. She says that my jealousy and anxiety are unsubstantiated, that she still loves me, and my thoughts don’t have to be like that.

I’m sorry, but even if she says this a hundred times, it just helps for a few hours. I can’t influence my feelings. It hurts me. I miss her seeing me as the only person in her life and I am heartbroken. I don’t want to feel like this anymore, and I still don’t think that taking this friend away from her would be a good decision. And, of course, I don’t want to break up with her, I love our relationship and I love her more than everything in the world. I’m clueless, helpless, heartbroken, sad, hurt, jealous… I don’t really know how to express these feelings. I wan’t it to stop, because I don’t want to destroy our relationship and I absolutely have no clue how.

Don’t get me wrong, I have friends that would listen to me, but they don’t seem to understand how our relationship works and honestly how I feel about that.

Thank you for reading until this point. I am happy for any advice you guys can give me and have a great evening!

[Wings]

Being jealous is understandable. You are trying to prevent damage to your relationship. It also sounds like you are feeling insecure, perhaps because he offers a level of communication and interest in stuff that the two of you don’t talk about. Years ago, there was a married woman who desperately sought my company. I knew both her and her husband, and did not want to be in a position to hurt their relationship. Therefore, I kept contact to a minimum. One day, the husband came to me and asked me to spend more time with his wife. Clearly, he trusted me not to pursue romance with her. He said he wanted me to come around more because after I spent time with her, she was much easier to get along with. The arrangement worked well for years, until sadly, she passed away.

After 30+ years working in the building trades, I went to nursing school. There, I was surrounded by plenty of attractive women. I spent a ton of time with two of them in particular. I also invited them to my house and introduced them to my wife. She never worried about it. She trusted me. Time passed. We graduated and went our separate ways. That was 21 years ago. We still talk to them once in a while. My wife also had a guy that she talked to for hours on end. I didn’t worry about that either. We’ve been together for 27 years, and have remained absolutely faithful to each other.

The point is, it’s entirely possible that she is keeping this friendship going, with no intention of it becoming romantic.

As long as she is reassuring you that she is not interested in him romantically, your best response is to trust her.

Even if she does eventually run off with this guy, it won’t be because your insecurity drove her away.

[SheetMetalHead]

Hi there. First off, welcome to Heart Support. You came to a good place.

Unfortunately, I’ve had different experiences from @Wings. In the past, I’ve tried to deny my gut feelings of worry, but my gut has almost always been right. The guys they told me not to worry about were guys they cheated on me with or left me for.

It is easy to cross emotional boundaries with others, easy to deny that there’s any wrongdoing because nothing sexual or overtly romantic is taking place. As one marriage speaker said at a seminar, “It’s easy to catch the tingles, and at some point you will catch the tingles.” When that happens, the right thing to do is shut it down; but that can be hard to do because it feels good, and we can justify it to ourselves by saying that “nothing” is happening.

The panic you’re feeling is anxiety winding up as you think about it more and more. At this point, it sounds like you’ve lost control of your feelings, but there was still something that caused those feelings in the first place, and that shouldn’t be discounted. Dismissing your feelings isn’t the way to make things better; having your feelings changed with reassurance is.

Has she pulled away and become more distant from you? If not, it may just be that she met a friend she enjoys talking with. If she’s growing distant, she may be investing herself emotionally in him. Think about that carefully. If you’re worried about this, I think the best thing is to have a calm conversation with her. Write down your thoughts beforehand, ask her to hear you out, and then tell her how you’re feeling. Use “I feel” statements, and use the word “you” sparingly. This isn’t a time to point fingers at her. Focus on yourself and how all this is making you feel. For example, “I’ve felt more distant from you since you started talking to this guy, and I’m worried,” not “I think you talk to this guy too much, and I think there’s something going on between you, and either you’re lying to me or you won’t admit it to yourself.”

The tough part of this is that emotional bonds aren’t black and white. Unless you find texts between them talking about love, you can’t prove that she’s falling for him. If you do find messages like that by going through her phone or computer, you’ll have violated her trust, and it will be really hard to recover from that. After you talk about how you feel about the situation, if she’s still listening calmly and not getting defensive, I think it’s reasonable to tell her that the guy makes you uncomfortable, and you’d like her to consider minimizing her contact with him. My wife and I have set boundaries like that with certain people, and it’s a choice we’ve each let the other make.

If you approach her calmly without attacking and she still gets defensive, unfortunately there’s not much you can do. If she gets angry instead of acknowledging your feelings, she’s probably hiding something, but arguing about it with her won’t make it any better. At that point, you can’t control her actions. Only she knows whether she’s being honest with you or forming unhealthy emotional bonds with the guy. You either have to trust her, be willing to forgive her if she confesses to an emotional affair, or decide that you can’t do either and leave. A relationship can’t be healthy without trust. Like Wings said though, even if she does run off with him, it’s her choice and not your fault.