crazy jealous?

iVillage Member
Registered: 09-27-2006
crazy jealous?
1
Wed, 09-27-2006 - 9:01pm
My boyfriend and I live together for almost 2 years. I love him very much and feel truly connected to him on many levels.Despite the warmth and tenderness we share, our relationship is tortured by his frequent bouts of jealousy. I am deeply committed to my boyfriend and do not entice the attention of other men. However, he becomes abnormally agitated any time I look at member of the opposite sex. He always thinks I am "staring at"or"checking out" other men.This very often causes fights between us.How can I deal with this problem?
iVillage Member
Registered: 03-26-2003
Thu, 09-28-2006 - 12:17am
Destiny, I don't think I'm going to tell you anything you want to hear. Your boyfriend's expectations are completely unreasonable. Half the world's population is male, you can't possibly go through life not making contact with any of them, you can't go through life without looking at one of them, you're certainly going to have many situations in which you'll be working with them (sometimes perhaps quite closely). I assume that you have no male friends. Did you ever? Do you feel having contact with members of the opposite sex is wrong, do you think having friends who are of the opposite sex is wrong? Does your boyfriend avert his eyes whenever a female comes into view? Does he have contact with them, work along side them, have any who are his friends?


What you have is a guy who has some baggage from his past or you have a guy who has some control issues. Which is he? Whichever he is, this isn't going to change unless he wants it to; he'll have to want to get some professional help to deal with his issues and resolve them in order for anything to change. I don't hear you saying that he's unhappy with the way he thinks and behaves, and it's very possible that he'll spend his life thinking and reacting exactly as he does now. I don't know about you, but living life with a guy like that would be pretty restricting for me. Not only that, but I would also feel very insulted that he'd think I would be unfaithful and I'd be appalled that he'd think we can go through life without looking at a member of the opposite sex. To be honest, there will always be people we think are attractive, and we're going to look at them, that doesn't mean we're going to cheat -- and I'm not suggesting you're gawking at guys when he accuses you either. I would also say that being in a relationship with a guy like him would be very exhausting, trying to pay enough attention to your surroundings to make sure you don't accidently look at some random guy walking down the street would be way too much work for me. I went out with a guy who was jealous and suspicious for a bit, I didn't try to avoid men like he would have liked, but I was highly insulted and very tired of having to defend treating men no different than I treated women -- like people.


In truth, Destiny, I don't know how to tell you to deal with the problem. It's his issue not yours, you can't fix it and you shouldn't play along. Fights are ridiculous because you're always defending yourself against something you didn't do. You shouldn't have to deal with this and honestly, you shouldn't deal with it at all. It's his dysfunction that you're getting pulled into and dysfunctional relationships aren't going to take you anywhere but down.








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