control my jealousy

This has been very easy lately because the one person in all the land who triggers my jealousy has not been coming around or calling much lately. So, I’m not learning my lessons from her. However, her almost total absence has given me some time without niggling jealousy and old insecurities popping up, and it sure is nice. I also realize that those things are all my baggage, and it’s not something I need to give my energy to any longer. I’ll try to stick that in my pipe and smoke it. :)

M let me borrow her skiis so I could go downhill skiing with G this weekend. I am gradually accepting her friendship with G, but when she mentioned offhand that she might sell her house and move (she only lives 3 blocks from us) I didn’t feel as happy as I thought I would. I actually like her and wonder if we became better friends, how much it would help me get over the jealousy I feel when G visits her or helps her with something at her house. I wonder how he feels about the possibility of her moving somewhere else in the city.

I don’t know if I can do this. I think this emotion is so deeply rooted in my psyche that I can’t weed it out. Sometimes I’m fine with things that might otherwise cause my jealous nature to flare, and I can never predict how I might react. I seemed to be ok with G’s best friendship with M, but other times I just get so tied in knots over it. I don’t know how to manage this emotion. But am I asking myself to accept something that most women wouldn’t anyway? Hmmmmm.

I found myself getting jealous and showing it…not an appealing trait to have. Why are we insecure? Why does someone like a gorgeous celebrity who has “everything” still feel insecure? Because it’s not what you look like or what you have, it’s what you feel you’re worth as a person. And we’re conditioned, mainly in our youth, by our parents and peers to see ourselves in a certain way. I’d better work on this. If I truly believed that I was worthy of love, I wouldn’t feel threatened if my relationship went belly up.

I become jealous when G does something personal and nicey for M, his good friend who used to be an ex (like making her a mixed CD of her favourite music). I like her and she’s a good person, in spite of my jealousy, but I feel irked when G takes time and thought to do something for her. G and I spend nearly all of our free time together, and he’s affectionate, caring, playful, attentive….but? I find that he doesn’t take the time to do concrete personal things for me. I guess because we practically live together and share our lives that it should be enough…but even when M calls him at work, it bugs me. I wish she would get a boyfriend instead of wait in the sidelines for us to break up so she can try to get him back. It’s happened several times before I came into the picture. Maybe all of this is about the fact that she still is in love with him and I wish she’d move to Poland. Plus, I should be happy that he occasionally does thoughtful things for her…it shows he’s a nice person. I just wonder if he wants to keep her ‘interested’...show he still ‘cares’...in case I don’t work out and he can fall back into their friends with special benefits set up. paranoid creature I am….wow…Therapy…Therapy….calm blue ocean, calm blue ocean…

I had a problem with my emotional reactions to G’s ‘friend’, a woman who used to be a ‘special friend’ and who was in love with him and might still be. It was hard for me to accept their friendship because my previous relationship with my ex was built on a lie surrounding his supposedly ‘Just friends’ relationship with an ex. In any case, I’ve met G’s friend several times and I can honestly say that I am okay with their friendship and I believe it is simply platonic. She seems to be a really kind, funny woman, but it’s a bit awkward because she doesn’t like the fact that I’m in G’s life, and he can’t spend late nights at her house like he used to. I wasn’t comfortable with his visits until 3 am although he claimed nothing was going on…just talking and playing guitar and watching a movie. But it is perception as Dr. Phil would say (not that he’s god or anything) and if you behave appropriately and with sensitivity to your partner, this is of utmost importance. So G saw that his late night visits to M were not appropriate and bothered me and he agreed that maybe it wasn’t such a good idea because M might still be emotionally invested in him and think there would be a chance some day to reunite. The result of all this has been that I am now comfortable with how things have developed, and I actually like her and hope I can get to know her better.

I think it’s impossible for me to completely stop being jealous. It’s an emotion that can be controlled though. So I’d rather say, “Try to be less jealous.” I don’t think we, as humans, can stop any one emotion entirely. But we can work on trying to maintain healthy levels of the potentially ruinous ones. Jealousy might decrease when self-esteem increases. I am trying a new cognitive behaviour called Akeru that helps me deal with anything negative that surfaces. It’s very effective.