Long Distance Jealously

I've been dating my boyfriend for about 10 months now. I moved to Chicago this year for school, and he lives in my hometown of Ohio. It's very hard, but we love each other so we are making it work. However, I've really been struggling to adjust to college and I've had a lot of depression and anxiety attacks recently. It has no doubt put a strain on our relationship. I have also become extremely jealous (I believe it is partially out of my growing insecurity) and I was on Skype with him last night and asked if I could go on his Facebook account playfully. I asked if he wanted to go on mine but he didn't. Naturally, I went straight to the messages. I realize this was a really jealous and clingy thing to do. They were all fine until I scrolled back to two years ago and I found this conversation with some random girl he was talking to...I wasn't expecting to find anything like this because I wasn't suspicious. The embarrassing thing is it was before he met me, and I know maybe I should think nothing of it because I can't get angry at him for the past, but reading sexually explicit messages he was sending to another girl just really pained me. I wanted to throw up. Even reading cutesy messages about how pretty she was, how he wanted to cuddle with her, and how he wished he could do something other than just texting with her (they met online) made me feel so sick. I've been upset about it all day and I cannot stop thinking about it. I'm hoping it will pass. I just had this lovely idea that I was always the only one he thought about like that (I am his first for a lot of things). I want to go back to pretending.

alexclaire -


You have a good intellectual understanding of what is going on, but as I'm sure you already know, just because we understand a situation doesn't change that we can still have emotional reactions to them.

Long distance relationships are hard. Do you think you'd have reacted different if you two lived nearer?

I'm also curious if this is your first boyfriend? I ask because odds are you have a past too (we all do), so it may help to remind yourself that nothing you've said sexually to others before you met your current BF was meant to hurt him. You already know that but of course it is key and important. Reminding yourself of that may help to reinforce what you already know, his past was not meant to hurt you.

p.s. it doesn't sound like he went out of his way to bring up his past, so I'm taking it he is respectful of your feelings. Maybe a good idea too not go visit his FB page again

Best wishes,

X

It might help if you can reassure yourself that she is an ex for a reason, and that he is choosing to be with YOU now.

I'm sorry I can't help but I just wanted to say that jealousy is what broke up my relationship and that you should get some help about your insecurities and boost your self-esteem somehow before it is too late. I know most colleges have a support program of some kind and even have free psychologists in some cases for the students - use them