My jealousy is destroying my confidence and wellbeing :(

Hi, I just need to talk about how much my jealousy is slowly killing me on the inside out and turning me into a stalking monster of a girlfriend.

I know that my boyfriend was in a long-term (2 year) relationship with a girl who he was madly in love with and broke up with him, which left him heartbroken for a long time. He went travelling with her and their photos are all over Facebook. It preoccupies my mind every day and has lead me to some compulsive behaviours. I constantly check her Instagram page (it is unusual for me not to do it every day) and scrutinise her pictures. I check her friends' Instagrams to see if any photos of her have been uploaded, or if there are any clues as to what she has been doing.

Recently my boyfriend left his Facebook logged on on my computer. Yep, you guessed it - scrolled through every single one of her old photos and photo albums, posts, check-ins, etc. Was this enough? Of course not! I went and found a string of conversations he had with her in messenger. There are no new conversations since 2014. Only ones from when they were together. Still killed me.

I have checked emails and read over old conversations with his close friends from when they broke up, and him saying how distraught he was. How he keeps seeing her everywhere and wants to get her back.

I've raised the topic with him but of course haven't mentioned my stalking, just that I had seen the photos, and I knew about her. I said it upsets me. His response was that I shouldn't judge his past on the photos published on Facebook as they are snapshots with no contexts or contents. But I cannot get it out of my head. It's destroying my self-esteem which is already at rock-bottom. I feel terrible in so many ways. I just cannot get rid of my jealousy.

Does this ring familiar to anyone? Any suggestions of how to overcome this, or what I can do to strengthen the more logical part of my mind, would be enormously appreciated.

I would add that their relationship ended at the end of 2013 - 3 years ago now. He was with another girl for a year and a half before we got together, whom he left to be with me. He is really good to me and always tells me how he feels. I'm just so sad about this and I want to stop letting it be an issue

I know you probably won't think this is helpful, but I would say therapy. Because, if I may, this really doesn't have anything to do with your present boyfriend, but everything to do with you (as you alluded to)

Maybe this relationship will last a lifetime, or maybe it won't and you will move onto someone else. Therapy will give you some relief no matter who you are with. And it will help with your marriage when that happens. I have too many women friends (I am a man) who suffer this insecurity and lack of self-esteem. They deserve to treat themselves better, but they don't, and they cycle through relationships with the same issues.

Treat yourself with kindness. Get out there and talk to someone who can give you some professional support.

Of course, in a practical way you could start to trust, and try to hold back the urge to check up on him. You don't have to try and change the way your brain thinks overnight, but you can make active changes. But yes, it will cause anxiety. Maybe start by there - by not checking up on him.

Otter.

As you wrote, logically you know better, but of course we feel how we feel, and your emotional side is what it is. Agree that you probably will need to speak with a professional if you want to expedite moving forward.

That written -

It's also a new world; odds of running into someone's romantic history in such depth and so constantly, before the internet, before social media, was relatively low. Today ... different story.

Of course you won't be the first or last to spend time searching social media for a romantic relationship's past or present, but one bit of advice to ponder if that's okay?

You really are just hurting yourself by doing this. That happens too, there are reasons why we feel we need to hurt ourselves, to trigger our own vulnerabilities and insecurities, but that's also the key to figuring out what's going on. Not what has he done, but why you are hurting yourself, something a therapist may be able to help sort out.

The tiny bit of advice then is next time you find yourself tempted to look, think of some imagery such as hitting yourself over the head with a bat, or putting your hand on a stove, to hurt yourself. Really any imagery can work, but the key value of this is you probably wouldn't go out of our way to physically hurt yourself. Why go out of your way to emotionally hurt yourself?

Dear RachaeyH:

I was so jealous at a way-back boyfriend's ex girlfriend, so consumed, so troubled, that it lead me to see a psychiatrist and get on my 17 year run on Zoloft (later to add other stuff) so to get relief from the obsessional jealousy. Many years later, after finally getting off all psychiatric drugs, I am finally NOT jealous about my current partner's past relationships. So there is hope.

What I figured, following psychotherapy, a long process of healing is that his past with other women has really, nothing to do with me. he didn't know me. Sure, I knew it before, but now I really, really know it. To my amazement, as my relationship with my current partner improved and I am now happily married to him, it is me, yes, me of all the women in his life, who has been the BEST for him, his FIRST partner, he said. WOW. Didn't expect to ever hear of me being the first -

I can't explain myself too well right now, but I feel empathy for you because I was intensely jealous at any and every man's sexual past, imagining, tortured... and now I am over it and therefore, would like to help you if I can. Let me know if you would like that, if you have questions (questions will help me explain myself better).

atina

atina wrote:Dear RachaeyH:

I was so jealous at a way-back boyfriend's ex girlfriend, so consumed, so troubled, that it lead me to see a psychiatrist and get on my 17 year run on Zoloft (later to add other stuff) so to get relief from the obsessional jealousy. Many years later, after finally getting off all psychiatric drugs, I am finally NOT jealous about my current partner's past relationships. So there is hope.

What I figured, following psychotherapy, a long process of healing is that his past with other women has really, nothing to do with me. he didn't know me. Sure, I knew it before, but now I really, really know it. To my amazement, as my relationship with my current partner improved and I am now happily married to him, it is me, yes, me of all the women in his life, who has been the BEST for him, his FIRST partner, he said. WOW. Didn't expect to ever hear of me being the first -

I can't explain myself too well right now, but I feel empathy for you because I was intensely jealous at any and every man's sexual past, imagining, tortured... and now I am over it and therefore, would like to help you if I can. Let me know if you would like that, if you have questions (questions will help me explain myself better).

atina

Thank you for your post Atina

It is reassuring to know that it is possible to be free from this constant checking. I feel like I just can't help but do it - it makes me miserable, but I can't stop. It causes rifts, I look at him differently as if I have discovered something about him that has changed the way I know him. Of course this is ridiculous, especially through just looking online. He says he is also curious about my past and is jealous but not on the scale of me. Luckily he isn't aware of how bad I am.

What did you do to help yourself not check and recover your self-esteem? Honestly my self-esteem is just non-existent now. It's so hard. My sadness is fuelling my compulsion to check. It's like a cycle that I just cannot break! Although sometimes I'm better than other times. Also I really, really love my boyfriend and we have discussed marriage and children. So I know it's not a fling, no matter if and how it ends up being. I think that's why the compulsion is so strong.

Dear RachaeyH:

You are welcome. You asked how I resisted checking and how I recovered my self esteem.

My answer: through therapy and ongoing healing, I realized that (I am jumping to the root cause of it all), realized that my mother didn't love me, that she didn't love me not because I was unworthy, but because she was angry and needed to relieve herself from her distress by attacking me. I realized I didn't deserve those attacks, that I didn't do the wrongs she accused me of doing, that there was nothing wrong with me. In other words, I separated my self, and my self esteem from my mother, and from what she told me about me, from how she treated me.

I also learned that other people, most others, suffer too, struggling and need my help. I became resourceful.

atina