Jealousy of a husband or wife's past can arise in any couple - in the modern world, most of us have personal baggage behind us in the form of past relationships. Knowing that your significant other had someone before you often causes pain, makes you sad and contributes to the development of complexes. It seems that there is no way out of the painful situation. With the right approach, you can find mutual understanding and a solution to the problem, which will help maintain relationships and find the answer to the question of how not to remember the past and live only for today.
Reasons for jealousy
Jealousy is a destructive feeling because it:
- destroys interpersonal relationships between a guy or a girl;
- distracts from important goals;
- absorbs positive energy;
- is a prerequisite for the development of addiction.
Often the reasons for male jealousy lie in his lack of self-confidence; he doubts whether he can give his companion what she received in past relationships. There may be good reasons for this behavior - his low earnings, lack of career advancement, failure to meet the high standards of a prosperous life.
If there are no such prerequisites, then painful jealousy can be a figment of a man’s imagination; it can be the beginning of serious mental disorders. They could have arisen earlier, but before that they did not appear or were well masked. The origins may lie in a man’s childhood, in his family, where jealousy was present. Girls need to pay attention to such symptoms before it’s too late.
Some men specifically ask their women about past relationships to get detailed information so that his girlfriend/wife feels that she is completely under the control of the man. By this method they increase their low self-esteem and try to show their importance in the eyes of their partner.
It happens that a woman gives a reason to be jealous of herself, but this does not always happen with intent. She may casually mention some episodes from her communication with her ex-husband, without attaching any significance to them, but such statements can infuriate an emotional current partner. Some women deliberately cite past men as examples in order to annoy their partner and show their success with the opposite sex. Such games are dangerous with men who are sure that a woman should belong to them undividedly.
Often a partner becomes jealous if there is a lack of lively emotions in the relationship with his current lover, they do not feel each other, have few points of contact, and cannot find a common language. The reason is hidden in the fact that people got together without knowing each other well, and they do not seek to penetrate into the inner world of their partner, but only seek to find out facts about his past relationships.
How to overcome feelings of jealousy
To get through a divorce painlessly, you need to let go of the situation. Attempts to win your husband back will fail if his feelings for you have faded.
Are you sure that the fire of love for you still glimmers in his soul? Then you need to act actively, but gently. If it was the man who initiated the divorce, you need to forgive him for the grievances caused, trying to find a place in your heart for gratitude for the once happy moments given to him. Only under this condition will the separation not be too painful, and it will be easier for you to prepare for a new life by opening your heart to new love.
A way out for men
If it is clear from a man that he is jealous of his wife’s or girlfriend’s ex-partner, then he is living in the past and not trying to build a harmonious relationship in the present. It is necessary to try to solve the problem by contacting a psychologist; the initiator can be a man, or maybe a couple.
Among the psychologist’s common advice to jealous men:
- work on yourself, constantly improving in all areas, then there will be no reason to compare yourself with other men, there will be no reason for other people to engage in these comparisons, including your current companion;
- it is necessary to get rid of complexes that prevent you from building harmonious relationships with those closest to you; this may require a long diagnosis and constant support from a psychologist;
- suspicions destroy relationships, which should be based on trust, which a man must constantly learn in order to maintain the love that united these people;
- change the model of behavior in relation to your companion - control should be replaced by care that will prove to the woman that she will not meet a better partner, all reasons for jealousy will disappear by themselves.
Talk to your friends3
Friends are a real miracle! They can help you cope with any problem and especially overcome jealousy after a breakup. Psychologists recommend pouring out your soul to friends and telling them what was wrong in the relationship. It is important to share your thoughts only with people you can trust.
The main thing is not to focus solely on the topic of separation. In general, you should spend more time with friends, since thoughts of a breakup and your ex are almost inevitable when you're alone.
Actions of a woman
A woman in a relationship with a jealous man should not behave passively: she can act independently, she can resort to the help of a psychologist, to whom it is advisable to bring her boyfriend/husband in the future - joint psychotherapy is much more effective.
A woman needs to answer the following questions for herself:
- does she still have feelings for her former lover;
- does anything connect her and her ex-husband (children, obligations, work);
- whether she is satisfied with her current relationship;
- Is she giving rise to jealousy with her rash behavior?
After such self-analysis, you need a frank conversation with your partner, the need for which should be convinced. During such a conversation, which should take place in a relaxing environment, without external stimuli and in a calm tone, you need to discuss your current relationship. A woman should avoid comparing past and current relationships, labeling, she needs to emphasize the value of having this man next to her, he must believe in his indispensability. Then the couple needs to outline common plans so that they both understand that it is better to go through the further path of life together.
What does this threaten?
There is no place for jealousy in a healthy relationship . If one of the two suffers from this illness, this means that there are problems in the couple that are not necessarily related to the past.
The most dangerous and unfair behavior of a jealous person is transferring guilt and responsibility to his other half. An unpleasant feeling relates only to the person experiencing it, to his personal complexes and fears.
If a person openly told his other half about his former love affairs from the very beginning and the other person accepted him as he is, with all his baggage, then responsibility is removed from both, and the past should be forgotten.
Another situation arises when a person hides his long-standing sexual relationship for the time being. If the wife told about her past experience after some time, and before that she assured her lover of her inexperience, then the man has every right to be angry and jealous. After all, jealousy is superimposed on the pain of deception and betrayal. The same can be said about the opposite situation, when the wife finds out about her husband’s sexual experience too late.
If the hidden relationship concerns a person familiar to both , then the resentment will be many times stronger. A lie will cause a serious crack in the relationship, which the couple may never mend.
Jealousy towards a former relationship can also be feigned and far-fetched. After all, this is an excellent reason to nag your partner endlessly - an inexhaustible source of irritation! As soon as a person becomes offended or angry, he can easily grab onto the “sin” of his other half. This manipulation of an unreasonable feeling of guilt for previous sexual experiences is a common technique used by weak, embittered people. They themselves sometimes believe in their pain, deceiving themselves, passing off real grievances as imaginary jealousy.
Manipulation
Dangerous case. There are men who leave on their own, live alone for some time, but they never let go of the victim-wife. They often live with a mistress, one or two, or three, but they never give a divorce.
They keep the woman on a short leash, periodically throwing out the fishing rod, saying: “It’s a pity that this happened, but what if we start all over again...”.
All he wants is to make sure that you are still breathing and pining for him, that you feel bad and lonely.
Why does he need this? Your emotional response and tears after another conversation are a great boost for his inflated ego.
Do you have any friends with this experience, or maybe the situation is painfully familiar to you? Tell us in the comments how you got out of his net.
And he will do everything to keep it going. More and more. Of course he doesn't want to go back. This is very easy to check: look at actions, not words. And don't allow yourself to be a victim.
Jealousy of what happened before
As the relationship develops, partners begin to get to know each other better, share their past stories, and then pathological jealousy of the past of a loved one begins to appear. This is especially true when he previously had a beautiful romantic story, which was terminated on the initiative of the other party. In this case, there is a high probability that your partner still has tender feelings for the subject of his youthful or girlish passion, which may threaten the well-being of the current relationship. Whether this is true or not is unimportant, but in any case, jealousy of the past is slowly growing and maturing within us. At some point, it becomes too much and negativity is released onto the person you care about. Periodic repetition of such breakdowns is a serious threat to your previously excellent relationship.
In order to protect your love from endless squabbles and poking around in the past, you need to understand how to deal with jealousy of the past.
Partner feeling insecure
Where does the feeling of self-doubt come from? Where all our fears and phobias come from is from childhood. It is very important to instill in a child from an early age a correct and adequate perception of the world, as well as an awareness of his place in it. By constantly repeating to a child that, due to his young age and dependent financial situation, he is not a full member of the family and is forced to accept the point of view of his parents, you develop in him a lack of self-confidence, belittle his importance in the family and society, and provide fertile ground for the development of doubts in your capabilities and talents.
Growing up and entering into love relationships, such children continue to remain nobody and interpret any comparisons not in their favor. Only psychologists can help change this attitude towards oneself, but changing the vector of one’s attitude towards a partner’s past is entirely within one’s capabilities. First of all, you need to decide whether you want to save your relationship. If so, how can you learn to trust your loved one and curb your unfounded claims about his past? The first thing you should understand is that the main reason for your jealousy lies not in your partner and not in his past affection, but in your lack of confidence in your abilities. You do not believe that you have become the one and only for your beloved person, who is not afraid of any competition from other contenders, be it former or future.
What questions torment jealous people?
The first step is to figure out why jealousy occurs and how to deal with it? As a rule, jealousy occurs in people who are not confident in their positions and recognize the superiority of others over themselves. They are constantly tormented by unpleasant questions:
- how important were the past relationships for the partner, are they more important than the current ones;
- which of us does he or she love more?
- won't this comparison be in my favor?
These questions indicate that at the moment the most important thing for us is to be the main character in your partner’s life, the most desirable, surpassing in the intensity of feelings all previous love stories. And when a partner does not let us feel this clearly, fears and uncertainty arise in the strength of the ties that bind you. If you are not confident in your irresistibility and importance in your partner’s life, jealousy of the past appears and becomes the cause of your discord.
Ban on social networks5
Often after a breakup, many men and women follow the profiles of their exes on social networks - this way you can check who they communicate with and whether they are happy at all. But this habit actually makes a person even more jealous.
In order to stop being jealous of your ex, it is better to block his profile on social networks or completely remove him from your friends list until the pain of separation subsides. If you don't do this, photos and posts from your ex will constantly appear in your news feed. And this, in turn, will only fuel jealousy.
A study has found that social media makes it harder for people to forget past relationships. That's why the Facebook team has developed a new feature that allows you to block your ex until you've come to terms with the breakup. Another important thing to mention is that you should never use social media for the wrong purposes, no matter what the phrase implies.
