Dear V,
I have a wonderful boyfriend who is faithful, caring and supportive. Great, right? Well apparently I am not happy being happy, and I need to find something I can pick on him about. My boyfriend has a lot of exes…not serious girlfriends, but flings that lasted less than a month. I get really jealous when he mentions them, even if he is just saying “This girl I dated used to love that band” or something similarly pointless. I know that insecurity is the seed of jealousy-but I don’t consciously feel like an insecure person. Why can’t I get over the fact that my boyfriend has been involved with other girls, even when I know he is loyal to me now? I know I can’t hold someone’s past against them….but why does this bother me so much, and how can I quit stressing out over this stupid crap!? It also irritates me because he was the one who ditched all of them, and some of them still send him e-mails and pictures of themselves (which he shows me, thinking I will laugh and not realizing that I don’t want to think about his ex-chicks!)
Please help V. I feel like such a whiny girlfriend here, and I hate that!
-Jealous Chick
Dear Reader,
Though I’m not going to let you off the hook by saying that you have every right to profess your jealousy, I don’t think that there is a person out there (who’s in love or maybe not) who wouldn’t sympathize with your feelings. Emotional infidelity is very real, though I really would be surprised if your boyfriend were being unfaithful to you. I highly doubt that he would show you these pictures if he were actually cheating on you, and the fact that he has enough grounding in the relationship to share his laughs with you says a lot about you and about the state of the relationship-it’s real. He trusts you enough to trust him. Of course, I’m assuming that he is a nice guy, and if he’s not, then I could be way off the mark here.
I wholeheartedly believe that feelings are never wrong, but that it’s the behavior that expresses these feelings that can be deadly. OK, so it upsets you that he shows you these pictures, so tell him that though you are an extremely confident and secure person on the whole, that you really don’t appreciate what he’s doing. Problem solved, hopefully. Be aware that you will never be able to stop other girls from hitting on him. It’s just not going to happen unless you have magical powers or happen to be some kind of unearthly god. Sorry, that’s just the way things work.
Oh, and word to the wise, even the most confident of the uberconfident still get bogged down in their own insecurities. Everyone carries around the weight of something they wish that they could change about themselves. What do you think that unnecessary display of confidence is for? Bingo, it’s all about disregarding that part of yourself that you wish just didn’t exist: the control issues, the big butt, the empty bank account. Whatever. Nobody is perfect, but everybody tries to be, to absolutely no avail and a large increase in personal distress. So, relax Captain Cool, let your boyfriend know that he can keep his pictures to himself and enjoy your relationship with him.
Best of luck!
V.
Fact o’ the Day…Erotic sensations have the potential to travel from the skin to the brain at rate of 150 miles per hour.
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