When it comes to relationships, I have always been the jealous type. More specifically, I am the jealous type when it comes to a guy’s past. See, I trust that the guy I am with isn’t going to cheat on me. I trust that he isn’t texting other girls or anything like that. But what I don’t trust is his past. I get hung up on who he has been with. Was she prettier? Was she funnier? Happier? Smarter? But no, seriously, was she prettier?
With my current boyfriend, initially I didn’t care about how his ex looked. He convinced me I was the most beautiful woman he’s ever seen. He was obsessed with my image, saving every selfie to a folder in his phone. I felt secure in my beauty, but it didn’t change the fact that I was still jealous. So what was I jealous of?
In the first week of dating, my boyfriend told me a lot about his ex. I know that you instantly think “Oh honey…he’s not over her.” but it wasn’t like that. She cheated on him, stole all of his money, moved to London, and a year later on Christmas Eve she texted my boyfriend telling him she got engaged to the guy she cheated on him with. Yep. That happened.
He has been through a lot, and if he was going to be close to anyone again, he needed to confide his past.
So what exactly was I jealous of? The part where she’s a cheater? The part where she’s a stealer? The part where she married a British guy? (Well okay, yes, that is kind of dreamy but beside the point). No. I was jealous of how close he had been to her. He loved her, they were living together, and he wanted to marry her. We had only been dating a week, and those facts crushed me. If we were to ever get serious, how could I ever live up to that? If he had loved some other woman so deeply, I couldn’t see how he could love me more.
But then he did. He fell for me so quickly that he couldn’t help himself. In a letter, he wrote, “Here we are now, almost three months later, hundreds of miles apart, and I’m still falling in love with you. You are the most beautiful thing I’ve ever laid my eyes on, and I’m so lucky to call you mine.”
Although I could go on and on, we know that this is not a love story. So what happened next? Well, over time I got more comfortable in our relationship, and the initial jealousy mostly faded. But then our sixth month rolled around, and I got hit with a huge wave of insecurity. But no, seriously, was she prettier?
Suddenly it mattered. Suddenly, I couldn’t trust his words; I had to rely on my own understanding. I had to decide for myself if she was prettier than me. Six months in, and I was Facebook stalking. It was 1 AM, pitch black, and all I had was a laptop screen to cast light on my insanity. After sufficient creeping, I found her name buried in his statuses. I went to her page. Her profile picture was one of those dumb black and white angled close ups that could make anyone look halfway decent. Not good enough. Private profile? Can’t see more pictures? Time to Google!
She has a blog. Oh God she has a blog. This has gone too far. Do I really want to know more about her? How would my boyfriend feel if he knew I was doing this? Will any of this make me feel better? Hm…well, if she has a blog it probably has her picture on it. Click.
It does. Okay she’s blond. I dyed my hair blond and my boyfriend loves it. Does he just like it because she was blond? What does he think of when we’re lying down and he holds my hair? Does he think of me? I wish I was a brunette again.
Okay she’s thin. Okay… she’s thin. You knew she would probably be thin. It’s not the end of the world. Should I be thinner? Would he like it if I was thinner? Would I like it if I was thinner?
Her face is…okay. She kind of has a sweetheart face like mine. Do we look similar? When I meet his friends, will they think he has a type? Will I blow them away or will I just meet their standards?
I was in search of security, and yet seeing her only left me with more questions, more doubts. It left me sad. It left me with all of the issues I had months before. Again, how could he love me?
I wanted to call my boyfriend in a pool of tears. I wanted him to comfort me and give me reassurance. I wanted him to give me value because I had lost it moments before. But I knew that talking to him would not help me in the long run. I had created this problem and I had to start finding the solution.
I sat in my bed, this time with my phone’s display as a source of strength and illumination. I opened my Facebook messenger and wrote him a very long message until I got to the heart of the issue:
“I don't accept your love on a daily basis and I wish I did. It took everything for you to love me. I know the broken feeling it creates. Your heart breaks for me and I forget that all the time. I just have to pray that I will be more mindful of your love and that it is a gift that I have to choose to accept every day. I don't want to choose inadequacy and jealousy. I don't want to choose your fucking ex. I just want to choose you. I hate when I make choices that leave me unhappy and I act like I can't stop them. That's not who I am. That's not what my whole life and passions are about. I have to start owning my choices including holding on to negative emotions. I need to let those go. I choose your love tonight and I am going to start choosing it every day.”
I realized that while it is hard to prevent the initial feelings of jealousy, it is always a choice to act on them—to let curiosity get the best of me. When I choose jealousy, it means I am not choosing love. I am not accepting that another person could care for me unconditionally. I am not trusting that they really value me. And even worse, I am relying on another person’s image to evaluate myself as a person.
Her beauty does not affect my worth.
Say that out loud. Her beauty does not affect my worth. Saying those words makes me cry because the opposite statement is a lie I have been telling myself for a long time. I think it’s a lie that is engrained in every woman in our society. Men value us for our beauty and we internalize that. We start to value ourselves for our appearances and we judge other women by their looks.
It shouldn’t matter what my boyfriend’s ex looks like. Yes, she was sort of pretty. But what if she was a bombshell? What if she was ugly? None of it matters. She was a terrible person and is no longer in his life.
Just because I am rationally aware of my issues does not mean that I am free of them. I still want to go back to her blog. I still want to go to her Facebook to see if she’s updated her stupid picture. I still want to see her. But those would be bad choices. They would never make me feel better about myself.
I am tired of jealousy. Today, I choose me.