Coping w jealousy

[Idontknowj]

Okay. So me and my boyfriend have been dating for almost a year now and in the beginning he was the one who was all over me, he would often get jealous of me or insecure about me taking interest in other guys. I didn’t really care much however because it wasn’t too serious of a relationship to me. However, once we started getting more serious I developed strong feelings for him and now I’ve gotten to a point where I actually care about him a LOT. This meant that I started getting extremely jealous and now it’s gotten to the point where when he follows a girl on instagram it makes me so mad. My jealousy caused me to start snooping on his phone (I know it’s really bad, I’m trying my best to stop) and I’ve found pictures of girls from before we dated but I still get bitter over it. On top of that, I’ve found other things from his past that angers me and even things just like him searching up and liking pictures of girls while we were dating makes me really angry. We've been fightng so much lately and before he used to be a rational fighter and reasonable while i used to be more on the stubborn side, but now all of thats gone and its both of us butting heads and being equally stubborn or almost the other way around. Every time i rethink about him being even attracted to any other girl i develop a strong bitterness towards anything relevant to the type of girls he looks at or things that remind me of it, and it makes me bitter towards him almost to the point where i want to break up with him because i dont feel he makes me feel like im enough. Am I being reasonable? I do know im being quite stubborn i just need someone to tell me what to do im honestly just completely lost.

[RoonilWaslib]

i want to break up with him because i dont feel he makes me feel like im enough.

 

I'm curious about this part. What does he do that makes you feel this way? Be specific if you can.

 

To me it sounds like something happened that changed the dynamic of your relationship. In my experience, you don't start snooping on your partner's phone for no reason at all. I could be wrong, but I get the feeling that maybe he said or did something that set this in motion. Is this true?

 

If not and it is 100% coming from you, then it is a case of insecurity. If it is as you say it is and nothing more, it sounds like as soon as he stopped being jealous and possessive, you started being jealous and possessive. It's a push-pull sort of thing that can happen if one or both people in the relationship are insecure, either with themselves or with the state of the relationship. If this is truly what's happening, I would do this:

 

1. Recognize that your insecurity is your problem, not his. Stop allowing it to dictate the way you treat him. Stop snooping, stop checking who he is/is not following. Just stop. If you have to remove yourself from social media for a while to accomplish it, then do it.

 

2. Seek out why you feel this way in the first place. I'm a huge proponent of therapy for this kind of thing. Whatever method you use, get to the bottom of your insecurity so you can start to work on it.

[siberianwildfl]

His initial jealousy allowed you a false sense of security and so you didn't think you needed to worry about him leaving you as a result. Now that you're vulnerable your insecurity is apparent too. You've both been acting out of fear.

 

He cannot sustainably make you feel like you're enough because your value is not based on his opinions of you but your own. He also cannot erase his past nor is it reasonable to ask him to make his world smaller so that you are no longer afraid (this is a key feature of abusive relationships).

 

He will always be attracted to others as will you. That's natural & healthy. You both can set boundaries that you mutually agree to regarding how you interact with people you are and have been attracted to, but if you don't or can't agree then you likely have very different values and will both be unhappy long term.