How to help stop your partner’s unnecessary jealousy in its tracks 

Last night for about the first time in two years – I found myself getting really jealous – like the icky kind of jealous that is completely irrational and silly.  And it surprised me, because I can honestly say that for about two years now I haven’t had any big bouts of jealously.  Prior to that however, I dealt with it a lot.  It was something that came up within me that would eat away at me and make me feel gross and sick to my stomach.

The way I experience it, jealousy is an awful feeling; one that doesn’t seem to do me any good – especially when it is unwarranted and unnecessary.

So last night, something happened where I was feeling jealous and I could feel that gnawing feeling in my stomach – so I decided to talk to Jonny about it because I didn’t want that old pattern to resurface again, and I wanted to put a stop to it and take control over it right away.

So as we sat down to talk about it, I told him, “look, when I am jealous, alls I want is for you to give me your presence and love and make me feel super loved – alls I want is for you to remind me of the deep, intense amount of love that you have for me.”

Yet, he didn’t seem to quite understand that in the moment – so (as a typical male) he started to reason with me about all of the reasons why I shouldn’t be jealous.  And all of the reasons why I didn’t need to feel jealous about this other woman.

And I’m pretty sure that as he was trying to reason with me that I was looking at him with this blank stare on my face and I wasn’t responding, because him reasoning didn’t do anything for me.  I didn’t need to be rational about this – jealousy isn’t rational (especially in this relationship – there is no rational reason for me to feel it).  So him “reasoning at me” just made me feel worse – because I didn’t want to be reasoned with – I wanted to be loved.

And then all of a sudden, he saw the blank stare on my face, and he stopped in his tracks as he must have realized what I had meant about wanting to feel loved.

And so he totally changed his approach from being rational to being loving and he said the sweetest thing – he said “I get it, I can see that no amount of me reasoning with you is going to help you right now, no amount of reasoning is going to make you feel better – what I want to do is to let you know how deeply that I love you and how I don’t want to be with anyone else except for you and how I’m choosing you and continuing to choose you every single day.”

And in that moment, I felt so loved.  He lightly touched my face – he looked me deep in my eyes and he didn’t stop looking at me.  He gave me his total presence – his total all (a side note to men:  this is all that us women want – your total presence, loving and attention – we can never get too much of it).  And it was then that I felt incredibly loved by him, and in that moment of feeling filled up by his love – the jealously dissipated immediately.

And so this is the way that you can stop your partner from feeling jealous – give your full presence and loving to them.  Don’t just respond with “well, yeah I love you” as you are looking at your phone…..that isn’t presence.  Put down your phone, look in their eyes, and let them feel your love.  That’s presence.

Also, to the person who is experiencing the jealousy: It is helpful to communicate to your partner about this jealousy from a place of loving – talk to them from a space of maturity and say “hey look, I know that this feeling probably isn’t even rational, but I really need to talk to you about it, so that I can let it go”.  Don’t talk about it in the heat of the moment when you are angry, or in a whiney way – if you want to receive love from your partner, you need to come from a space of loving as well.

And if you feel like this is something that happens a lot, then it is something that needs to be looked at.  I did a lot of inner work to be able to remove myself from having those feelings of jealousy come up all of the time and I would be happy to help you with that as well if you feel like that is something that could be of assistance to you.

And while yes, a lot of jealousy is how you relate to yourself while you are going through it – a large part of it also has to do with how your partner chooses to respond to you while you are going through it.  So remember – practice love and presence over reason – it will stop jealousy in its tracks.  Try it and let me know how it works.