How to quit being jealous

The way you deal with this emotion could lead to a major breakup — or a closer, happier relationship. Jealousy can arise in a million different situations and sometimes hits you when you least expect it. Maybe your husband won’t stop joking about his “work wife,” or your girlfriend flirted with the waitress at dinner last night. If you felt a little twinge in your gut and an urge to keep your partner to yourself, let’s get one thing straight: Jealousy is a normal emotion. “I would actually argue that all jealousy is natural,” says Jennifer Bevan, Ph.D., professor of communication at Chapman University in Orange, California. In fact, it’s so natural, Bevan points out, that researchers have studied people around the world and found very few cultures where jealousy isn’t present. The problem is when it becomes a destructive force. “It’s when it’s not being handled well that it can become what we call ‘morbid jealousy,’ which is when it spirals out of control.” That’s probably the type you wish you didn’t feel.

Believe us — you’ll know! Maybe you’ve never wanted to read your boyfriend’s texts before and now it’s pretty tempting. Maybe there’s a burning feeling in your chest whenever you see him talk to another woman. Maybe you get cranky whenever your wife tells a funny story about a situation you weren’t present for. Maybe, if you could, you’d clear her calendar so she could devote every bit of her attention to you.

“Researchers who study jealousy are an interdisciplinary group of psychologists, family studies researchers, cultural anthropologists and communication researchers like myself and they mostly agree that we experience it in three ways,” explains Bevan. “First we feel it emotionally; then we experience it cognitively so we think about it and worry and become suspicious; and lastly, we communicate it.”

Emotionally: Jealousy may start with an uncomfortable feeling such as anger, sadness, pain, surprise, confusion or anxiety. Ugghhh, why is he laughing so hard at that other girl’s corny joke?

Cognitively: Then, as you start to process it, thoughts can run the gamut. What is this other person bringing to the table for my partner that I can’t? Why doesn’t my significant other flirt like that with me anymore? Do they even love me? When it preoccupies you or causes rumination (turning it over and over again in your mind), that’s when jealousy can start to harm your mental health. “Rumination stresses people out because they end up stuck in cycle with no resolution,” says Erin Wiley, M.A., L.P.C.C., a clinical psychotherapist and the executive director of The Willow Center, a counseling practice in Toledo, Ohio. “Someone who is already struggling with anxiety or depression could be more likely to fall into the habit of ruminating on negative jealous thoughts.” Eventually, it may bleed over into the very relationship you cherish itself.

It gets communicated: “It doesn’t really impact the relationship per se, until it’s expressed,” says Bevan. And “expressed” doesn’t necessarily mean you telling your partner you’re jealous, although you can. Some of the less productive ways to express it might be that you avoid your partner, try to control whom they spend time with or throw things across the room in exasperation. More positive ways include working through your feelings about the current situation with a therapist or a trusted friend, or your significant other if you can do it in a way that will help, not hurt, your relationship.

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