Dear Miss U,
So my LDR girlfriend and I have been together for six months now and I couldn’t be any happier with her. But, one of my biggest things I have a problem with is my jealousy and it gets bad at times because I get jealous of other males that get to see my girlfriend every day. She is the exact same way with me, if she seen a picture me with ANY other female she’ll get p’d off. For ex. The beginning of my junior year I took my cousin Sam to homecoming because she didn’t have a date and I felt bad and so as the nice cousin I am I asked her of she wanted to go as friends and we did.
So the FIRST thing I do is tell my girlfriend and pray to god she doesn’t slit my throat. Surprisingly, she tells me it’s alright you can go with her I’m okay with it. Come to find out she never was okay with it and whenever I went to my grandmas to take pictures she seen on my mother’s Facebook account and I had my arm around her and this caused my girlfriend to be really upset and jealous. I told her that you can trust me and you should because I’ve always been loyal and available to her phone calls, and it come to the point where just to gain her trust I’d exclude myself from things just to gain her trust and so she knew I was staying modest to her. The part where I get jealous is when I saw a picture of her with one of her guy friends she just met in Cali because she moved from Idaho. It was his birthday and she uploaded a picture with his arm around her. Am I wrong for feeling this way? 🙁
Jorian
Dear Jorian,
Yes. You are both wrong. I think you know something is amiss with your relationship, or you wouldn’t be writing to me. Perhaps you are both not yet mature enough to handle a relationship and should both take some time to be single and gain some confidence in yourselves.
It makes no sense that she would be upset and jealous about you taking your cousin to a dance. She’s a relative! What on earth does your girlfriend think is going to happen between you? Nobody should care that your arm is around her – you are allowed to hug your family after all. It’s ridiculous.
I can slightly better understand why you’d be upset over the photo of her with this random guy. For starters, she can’t expect there to be different rules for each of you. If you’re not allowed to arm-drape with the opposite sex, she shouldn’t be doing it either. It’s that simple. However, I still feel you’re both wrong.
Think about your daily life and the way you feel for a moment. Are you romantically or sexually attracted to every single girl you meet? When you’re talking to a lady, is cheating on your girlfriend in the back of your mind? Is every female you encounter an enticing vagina waiting to lure you in? No, of course not! And it’s the same for her. She’s not going to be attracted to every guy. Every other male on this planet is not a threat to your relationship. In fact, the only threat to your relationship right now is the jealousy you’re both letting take control. Believe me, jealousy will destroy your relationship if you give it half the chance.
No one likes to feel as though they are not trusted. And don’t even start with the “I trust her, it’s them I don’t trust” because that is a cop out. If you trust her, then you know she will be faithful, no matter what another guy might try. It takes two people to have an affair. If she’s not participating that’s all that matters, so the only one you need to trust is her, and the only one she needs to trust is you. Simple.
Lastly, it’s not alright to try and choose each other’s friends or control each other. It is healthy for you to have your own social lives outside of the relationship, and it isn’t right to make each other feel guilty for doing so.
It’s normal to feel a little twinge of “I wish it was me she had her arm around in that picture” or “I miss her and wish we could so easily spend time together” but it should never escalate into accusations or trying to control the other person’s actions.
Dear Miss U,
My boyfriend and I have been dating for some time and plan on meeting up in the next 2 years. I live in America and he lives in Argentina. I’ve told my best friend and my sister about him and even introduced him to them. I cannot tell my mother because I am only 16 and he’s 19 (we met when I was 15 and he was 17) but I’ve told someone about him. He hasn’t told ANYONE about me, not even his best friend or his two sisters. It hurts me that I can’t send him anything for birthdays or Christmas cause his family can find out. It makes me feel like a horrible secret and many fights have happened cause of it. Am I right to feel this way? Or am I overreacting?
Sara
Dear Sara,
It doesn’t make sense to me that you’re upset with him for hiding the relationship when you are hiding it yourself. I recognize that you have told a friend and your sister – but perhaps he doesn’t have anyone he trusts or confides in the way you do. Guys quite often don’t have the same kind of relationships with their friends as we do with ours.
But it’s been two years, isn’t it time both of you started to come clean about this? Yes, I see there’s a small age difference, but if you want to be treated like an adult you need to act like one, and hiding your relationship isn’t the way to go about that. What happens in two years when you finally do meet? You’ll feel like you’ve known each other forever but to everyone else you’ll be strangers rushing into love. At least if people know you’re part of each other’s worlds now, when the time comes to meeting they will be less likely to throw up road blocks. This is just my opinion of course.
To answer your question though, yes you are overreacting. It makes you a hypocrite if you’re getting angry and upset at him for doing something you are doing yourself.
