Reader’s Question

I am a 25-year-old woman, and I have been with my current boyfriend for two years. Although he is kind, polite, treats me like a queen, and is the best boyfriend I have ever been with, I am very jealous about everything he does. I have terrible suspicions all the time. I always think my boyfriend is talking to other girls when I call him and get a busy tone. When he says he’s going to bed, I think he’s with another girl. Sometimes I even start fantasizing about what another girlfriend of his must look like and why he probably prefers her over me. This kind of thinking really kills me, but I can’t stop it.

Lately, my boyfriend has started to keep stuff from me like who he met and who called him, especially if there were female friends involved. It seems like he has to think about every single word he might say before saying it so that he won’t upset me. I worry that I might be smothering him very slowly, and I want to stop my paranoid behavior like searching his mobile or laptop for evidence that he is deceiving me, or thinking that he will meet someone else and that he’s going to break up with me. I also want to stop comparing myself to every girl he sees. But I don’t think I can help myself. I don’t seem to have any confidence in others as well as myself. I’m afraid of losing this guy. What can I do?

Our Clinical Psychologist’s Reply

There are many factors that can influence a tendency be overly guarded, mistrustful, and suspicious without warrant in relationships. Sometimes, past hurts, betrayals, and other trauma can make us wary of trusting. But most of the time, the inability to trust and the desire to possess arise out of our own insecurities and deficient self-esteem. It’s not really possible to love someone else freely when we desperately need them to attest to our self-worth. Putting such undue responsibility on them to validate us is not only unhealthy but also confers upon them inordinate power to hurt us.

Developing a healthy sense of our own worth is no one else’s responsibility but our own. Healthy self-esteem is more than just self-confidence. It’s trusting our ability to take care of ourselves emotionally as well as having a realistic sense of our worth as a human being. When a person with a healthy sense of self enters into a relationship, they’re better able to judge the character of the other party and what they might bring to the relationship. Two people who know themselves and their worth are free to give themselves to one another. Then, the relationship becomes one of daily giving and not one of possession or fear of loss.

It’s impossible to lose what isn’t there in the first place. Possibly losing your boyfriend is most likely not your real fear. Rather, the fear is more than likely that you will somehow drive him away and “prove” your inner suspicions that you are not a person of worth or value to anyone. So, rather than obsess about whether you will drive this boyfriend away, it might be well worth your while to do some soul-searching about the root causes of your insecurity. Talking with a counselor could prove very beneficial in this respect. Coming to know yourself better, respecting yourself more, and having a healthier sense of your own worth will enable you to enter into relationships with a very different set of needs and concerns and increase your chances of finding fulfillment as opposed to being plagued by constant worries of betrayal and loss.