Reader’s Question

I’m a college student, and I have a relationship issue that is causing me a lot of mental distress. I hope you can give me advice about it.

My old roommate slept with a girl who later became one of my best friends. She is now my girlfriend and I simply love her to death. Before we started dating and were just good friends, she confided a lot of information to me. Perhaps she gave me way too much information about what happened between her and my old roommate. To make matters worse, my roommate actually has an audio recording of them together, and he played it to me. I didn’t want to listen to it, but he played it anyway. I didn’t know it was her at the time. Now, for some reason, I find myself thinking about the two of them together intimately, and it makes me sad and depressed.

My girlfriend and I have a good relationship with good communication. But I’m worried that my insecurity is getting the best of me. I don’t want what is going on in my head to destroy my relationship with her. I haven’t talked specifically about all this with my girlfriend, but I did tell her that mentioning him in any bothers me and asked her to try avoid talking about him if she can. Is there anything I can do to get over this situation that might be more successful?

Any advice would be appreciated.

Our Clinical Psychologist’s Reply

What you report sounds a lot like obsessive thinking. And although this kind of thinking almost always causes a person a good deal of distress, it’s often quite hard to stop. That doesn’t mean, however, that you can’t put a stop to it. But it takes practice. And it might even take some professional help and even some medicine.

In the absence of medical or other professional assistance, you can do some things right now to break the vicious cycle of obsessing. As simple as it sounds, it’s as straightforward as changing your thoughts — from the insecurity-based obsessive thoughts to more security-oriented positive thoughts about your relationship. It might seem a trite and overly-simplistic strategy to you, but it works. It’s not easy, because sometimes you might re-direct your thoughts only to have the insecure, obsessive thoughts return. But if you remember the fact that you can always re-direct your thoughts, and reinforce yourself for doing so over and over again, in time, you’ll be able to feel secure and in control again.