Insecurity ruined my relationship!

I have been with my boyfriend for four months now. He was a great boyfriend, very loving and attentive and always there for me. Problem is I ruined it with my insecurities and jealousies! My last relationship, my bf cheated on me and lied to me so now I'm scared of the same thing happening.
Instead of feeling happy being in this relationship I am constantly questioning everything..I'll badger him with questions about anything and everything I am suspicious of and then I'm not satisifed with the answer so I keep going back to it. He has to deal with women at work (we work together) and I get extremely jealous. I constantly check his email at work or his texts and need to know whose calling him.
I then become unhappy because I want to trust him so bad..
I found out he was going out of town for a couple of days to visit friends with his two year old daughter and freaked out that what if theres gonna be other girls around?
So he's been getting more and more frustrated with me, for good reason. Then finally we had another blowout last saturday, he dropped me off at home and I didn't hear from him again. Finally recieved a text saying he needs time, my jealousy is too much for him.
Now I'm kicking myself for losing such a great guy!! I've been depressed and can't eat or sleep. I want him back so bad and I want to make things work so bad. Otherwise this problem will only happen in the next relationship as well.
I think theres a chance he might want to work things out since he said he just needs time and we should just be friends for a while.
How do I stop myself from being so jealous??

Ever consider going to a counselor by yourself or with him?

Trust issues aren't easily fixed. However, just because you feel compelled to do something doesn't mean that you have to do it. For example, just because you feel the need to check his email doesn't mean that you have to actually check it. Trust is built over time and you're not going to learn to trust him if you constantly expect him to lie to you.

You don't have to believe every thought that pops into your head. Thoughts lie all the time. If you want a healthy relationship, you have to learn to be strong enough to be vulnerable even if it is unpleasant for a while. The only way to protect yourself against cheating/lying/getting hurt is to not date and to live in a cave somewhere. Acting controlling towards the guy is just going to make you both miserable.

And I seriously suggest counseling.

I can only tell you from my point of view. My husband is the jealous & insecure one. He questions every move I make & assumes the worse about everything I do. If I am on the phone with him and he hears someone's voice in the background, he wants to know who it is and why they are there, etc.

I guess I can tell you that if you do that in your relationship, you will make your mate feel the mine has made me feel: I wonder if HE isn't the one doing something I should be worried about.

Does that make sense? Part of his actions make me want to get away from him & part of it makes me feel like he must be guilty of something if he is so worried about me.

So, maybe just try to realize that if he's pretty much been honest with you (the way I have been with my husband) that if he were doing something, he'd be man enough to tell you and break things off. That's what I tell my husband: I have no reason to lie to him. Why cheat on him if it would just be easier to leave and be with another person. And also, think about this: jealousy and insecurity makes the other person feel suffocated and not so much loved by you as feeling "owned" by you. That's not a good feeling.

So, I'm just trying to let you know how your mate might feel. I'm on the other side and know what it feels like.

Good luck

Good question! When you discover the answer please clue me in on it.

I have huge insecurities with my boyfriend because of my depression. To make it even worse just when I thought it couldn't get any worse my boyfriend said that he doesn't love me anymore ( he still cares for me deeply) because of what my depression is doing to our relationship and the fact that I am not acting like myself anymore.

I know where your coming from I too constantly check up on my boyfriend and get extremely jealous of his friends and family I think it's an effect from previous bad relationships I don't want to be like this it makes me Anxious and I feel bad but I can't seem to control it it takes over me and I become obsessed with thoughts I have and I dwell it

I have been there too, where my jealousy and abandonment issues have messed up past relationships.

Now, as my thread posted today shows, the abandonment issues are still there as is the jealousy, but I have begun to fight it stating with those horrible thoughts we jealous and insecure people think about.

In my situation I have to actually deal with my girl living with ex due to circumstance..yikes!! Not a healthy one for a person trying to get over all I have felt in the past.

However, as far as those feelings go I have come to realize they are all just fantasy. I am with a wonderful woman who is very honest and pure and I know and everyone who knows her knows she does not cheat.

That is all fine and well, but it did little when I started to have those fantasy about how maybe they are going to sleep together, get back together etc etc...

Last night as I was in a bad patch, they were building a toddler bed (looong story) and the guy made a joke with a kind of flirty familiarity, which I heard over the phone... which is to be expected, they had two kids and were together six years.

Now, she said she would call after she was done and it was a long while before I got upset and started sending texts, which went unanswered. I started to imagine them building the bed and then maybe having 'you know' on it. I had this done perfectly in my head, to the first little touch to the end and it was burning my soul like a freight train from hell.

After she called and we talked about it, I did not mention that my garbage got to that level, as I only felt it might start pushing her further away. After all, once she was on the phone and I realized how silly I was being I did stop worrying.

I am still learning how to deal with myself but this is not the first nor the last thought of this nature that will cross my mind.

However, with some practice you can start to see how silly the whole thing is. Like you some of this stems from having the wool pulled over my eyes and being cheated on in the past, as well as other factors.

At first it is hard but think about how realistic you are being when you think about this stuff.

Also, last week I found myself waiting for her phone call and saw her in Facebook chat, which made me wonder if she was talking to someone on there as well. Ends up she was reading the stuff I asked her to read that I posted about our situation earlier that day (duh!).

As one of the posters above said, you can stop doing this with a little self talk about how you are being and some will power.

Think about it...even if you find something what if you got it all wrong. And if you do find something bad, it will always come to light and the more secure you are in yourself, the more easier it will become to deal with these situations, for better or for worse.

I am no Zen master but one thing that got me up to par was simple breathing meditation where you try to focus on your breath and nothing else,

Being cheated on also wrecks self esteem so make sure you think of positive things not only about you and your partner but also yourself every chance you get.

Every 'I can't" becomes "I can" and so on...again I have not mastered this but I have done enough to know you can get results if you apply it.

It also brings to mind something I saw on a website when I was researching this same issue: Every relationship is like three pillows..one at each of the partner's feet to represent their space and their lives and the one in the middle representing the relationship you share.

Sound hokey I guess but it is true, also know you are not alone in feeling like this and it is just a natural defense thing, but one that does more harm then good.

Hope I helped, I wish you well...

jealousy is a feeling that is difficult to bear

It is hard to control feelings, but you can, to some extent, control behaviors - if he comes back and/or in your future relationships, can you abstain from checking the guy's phone log? Can you abstain from asking questions about who calls your boyfriend? Is it possible for you to keep boundaries? Can you journal/post about jealousy somewhere not visible to bf, when you get the feelings, instead of acting out by violating his privacy (and, in this particular case, the bf's employment agreement by which he surely is supposed to keep his work email private)?

Also, how would you feel with tables turned? Would you enjoy having a relationship with a guy who needs to know everything about your conversations with other people?

I've been on both sides of the coin. When I was younger, I was jealous. My exh is/was a very jealous man.

Badgering with questions, is about trying to control the environment due to fear . Fear of being alone, fear of losing someone, fear of feeling the pains from childhood. No matter what the fear is of, it's fear.

Constantly checking e-mails and texts, displays an invasion of privacy and lack of trust. It's self-doubt, aka, insecurity. There's a fine line there, it's human to have moments of insecurity, to have moments of self-doubt. Therapy work, and self-work, self-awareness can lead to being able to say, hey wow, I am outside my comfort zone, I am feeling vulnerable, and it doesn't feel good. The better thing to do, in a relationship, is to acknowledge, hey, this is what I am feeling, being able to express either with words or other forms of expression what the trigger is. And to just talk and communicate. It's non-confrontational, it's just showing the vulnerability to your partner.

Yes, if you don't address this now, it will follow you over and over again. Now, I hadn't completed my therapy work, on this issue. So that, by the time I reached my marriage(former), I declared to myself that I would no longer be that jealous type, but had I done the therapy work, I wouldn't have swayed so far in the other direction, that maybe I wouldn't have accepted it, with my ex-husband. Maybe, I'd have walked away sooner than later. And oh, wow, jealousy is a funny little emotion. What he has done is far worse than anything you've described here, it's just, I am trying to convey to you, that therapy work helps.

Sometimes, willing oneself to stop, isn't enough. That's the lesson I learned.

No, it does not have to happen in a new relationship as well - since you realized that it is a problem, you can work on preventing it from happening in a new relationship.

This thread reminds me, of seeing a new music video today. Sean Paul, "Other Side of Love". It's about his gf constantly checking his phone. Tears flowing because she kept seeing that he was texting with a woman. But at the end of the video, he ends up giving her a most beautiful necklace, with his cell phone, and he walks away. Thing was, through the video, he was communicating to get her this piece of jewelry, but the jealousy destroyed the relationship.

Something to consider seeing, if you don't mind a little Reggaeton music. The message was good. And it applies.

"Baby you don't have to keep looking through my phone, if something was going on, you'd already know" ~Sean Paul