I have been deadly jealous about the past and it has been pretty awful. Not only for myself but also for my girlfriend.
When I mean feeling jealous in relation to the past, I mean when you become jealous about the persons your partner have had sex with, kissed, flirted with, or something similar.
Maybe the people are still a part of your partner’s life. If so, I assume that it’s something you basically have accepted. I suppose that you’ve known it from the beginning of your relationship.
Therefore, it’s not an exception for not to become jealous about it, it’s completely normal.
Am I crazy when images, insignificant people, music or a particular location can make me jealous?
I, and several others i have known, once became jealous of seeing pictures from their partner’s past. It didn’t actual had to be a “kissing” picture with one of your partner’s past acquaintances.
It can be a very common picture, even without any visible association with other people. The same goes for music.
You could unfairly associate insignificant people that are just friends with your partner, with a given situation that arouses jealousy.
Locations can be your partner’s residence, or a particular nightclub.
All the above has sadly made me very jealous over time. I have come far beyond that jealousy now. I’m happy today, because now I’m able to help you, if you feel the same way I did.
Ask yourself about your partner’s jealousy
One of the first things you can do right now is to ask yourself about the following:
• Should your partner be jealous about pictures, music or friends from your past?
• Should your partner be jealous from being at your home, because you have a history with another person where you live?
• Does it nourish yourself negatively that others have been in bed with you?
You can probably answer no on the above three examples.
The last example is the most frequent; being jealous about people your partner previously had sex with.
To emphasize this, I could probably write another book about the topic alone, because it has been something that has filled much in my life in the relation to jealousy.
If you can tell your partner that he/she has no reason to be jealous of those you have had sex with in the past, why can it be so damn hard to be free from jealousy about it yourself?
It can be caused by many things, but I have personally experienced that it is primarily due to the following:
• Low self-esteem
• Pride
• A too “good” imagination
• Worries about what others think of you
The four things play a huge role in being jealous about a partner’s past, and each point is VERY important for you to work with.
Pride:
We are all proud to a smaller or larger extend and in certain levels. It’s good to be proud of something you have accomplished. It‘s positive to be proud of what people around you have accomplished. When I mean accomplished, you probably know what I mean.
But when pride becomes a nuisance in the relation to jealousy, it could for example be if a destructive thought like this pops up in your mind: “The fool have had sex with my partner, he has been close to the one I love, it shouldn’t be like that!”
Then you will probably begin to get angry, aggressive and powerless. Finally the worst thing happens: your jealousy takes over and you will rush it over your partner who is completely innocent.
Let’s find a solution to this, because it’s just around the corner, believe me!
The first thing you MUST do, roughly speaking, is to knock into your head that there is NOT anyone who had sex with your partner.
Before you and your partner got together, your partner wasn’t your partner. So a person your partner have had sex with in the past, has NOT done anything to insult you, and the same goes for your partner.
Therefore you can safely let your pride remain at rest, because there is nothing that’s worth reacting to.
A good imagination:
If you have a good imagination, like I have, it’s a great strength. You are most likely creative, happy with daydreaming or just happy to fantasize about wonderful things in life from the past, present and future.
But just as rewarding it is to have a good imagination, just as debilitating it can be in proportion to your jealousy.
You control it yourself, and it’s a big responsibility to have a good imagination as you and me.
It can be difficult to control, but you let me help you with that.
Second jealousy exercise:
Close your eyes and use your imagination, to visualise a situation that makes you jealous. I know it’s not the funniest thing to do right now. But a proper jealousy treatment also requires a bit of work in order to be achieved.
Once you have evoked an image of a jealous situation, let yourself be in it. The next move is to experience the situation again, but this time you’ll have to think of the situation exactly as you want it to be, a situation without jealousy.
Repeat the exercise as many times as you need, and let yourself smile at the end, because it works!
You do not have to close your eyes every time, because if you are jealous in a given situation (perhaps about one of your patterns, which you’ve read about in the last chapter) it’s important for you to use your good imagination to change your beliefs or experience of the given situation, when you are in the situation.
We can take a very familiar and simple jealousy instance as example. You lie in your girlfriend’s bed, and suddenly your good imagination makes you jealous. If you think about your partners past, and that he/she had sex with others in the bed you’re lying in, and then jealousy takes over you, this is where you can make a difference!
It’s very important that you first recognize that you are jealous and then are doing something about it right away. You’re doing that by overruling the jealousy with a positive memory from the present. Past is past and it doesn’t benefit you in this situation.
By pushing the outdated thoughts of the past away, you’re letting the real and present thought take its well worth place in your mind and feelings – like it should be.
Keep doing this exercise, and eventually you will master it. It only requires that you’ll remember it and do it.
Concerns about what others think about you & low self-esteem:
This part deserves its own chapter. Therefore, you will learn about it later in the book.
Feel and respect yourself
It’s important that you feel and respect your own limits before you even do anything in relation to your jealousy.
As I mentioned earlier, I assume that you and your partner already know each other’s lives and have accepted them, before you decided to be together. By that I mean, that if your partner has an acquaintance who he/she had sex with in the past, it’s not something you can change if you’ve accepted it from the very beginning. Of course you can talk with your partner about it, but if you knew it from the beginning of your relationship, it’s also something you have chosen to accept.
What you basically have to do is talk to your partner about where your boundaries are.
None of us are perfect, and if some situations make it impossible for you to think rationally in relation to your jealousy, and it exceeds your limits, you have to see if there are alternatives.
For example, if your partner has a spare time job, where she works with one he/she have had sex with, it’s important that you tell your partner that goes beyond your limits. Depending on how much it means to you, you must try to find a solution. The solution could be that your partner finds a new job. Or it could be that your partner change the days he/she works to avoid working with that certain person.
Remember, I’m not saying that it is the right solution; you can only decide that by feeling it in yourself.
No matter what, it is very important that you communicate with your partner in an orderly manner. If you don’t talk in a proper way, your partner can perceive it as criticism, and then feel compelled or “strangled. It may therefore be a good idea calmly to prepare what you want to talk about, and that you talk about it in a quiet and constructive way.
You can prevent jealousy by changing the past!
When people say you can’t change the past, they are actually not quite right.
You are probably sceptical right now, but let me make you smarter.
Of course you can’t change what objectively happened in the past, then you would need a time machine, and it’s not invented (yet).
But like everything else in life, it’s the subjective view of the past, which means something for you. It’s the way you relate to the past. At all times it would be most important for you!
Like in exercise number two, you can take advantage of something similar here.
It’s exactly like the words about the bottle, which you might already know. To be sure, let me just demonstrate it for you.
It’s a hot summer day, you’re sitting on the beach, with half a water bottle and the nearest grocery store is too far away. You can choose to interpret the content in your water bottle in two ways.
Is your water bottle half full or half empty?
The choice is completely up to you, whatever you choose the positive or negative interpretation. Let me just promise you one thing: you can’t change the fact, that your bottle has the volume of content it has, but you can change your attitude about it.
Here we can further refer it to something in real life, which has something to do with your jealousy.
Maybe you’re jealous because your partners have been in bed with more than you have. The situation this time is the same, as our situation with the water bottle, you can’t change the fact that he/she has slept with more than you have, but you can change the way you interpret it.
The half-empty interpretation:
“It makes me fucking insecure that my girlfriend has been to bed with more than me, the risk that I will bump into one of the people is greater for me, than for him/her. Why 
should I be offended by this, when I’m almost a virgin myself and always has been innocent?”
The half-full interpretation:
“It’s great to have a girlfriend, who is experienced, and isn’t insecure about me, or sex in general. My partner is always ready to try something new. I know that he/she haven’t only had sex with me, so when my partner tells me that I’m great in the bed, I know what he/she says isn’t on an inexperienced basis. ”
What we basically have to do is just to think positively, it’s so got damn simple!
Sit down and chew a little bit on this. I’m sure everyone would benefit from a little thinking about it sometimes.
