Green with Envy

I recently watched a show about jealousy and how it can severely affect a relationship. That seemed fairly obvious to me but also made me feel like jealousy can at times be flattering. For example, if a man looks at me and my husband notices, he makes small remarks that can come across as territorial. I personally think it's cute when he does this because it's just between us. Now if my husband were to take it to an extreme, it would be a totally different story. But jealousy rarely exists in my relationship. Sure I have my moments of "I can't believe he used to date her" or "Why is he flirting with her?" but it all comes down to trust. Let me tell you, there's nobody in the world I trust more than my husband.

But when I think of my spurts of jealousy throughout my relationship only one time comes to mind. It was a situation with a girl my husband was once close with, but never actually dated. I didn't mind them being friends, even though I knew they were more than platonic friends at one point in time. I trust him and I don't see her as a threat whatsoever. Until one day, she started posting pictures of the two of them all over Facebook. I realize they weren't recent but they weren't entirely innocent either. My perspective was that his family, my family and our mutual friends could and would see them. After explaining to my husband that women who do this only do so because they seek attention from that person, I asked her politely to remove the inappropriate photos from her profile. Of course she got "butt hurt" aka upset. The reason my husband didn't ask her was because he is not one who likes confrontation. He avoids it all cost with everyone (well except me lol) and frankly, he didn't think it was a big deal at the time. She responded with a hasty email claiming my insecurities and inability to trust my husband. That was far from the truth but absolutely showed her true colors. She then deleted my husband from her friends list only proving my point that she still indeed had feelings of some sort for my husband.

The reason I use this as my one issue with jealousy is because I was jealous at the time of her because my husband didn't see the point in having those pictures removed. I thought there were mutual feelings between the two of them. I fully expect support from husband, especially when it comes to other women! So when he wasn't listening to my feelings on the matter, it bothered me and of course made me jealous of her. Now he realizes my reasons and she never comes up in our conversations.

So while jealousy can at times be cute and remind us that the other person cares do us, it can also be a deadly weapon. Just make sure it never takes over the relationship.
EMM