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What to Do When the Green Eyed Monster Roars

By: Sarah Love Jealousy is an unfortunate thing that everyone has to deal with at one point in their life or another. Especially if you are in a relationship. More than likely, sometime you will feel that ugly green monster creeping up on you, taking over your actions and possibly leading to heartache in your relationship.

Jealousy can happen in many different situations. Perhaps he crossed the line and cheated on you. Or maybe he is goggling some busty babe across the bar. Or maybe he is even just having a simple conversation with a co-worker that you find threatening for some reason.

No two ways about it, jealousy sucks. It makes you feel all kinds of hurtful emotions - anger, guilt, fear, hurt, disgust - you name it. And that happened whether or not your jealousy is reasonable.

There are basically 2 kinds of jealousy. Jealousy that is reasonable and founded is an actual event is one kind. The other kind of jealousy is groundless - this is like if you get upset that he ran into his ex-wife at the grocery store or he casually mentions something that happened with an old flame years ago.

Jealousy that is rational - such as your man cheating on you, is a signal flare. You cannot ignore these feelings. These feelings definitely indicate that you and your man have some serious issues that you need to work on - together. If he will not work with you on them and he is making you feel like something other than numero uno - you need to find someone who will treat you better.

What those jealous feelings are saying to you at that point is that your relationship is out of balance. He may be making you feel like it's all your fault, or even vice versa. Balance needs to be restored for your relationship to work, and if it cannot be restored, then it needs to be ended before it gets to a more hurtful point.

The imaginary situation or past occurrence is what leads to the second type of jealousy. Let's say you are jealous because your man ran into his old girlfriend at the mall the other day. Everyone has a past. Everyone had relationships with someone other than you at some point in their life. That is no cause for a negative reaction on your part, and will only hurt your relationship and show him that he cannot trust YOU when he tells you things.

If you become jealous over small things like this - then what your emotions are telling you is that you are afraid and insecure. This is not in any way HIS fault. This is something YOU need to work on with yourself. Take some time and really reach inside yourself and figure out what is causing the fear you have.

There is also a jealousy about things that have not even HAPPENED yet. This is also an emotion founded in fear and insecurity. This happens when you see your man having a conversation or something with another woman and you instantly get jealous, imagining all sorts of wrongs. When this happens to you, you need to reach down deep again and dig out exactly what it is that you are afraid of.

There are cases where jealousy is justifiable and valid and cases where it is not. In each case, you must get to the root of the problem, as jealousy is a symptom of a deeper hurt that must be healed in order for the relationship to evolve.