very-confused-girl Posted December 22, 2004 Share Posted December 22, 2004 About almost a month ago I posted here about my unusual problem - that jealousy of my boyfriend makes me feel good. Lack of jealousy pisses me off. And specifically because I know he used to be very jealous person in the past so what bothers me at most is when in the same situations that made him jealous in the past with previous girlfriends, he doesnt get jealous with me anymore. Lots of people replied to me that my reactions are not healthy and my efforts of trying to make my boyfriend feel jealous is very wrong. I know but I still cant help myself. It doesnt mean that Peter (my boyfriend) is not jealous at all, he is jealous and probably he is the most jealous boyfriend I have ever had but I can see that in his life over years his jealousy has been diminishing but I dont want his jealousy to disappear completely. Everytime he gets jealous of me it is like a small "win" for me. About a week a go I was telling him about my intention of going on a holiday with my mum. My mum´s dream is to somewhere like Egypt or Tunis. Peter told me that if I was gonna take my mother there, he would leave. Most likely he is worried about me meeting some arabic guy cos he knows I do find these type of guys good-looking. No I know it is going to sound weird but him trying to stop me from going to arabic country with my mom makes me feel that he cares. And now I dont know what to do. Whether to listen to him and give up this idea of going to arabic country and go to some different country, which is going to make Peter happy or not to listen to him at all and get on a place and enjoy holiday with my mom. Regarding just the holiday itself, I would like to take my mom to Arabic country because it is her dream and I want make her dream come truth. But from the perspective of my desire for Peter´s jealousy I would prefer not go to to Arabic country and to choose a different country because if Peter sees that he told me not to do something and I listened, he is going to find out, that jealousy works on me and he is going to become more jealous and controling which is what I want to make me feel desired. His previous girlfriends didnt like him being jealous therefore he is trying to hold back with me now as he thinks I dont like jealousy as well. I would like to convert his train of thoughts to make him realize that with me he is "allowed" to get jealous. I know my wishes and reactions are not traditional. I can absolutely see it and analyse my emotions but I cant help myself. Emotions are unfortunately not rational and my heart wants something what seems generally ridiculous. Link to post Share on other sites
LucreziaBorgia Posted December 22, 2004 Share Posted December 22, 2004 So, you only feel loved and desired when someone is jealous and controlling of you, and you would like to manipulate your boyfriend into unhealthy behaviors to feed your own needs? Ok, fair enough. Regarding just the holiday itself, I would like to take my mom to Arabic country because it is her dream and I want make her dream come truth. In that case, do it. Don't use her lifelong dream vacation as your opportunity to manipulate your boyfriend. If you are dead set on making him jealous and controlling, then do the opposite of what he wants and go to the Arabic lands. Your mom will be happy, and your boyfriend will be livid. Jealous and controlling people generally become more so if you do or act the opposite of what they want. If you do what they want all the time, they will 'relax' knowing that they have you where they want you. I'll warn you though. You are playing a dangerous game here. Don't be surprised if it ends up differently than you expected. Link to post Share on other sites
Author very-confused-girl Posted December 22, 2004 Author Share Posted December 22, 2004 Originally posted by LucreziaBorgia So, you only feel loved and desired when someone is jealous and controlling of you, and you would like to manipulate your boyfriend into unhealthy behaviors to feed your own needs? No, I dont ONLY feel desired when he is jealous of me. Jealousy makes me feel desired AS WELL AS other evidence of love like telling me nice things, kissing me, hugging me etc. I just cant imagine how somebody who IS in love, IS NOT jealous in the same time. Jealousy is fearing of loosing the partner so the MORE you love somebody the MORE people should be afraid of loosing the person because if you loose beloved person it SHOULD be a big loss. So if my boyfriend is holding back and showing no jealousy it makes me feel like he is not jealous at all, he doesnt care and whatever I did to him, it wouldnt bother him at all.... I know thats not the case cause he told me he loves me, and he would be extremely hurt if I did something to hurt him but he doesnt want me to be giving him reasons to be jealous... Link to post Share on other sites
LucreziaBorgia Posted December 22, 2004 Share Posted December 22, 2004 Originally posted by very-confused-girl I just cant imagine how somebody who IS in love, IS NOT jealous in the same time. Jealousy is fearing of loosing the partner so the MORE you love somebody the MORE people should be afraid of loosing the person because if you loose beloved person it SHOULD be a big loss. So if my boyfriend is holding back and showing no jealousy it makes me feel like he is not jealous at all, he doesnt care and whatever I did to him, it wouldnt bother him at all.... Have you spoken frankly with your boyfriend about this? If you haven't then you really should sit him down and explain to him very clearly how you feel. VERY clearly. Explain in great detail how you think that jealousy is a good thing. You have to understand that jealousy is generally considered to be a bad thing in a relationship, and unless you tell him your boyfriend will not understand that you feel that its a good thing. Link to post Share on other sites
morrigan Posted December 22, 2004 Share Posted December 22, 2004 I wouldn't want to date a guy who tells me where I can go, and I wouldn't want to go somewhere just to get my boyfriend livid with jealousy. Either situation is manipulative. If you need a guy's jealousy as a constant stimulus in your life, you'll end up in relationships with controlling, aggressive, and potentially abusive men. If you want to go to Tunisia with your mom, go and have fun. Your boyfriend will stick to his word and dump you or he will get more jealous and controlling as time goes on, informing you where he will allow you to go. I would take the former. Link to post Share on other sites
mehim Posted December 23, 2004 Share Posted December 23, 2004 well i would say that i kinda have the same thoughts about the jealosy, but not to that extent. and by the way me and my bf are arabs so if u r interested in meeting him, lol holla at me. JK anyways i like it when i get him a little jealous, he is not controlling at all, he never shows any sign of jealousy what so ever. therfore, i like to tease him sometimes to just get him a little fired up, sometimes things just happen on their own. but let me worrn u that we did break up once because of my huge huge mistake of trying to get back at him and making him jealous. it took us five months to get back together and for him to forgive. i dont think u should make ur bf jealous all the time, and about big issues like that, such as u leaving, and traveling etc... i dont really know what to advise u, i just want to share my situation with u which might help u out. Link to post Share on other sites
Author very-confused-girl Posted December 23, 2004 Author Share Posted December 23, 2004 Thank you mehin, thank you for this post. At least I can see I am not the only person who is doing bullsh*it Actually I know I can push the limit and I may loose him. And I dont want to make him jealous by leaving to Tunisia, actually what I meant is that I would prefer not to go to Tunisia and make him realize like this that I have listened to his wish of not going there and this would make him feel that next time he is allowed to get jealous again. And I want him to get jealous again But see, this is already wrong because I should completely not listen to him and take my mother to a country that she dreams of. I am really now using my mother´s dream to manipulate my boyfriend like LucreziaBorgia already mentioned to me. But my biggest problem is probably that deep inside I require him to be as jealous of me as he was of his previous girlfriends. His previous girlfriends dont let me sleep I understand that he is trying to avoid conflict by holding back his jealousy, because his exgirlfriends didnt like him to get jealous therefore he is trying to be more tolerant now in our relationship. But I still feel that he loves me less than his previous girls or he is not that afraid of loosing me than he was with them because loosing me wouldnt be such a big loss for him. Link to post Share on other sites
LucreziaBorgia Posted December 23, 2004 Share Posted December 23, 2004 . But my biggest problem is probably that deep inside I require him to be as jealous of me as he was of his previous girlfriends. His previous girlfriends dont let me sleep I understand that he is trying to avoid conflict by holding back his jealousy, because his exgirlfriends didnt like him to get jealous therefore he is trying to be more tolerant now in our relationship. But I still feel that he loves me less than his previous girls or he is not that afraid of loosing me than he was with them because loosing me wouldnt be such a big loss for him. Have you told your boyfriend this? I think it would help you to get it off your chest and tell him how you feel about it. Link to post Share on other sites
Author very-confused-girl Posted December 23, 2004 Author Share Posted December 23, 2004 I did tell him this and he said that loosing me would be the biggest loss in his life. He says he already (after 1 year of a relationship) loves me in some aspects more than he loved one of his previous girls (they have been together for 8 years and they have been almost like brother and sister) and he said he is learning from mistakes from his previous relationships. He told me he observed that girls do get upset when he was jealous of them so he is trying to reduce his jealousy now. And he also said it is not pleasant for him to get jealous, he has sick feelings in his stomach, he doesnt like it therefore he is trying hard to avoid jealousy. And on the top of all he said that there are some things he got used to over years that cant make him jealous anymore. For example in his first relationship he was upset only if guys were stearing at his girlfriend. This has diminished over years so ritenow it is harder for me to make him jealous as he became more resistant to certain things. And when I asked him why is he not stopping me from doing things then, why is he not showing jealousy so much like in his previous relationship he told me that he realized he cant stop girls from doing stuff cos when he tried they did the opposite. He said that if I gave up doing certain things for him after him telling me to do so (for example if I stopped wearing short skirts after he told me he doesnt like it and it makes him jealous) it wouldnt satisfy him anyway. He claims he wants ME TO BE THE ONE who is going to decide. If I stopped wearing short skirt from my own decision this would be the only time he would feel I really felt like doing it. But if I stopped wearing skirts after him telling me to stop, it wouldnt satisfy him because he wouldnt feel I really did it from my own decision. He does feel uncomfortable with some actions of mine but he is leaving everything up to me. Another reason why is he not telling me to stop doing certain things is that he wants me to make my decisions myself because he wouldnt want me in the future having complaints such as: "You know Peter I gave this up for you". He basically wants to prevent himself from me holding things against him in the future. Link to post Share on other sites
jmargel Posted December 23, 2004 Share Posted December 23, 2004 You are emotionally abusing your bf and that is totally wrong. You are trying to make him very insecure about the relationship. You are also trying to 'control' him by making him feel this way. You need to accept him for who he is, or leave the relationship. If you love someone you don't 'try' to make them into a different person. You have your own issues in which you are trying to project onto him. Instead of dealing with your own problems, you are trying to solve them by trying to change him. Love is NOT jealously. Jealously stems from control, not love. Love is trusting someone enough to know that your partner would never do anything to jeopardize what they have. It might be best if you can't solve your own issues to see a counselor. You can't have a good relationship by doing this kind of thing. Link to post Share on other sites
Author very-confused-girl Posted December 23, 2004 Author Share Posted December 23, 2004 I can absolutely see that things I am doing are so wrong. Maybe something has happened in my childhood that caused this or maybe he is just my first true love and first boyfriend who is older and had some experiences before me and I always feel a bit funny if I spot that his approach to me in some situation is different from his approaches to his ex-s in the same or similar situations. But the truth is that I dont want to loose him and do want to solve my problem. I was just trying to get advice here how to solve my problem instead of going to counselor. Because I do belive people might have power to solve problem themselves if they are just well-informed and self-analysed about themselves. In my country going to counselor is not such a common thing like in America. In your country it is almost like a fashion, even dogs have their on psychologists. We dont have this concept here. Going to psychologist is here viewed a little bit like if I was hopeless and couldnt help myself. Therefore I wanted to use this forum and your advice like my "psychologist" Link to post Share on other sites
blind_otter Posted December 23, 2004 Share Posted December 23, 2004 Yeah, that's dangerous. Read up on emotional abuse. Link to post Share on other sites
Recommended Posts