Should I be worried?

[Guest]

sorry, this will probably be long...

 

Here's the thing - my boyfriend and I have been dating for 4 1/2 years. We are both 23. He recently moved into my house with me and my mom. For the first 3 years of our relationship, we rarely went anywhere without eachother, but we gave eachother free space. He was always a little jealous of guys that I would talk to at school (totally non-threatening... only for work on school projects, etc - college)... but nothing that felt overbearing or anything. We always hung out with the same crowd of people, not many girls included, other than my own cousins and their girlfriends. If he says a girl is hot, i will usually agree or disagree... so I'm not a jealous person in general.

 

Anyway, over the past year and a half, he and a couple of his friends have started hanging out with a new crowd, including girls I don't know. I get along with them ok. Up until last year, he had talked about getting married and when i mentioned wanting to have children, he was all for it. Then, it seems, he changed his mind. If I talk about wanting to get engaged, he tells me to shut up and not talk about it. (None of his close friends are engaged, and only one is in a serious relationship). I feel like he changed a bit when he started hanging out with these people... like he's trying to maintain is youth or something.

 

Now, I can't go out a lot like I used to because I have thyroid cancer, and I'm in treatment, which makes me very very tired all the time. So I really can't stay awake that late. I never used to say anything to him about going out with his friends without me, because I was never really a jealous person.

 

Here's where my problem is. The new crowd has a couple of girls that like my boyfriend. My boyfriend and I met these girls on the same day, together... so they know he has a girlfriend. But after that day, I didn't really come out much with him. I heard from someone that the one girl likes him, and they bowl together on a league every week. She assures me that she doesn't like my bf, she likes his friend... so I can deal with that. The other girl is what worries me. She blatantly told him that she likes him, and he apparently told her to get over it cause nothing was going to happen. I asked him why she would tell him that she liked him, knowing that I'm with him, and he said she didn't really know me. This makes me think that these girls think that because I don't go out a lot, that I don't really care about my boyfriend or something. She IMs him and calls him. He keeps it short, but still. Why are you trying to talk to my boyfriend?

 

You know how girls can be manipulative. He hangs out with this crowd of people and they go drinking and stuff without me. I never cared before I knew this girl liked him (and basically had no regard for the fact that we are dating). Now I am jealous. He's never given me a reason not to trust him and he's never cheated. I've just got this gut feeling about the whole sitution - it makes me sick. I've told him about how I feel -- being jealous, not liking this girl's situation, feeling scared that something might happen because I'm never there and I know girls can get what they want, especially when alcohol's involved. He tells me that I'm being overly-jealous and I never was before. And he wants to know why I'm "up his ass" all the time all of a sudden asking who he's going out with and stuff. He knows it's because of the girl, but he swears I have nothing to worry about. I just can't shake the feeling.

 

So I guess my question is, should I stop freaking out? How do I get myself back to being the non-jealous girl I was -- I liked that so much more... haha.