I’m struggling with jealousy in my relationship and I honestly don’t know how to deal with it anymore.
I have always been quite jealous, but lately it has become especially difficult for me because I feel like I notice situations where he looks at other women, while he consistently says that he doesn’t.
I know that I pay very close attention to where his eyes are going, and I’m aware that my jealousy can influence how I interpret things. I’m not claiming that every situation I perceive is objectively exactly the way I see it. But there have been several situations where I felt like I clearly saw him looking at a woman, and when I later brought it up, he completely denied that he had looked at her.
For example, there was a situation while I was driving and he was sitting in the passenger seat. At one point, he looked towards the side/street several times – I counted around five times. I couldn’t clearly see what exactly he was looking at, and I wasn’t 100% sure there was a woman there. Later, when I asked him about it, he said he had been looking at the boys. I was actually referring to a different moment, but by then he was already annoyed by the whole topic and didn’t want to reconstruct what he had been looking at.
In another situation, I was driving again and there was a woman walking along the sidewalk. I saw him turn his head quite noticeably towards her, almost like a shoulder check. Later, when I asked him about it, he said he hadn’t looked at a woman. When I asked what else he could have been looking at, he hesitated and basically said that he doesn’t know when or where he looks around in the world, but he definitely hadn’t looked at a woman.
There was also a situation where another driver let us go first because the cars were very close together. My boyfriend smiled at the woman. At the time, he initially said that he had smiled out of politeness and that he had actually been annoyed by the situation. When we talked about it again two days later, however, he said he had never said that he smiled out of politeness. He claimed that he hadn’t even looked at the woman, but had only smirked and looked at the car door. He also said that I was reconstructing the situation in my head.
And there was another situation where he said he hadn’t seen any woman and had only been looking into a street. From my perspective, there wasn’t even a street there that he could have been looking into.
What makes this so difficult for me is that I genuinely don’t know what to trust anymore. I see something, it hurts me, and then he tells me that what I think I saw didn’t happen that way.
At the same time, I know that I am extremely attentive to his eye movements because of my jealousy. So I’m not looking for people to tell me that I am definitely right and that he is definitely lying. None of you were there, and you can’t know what actually happened or what was going on in his head.
I also don’t want this post to turn into people deciding whether my boyfriend is lying or telling the truth. That isn’t really what I’m looking for.
The problem is that I have reached a point where I barely bring these situations up anymore. I already know what his answer will be: that he didn’t look at any woman. And whenever I bring it up, it tends to cause an argument or he gets annoyed because he feels like he constantly has to defend himself.
So I’m left with the situation, the hurt, and the uncertainty by myself.
I’m honestly desperate because I don’t know what I’m supposed to do with that. I don’t want to constantly monitor where he is looking. I don’t want to reconstruct every situation afterwards. I don’t want to interrogate him or keep asking for reassurance. But at the same time, I also don’t know how I’m supposed to simply ignore something when I feel like I clearly saw it and it genuinely hurts me.
I’m already in therapy, and I’m working on my jealousy and insecurity. But I feel like I’m stuck between two things: on the one hand, I know that my jealousy is a problem for me and that I need to learn to tolerate uncertainty better. On the other hand, I feel hurt when I experience situations differently from my partner and then feel like there is no room to even talk about them without it becoming an argument.
So I’m mainly looking for advice on how I can deal with this situation in a healthier way.
How do I handle it when I notice something that hurts me but I know that talking about it will probably only lead to another argument?
How do I learn to trust my own perception without automatically assuming that my interpretation must be correct?
And how do I deal with the fact that I may never know exactly what he was looking at or what he was thinking?
I would really appreciate advice from people who have dealt with intense jealousy or similar situations themselves.
I’m not looking for a verdict on whether my boyfriend is lying. I’m looking for advice on what I can actually do from here, because I genuinely don’t know how to handle this anymore. My boyfriend actually feels the same way I do about this. He also doesn’t want me to look at other men, just to add that for context.
And just to make one thing clear, because I don’t want this post to come across as if I don’t see my own part in all of this: I absolutely know that I have a problem with jealousy and insecurity. I know that I pay far too much attention to where my boyfriend is looking, and I know that this can make me interpret situations more strongly than I otherwise might. I’m not trying to put all of the blame on him or pretend that my own behavior doesn’t contribute to the situation. I’m already working on this in therapy and I genuinely want to change it.
At the same time, I’m struggling with how to deal with the situations that still hurt me, especially when my perception of what happened is completely different from his. I’m not asking people to tell me that I’m right or that he’s wrong. I just want to learn how to handle my feelings, my uncertainty, and my own perception in a healthier way. don’t feel good.. (edited)
