There’s No Greater Sign of Insecurity Than Jealousy About Your Lover’s Past

My most recent partner showed me a picture of his ex-wife. He’d told me she was a “beauty queen,” but I wasn’t prepared for how beautiful she was and still is. She’s also highly accomplished.

For a moment, I worried. “What if that’s what he wants? I can’t measure up to that.”

It only lasted a moment. I’m secure in myself and what I have to offer to a relationship. That took some therapy in my twenties and thirties. I’ve had years since then to practice good self-esteem.

We all know the bite of the green-eyed monster.

Your partner hasn’t told you how attractive you are to them in a long time — or ever — and points out and comments on the beauty of others.

You watch your partner talking animatedly with another person and feel that stab of jealousy.

These are normal reactions, inasmuch as jealousy can be normal. We all have some fear of abandonment from childhood. Even with “perfect” parents, babies have to learn to self-soothe as part of their development.

Jealousy also serves — as in the first example — as a red flag. In that respect, jealousy is useful in determining the safety of a relationship.

What isn’t normal is feeling jealousy over people from your partner’s past. It isn’t normal because it isn’t logical. Exes are exes for a reason — or several. Jealousy about your partner’s past indicates a high level of insecurity.

Jealousy is the emotion we feel when we feel fearful of losing someone or a relationship that is very important to us, Robin Stern, PhD, associate director for the Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence, tells NBC News BETTER.

I was very young when I met my first husband. He was my first for everything. Sex, love, marriage. He also attracted women like bees to a flower. Still does, as far as I know.

I was mousy, inexperienced, and didn’t realize I was sexy. None of that was his fault or doing.

I was devastatingly jealous of his past girlfriends. It was an indescribable emotion, that had more than one origin.

One reason for the jealousy was certainly the fear that he might want and choose to go back to one of them. His most serious one lived up the street from his parents. I thought of her and felt jealous every time I visited his parents’ house.

The main reason was my insecurity. I was afraid I couldn’t measure up. Hence 10 years of therapy, including after he left me for another woman.

It’s a feeling I can no longer conjure for any partner I’m with in the here and now, and yet it was one of the strongest feelings I’ve ever had. It was jealousy that grew from the seeds of insecurity and feelings of inadequacy. The worst kind of jealousy.

“Jealousy is hard-wired in all of us,” Baland Jalal, a neuroscientist at Cambridge University School of Clinical Medicine says.

It can be useful if you recognize the feeling and respond in a way that helps you address a problem or something you are struggling with in a relationship,, Robin Stern, PhD, associate director for the Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence, tells NBC News BETTER.

If you’re feeling jealousy about the present or about your partner’s past partners, there may be something you feel is lacking in your relationship. Maybe you need a deep conversation to discover what you need in the way of reassurance and connection.

I know who I am and what I bring to a relationship. I also know my actual faults, not my perceived or imagined ones, so I can be honest with and about myself in relationships.

This is also what I expect in a partner. Self-awareness, courage to face their own insecurities if they have them, confidence in their ability to love and be loved.

Words of affirmation are important, especially for those for whom it’s their love language. However, except in certain vulnerable situations, they shouldn’t be constantly necessary to buoy up the self-esteem of another and to assuage the jealousy that derives from insecurity.

Are you the best lover I’ve ever had? Yes, if I’m with you and desire you, that tells you that you are. Even if you aren’t yet, you will be if you love me, I love you, and we communicate well.

Do you worry if I think of my past lovers while we’re together? I don’t. Do I ever think of them? The ones who were important and long-term, of course.

We are — in part — made up of every relationship we’ve ever had. Family and friends shape us in childhood and adolescence. Partners and lovers impact us, our intelligence, our sexuality, our securities and insecurities, and our degree of compassion as adults.

Every experience, every romance, every sexual encounter, and every commitment, helped me become the person I am. They helped form you as well.

If I am in love with you, I honor those who came before me. They not only helped make you who you are, but they were loved by you, if only for a time.

Therefore you saw something in them that made them valuable to you. If you didn’t see anything valuable in them, you can’t see anything valuable in me.

When we love, let’s love all of the person and their experiences who made them who they are.

Why would anyone want it to be any other way?

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This post was previously published on MEDIUM.COM.

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From The Good Men Project on Medium

What Does Being in Love and Loving Someone Really Mean?

My 9-Year-Old Accidentally Explained Why His Mom Divorced Me

The One Thing Men Want More Than Sex

The Internal Struggle Men Battle in Silence

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