How to deal with jealousy and trust in a relationship?
Jealousy is a typical human emotion and eventually, everyone has felt it at some point in their lives, especially in romantic relationships. Sometimes jealousy is transitory, but other times it can become overwhelming, and we may feel compelled to share our thoughts with our partner. Apparently, the connection between trust and love is strong. Any form of relationship is built on the foundation of trust.
The relationship will be weak without it and could finally dissolve. One of the most common causes of relationship breakdown is a lack of trust. So now the question that we need to think about is How to deal with trust and jealousy in a relationship? Is it normal to be jealous of our partner in a relationship?
The process by which two or more people exchange information, feelings, and meaning through verbal and nonverbal messages is known as interpersonal communication. Based on this definition, let’s take a look at what feelings of jealousy mean in romantic relationships, and how to open up a conversation with the partner about these feelings.
Through this chatting conversation on the left picture, a girl feels his boyfriend is ignoring her because the boy is feeling jealous that her girlfriend is spending the whole day hanging out with her best friend. Meanwhile, in the right picture, a girl reads a message on her boyfriend’s phone, and she thinks that her boyfriend got a message from his classmate who is a girl but actually a boy.
Jealousy problems could result in a small quarrel between couplessuch as shown on picture above, and possibly physical abuse or possibly murder in a more serious case.
A man with a serious jealousy problem burns his girlfriend’s car and sleeps with a knife under the bed (Greaves, 2018). Nicolas Tremain, a 40 years old man has accused his partner of attracting other men and it makes him angry that he broke the furniture in their house. On another occasion, he accused her partner of staring too long at a singer on stage which made him angry.
In the picture above is Christopher Kerrel who killed his wife due to jealousy, violence, and possession of his wife. Christopher used a hammer to strike his wife and bury his wife’s body. He is been jailed for life due to murdering Hollie Kerrel which is a mother of three children. The specific cause of murder is unknown, however, Christopher is known as a jealous and possessive man toward his wife.
Jealousy basically arises from insecurity within herself and not trusting her partner. In reality, jealousy is a sense of possessiveness and entitlement, whereas he wants to personalize what her boyfriend has, such as his privacy to have time to hang out with his own friends as well, besides spending time with his girlfriend.
Personally, I also experienced having a girlfriend who was possessive and always jealous of me. Even when I want to go somewhere to buy some things, she always contacts me every single time, every minute she always asks me to go home faster.
The reason she always does that is that she doesn’t want me to meet my friends there, but actually the main purpose I go somewhere is to buy my needs not to meet them. We have to trust each other by respecting each other’s time. Each of us needs our privacy and time.
To trust our partner, we have to stop thinking negatively about his or her privacy. However, we have to understand each other’s time and needs.
A jealous person holds on tightly to what they already have, usually their romantic partner, to keep others from taking this person away. When jealousy gets to a higher level, it can be highly destructive to a relationship (Wisner, 2022).
People trying to find which level of jealousy is considered normal in a relationship. Some people with jealousy problems think that the problem is relying on their partner that doesn’t want to be controlled by them, but actually, the problem is relying on themself. People need to know that the root of jealousy is self insecurity.
According to theory, people will become jealous when they suffer from low self-esteem. Our self-concept and self-esteem affect how we interact with others (Beebe et al., 2011, 53). Self-esteem could be defined as how we see ourselves in general.
It is also impacting how we feel about our abilities and deal with our limitations. When we have high and good self-esteem, we tend to think positively about ourselves, be confident in ourselves, and tend to have an accepting attitude about ourselves. On the other hand, when we have low self-esteem, we tend to think negatively of ourselves, feel unrespected, be critical, and insecure.
When people have low self-esteem, they tend to be insecure about themselves, and in a relationship, they will tend to control or isolate their partner from the outside world.
They might fear that their partner would meet someone better than them and their partner will be attracted to them.
There are also some features of satisfying relationships that need to be fulfilled in order to have a good quality relationship. There are four features of satisfying relationships according to Wood which are investment, commitment, trust, and comfort with relational dialectics (Wood, 2016).
Investment is defined as what we spend and sacrifice to maintain relationships. Commitment is defined as a decision that is not based on feeling to remain in a relationship. Trust could be defined as believing in other people’s ability and effort to work for the relationships.
In terms of jealousy issues, trust is the one that is related. People that get jealous of their partners have difficulty trusting their partners. They could not trust what their partner was doing to maintain and work for their relationships.
This problem could probably arise from trust issues that they have. They either experienced a partner that broke his or her own trust before and it became traumatic to them or It also could arise from their childhood experience of trusting their parents but their parents always broke their trust.
In my opinion, jealousy is not meant to be in a relationship since it could be destructive and could result in many negative things such as murder, physical and mental abuse, and other vandalism. People who think jealousy is normal in a relationship should check whether they have a problem with jealousy or not.
If they have, they need to search for immediate help such as making an appointment for counseling or consultation with a counselor and psychologist regarding the problem. Jealousy needs immediate responses so that it stops toxic and unhealthy relationships.
People might think that if you have no jealousy at all, you wouldn’t know if your partner cheats on you. However, suspicion and jealousy are two words that have completely different meanings. We might be suspicious of our partners when they do things that are uncommon, however, we don’t need to get jealous when they do that. We could ask our partner what really happens and whether reality and assumptions are the same or not.
If it differs from our assumptions, then the problem is solved, but if our assumptions are actually true that our partner has cheated on us, we could then have two options whether we want to end our relationship or we want to forgive our partner for what they have done.
In conclusion, jealousy need not be in a relationship since there are no positive things that arise from it. It could result in a toxic and an unhealthy relationship. It also could result in a lot of negative things such as physical and mental abuse, vandalism and even murdered.
Jealousy arises from low self esteem and trust issues. People with jealousy problems should find immediate help in order to solve those issues. They could go to the counsellor or psychologist to get a solution on how they should do things for themselves.
References
Beebe, S. A., Beebe, S. J., & Redmond, M. V. (2011). Interpersonal communication: Relating to others (6th ed.). New York: Allyn & Bacon – Pearson.
Greaves, P. (2018). The 14 crimes of jealousy which shocked Devon. Devon Live. https://www.devonlive.com/news/14-crimes-jealousy-shocked-devon-2228682
Wisner, W. (2022). Healthy Ways to Express Jealousy in Relationships. Verywell Mind.
https://www.verywellmind.com/healthy-ways-to-express-jealousy-in-relationshi
ps-5216590
Wood, J. T. (2016). Interpersonal communication: Everyday encounters (8th ed.).
New York: Wadsworth Cengage Learning.
Contributor: Jeremy Selopranoto (B2025)
Editor: Lily El Ferawati, PhD.