Dating Challenge: Overcoming Jealousy

It’s the feeling that wells up inside when a date speaks highly of an attractive coworker or when your soul mate seems a little too happy to see an ex at a party — it’s dating jealousy and it can take hold of you so fast and so hard that it leaves you and your relationship destroyed. Don’t let jealousy take over your life: Follow these dating steps toward overcoming the green-eyed monster in you.

1. Leave the Players and the Flirts Behind

One of the best ways to overcome jealousy is to not get involved with flirts and players.

One of the best ways to overcome jealousy is to not get involved with flirts and players. There are singles out there who will thrive on making you jealous because they like the dating drama and attention. If you’re jealous, they know that you are constantly obsessing over them and dwelling on them. By provoking your jealousy, they’ve just made themselves the center of your universe. Instead, be smart — kick them out of your universe and find a better date.

2. Determine if You’re Jealous in This Relationship or Every Relationship

In order to overcome jealousy, you’ve got to figure out whether you’re being real or being paranoid. Normal jealousy can actually serve a purpose. It’s there to alert you to a partner’s possible infidelity — a threat to the relationship. Is your relationship actually being threatened or is the jealousy in your head only? A good way to figure out if there’s a basis to your jealousy is to reflect on your past relationships. Are you always jealous even if you haven’t had a reason to be? Do you have trust issues in every relationship or just this one? Also, talk to some friends or family who can be objective about the situation and help you sort out your jealous feelings — a counselor can also be helpful with this.

3. Get Confident in Dating

The source of a lot of the jealousy has nothing to do with what your date does; it lies within you. If you’re upset because your date drools a little when he or she sees a fashion model or celebrity in a magazine, don’t start comparing yourself to that image. Work on your dating confidence and focus on all you have to offer. Then, your envy of others will dramatically decrease.

4. Talk It Through

Learn to communicate your jealous feelings in a healthy way. For instance, let your mate know that you’re jealous about the amount of time the attractive coworker gets to spend with him or her. Make sure as you’re talking, you’re not accusing. Accusing makes any person defensive, and you won’t get anywhere.

5. Draw the Line

Particularly, if you are in a monogamous relationship with someone, you need to establish what behaviors are acceptable to you and what behaviors will bring out the green-eyed monster in you. Are you okay with your partner constantly texting a single man — or single woman? Will that send you over the edge? How do you feel about your partner dancing with someone else at a club when you aren’t around?

Establishing reasonable boundaries and respecting them gets both of you on the same playing field.

Establishing reasonable boundaries and respecting them gets both of you on the same playing field. The keyword here is reasonable. Setting a boundary like “Don’t talk to any single men — or single women — you work with” is an impossible and smothering line to draw.

6. Strengthen Your Relationship in Other Ways

If you’re overly jealous when there isn’t a whole lot of reason to be, it means that your relationship isn’t as strong as it should be. You need to evaluate what’s lacking. Are you not spending enough quality time together? Has the passion died down over the years? Once you identify what’s really concerning you, then you can address it with your partner and work on strengthening the relationship rather than wasting time and energy on empty jealous feelings.

The Most Important Argument You’ll Ever Have in Your Relationship

The first argument is the most crucial argument you will ever have, setting the stage for all arguments to follow. Future conflicts will often look and sound like they’re different, but most times they are simply variations of the first, unresolved argument. Understanding that the first argument is a tool for healing, rather than just a random conflict, can spare yourself years of grief, hopelessness and helplessness in your relationship.

Dating Tip #1: Get to the Core

Minimizing the chaos, confusion and stress in your relationship, therefore, is accomplished by understanding what you’re really arguing about. The first argument teaches what is important to each individual, by linking back to each other’s underlying core issue. You may be fooled into thinking that you’re arguing about cookies, wastebaskets, fences, etc., but rarely are these “content” issues the “real” issue. The real issue is your core issue from childhood that gets unknowingly triggered by the content issue. All of these elements are present in the first argument, which explains its importance in unraveling the underlying root of the problem.

Without knowing the importance of the first argument, couples struggle to understand their disagreements. They consistently get caught up in the details of the fight, recounting what happened, trying to make their point and then desperately wanting the argument to get resolved so they can be “happy” once again. Unfortunately, however, arguing all the time only creates discouragement, frustration, and emotional damage. Recurring arguments will cloud minds to a point where a couple doesn’t even know what they’re fighting about. The same words are simply said over and over again, bringing only more confusion and unhappiness.

Dating Tip #2: Strive for Clarity

Somehow, we often think that repeating the same things that have never worked will suddenly work, and our partner will miraculously understand! It doesnt make sense, but we do it anyway. The first argument technique is a way to break the old, useless patterns that don’t work in a relationship that keep us from feeling intimate. The first argument is an important moment that can ultimately bring clarity rather than confusion. With clarity, we can solve and deal with anything that occurs in our relationships.

Dating Tip #3: Solve Big Ones Before Small Ones

Understanding the value and importance of the first argument as a tool to self-knowledge can reduce stress. When you start to argue and hear yourself repeating the same sentences that don’t work, going back to your tools of self-awareness will create a framework for resolving conflict. Small issues are connected to bigger issues, and the first argument reveals our bigger, core issues from the past. Once the big issue is revealed, the small issue can then be determined. It’s when the small stuff is triggering the core issues that we can’t resolve anything, and everything we discuss at a certain point seems like a survival issue. The first argument helps weed out what’s big and what’s small. Conflict then feels more manageable and more possible to resolve.

Dating Tip #4: Be “Current”

When conflict is resolved, stress is reduced and you have the ability to be current with each other. Being “current” means you’re in the moment with few unresolved matters clouding the relationship. The more current a relationship is, the healthier it is. Therefore, the first argument should be welcomed, viewing it as the helpful tool that it is. Don’t be blinded into thinking that the same conflict will never happen again, because it will. Allow it in and deal with it immediately. Acknowledge your own hurt, see how it relates back to past hurts and talk about that, rather than what you perceive are your partner’s faults. By doing so, you’ll be quickly rewarded with a peaceful resolution.

The first argument technique is not restricted to couples. Its principles can work with any intimate relationship — parents and children, boss and employees, friends. Any relationship that is important to us — one in which we have a lot at stake in its success — can easily trigger our unresolved issues. If we don’t care about someone, we’re less easily triggered because it doesn’t matter if the relationship works or doesn’t work.

Dating Tip #5: Repair It Now

Remember that when dealt with, the first argument is small. When put aside, it becomes bigger and bigger to the point of being overwhelming and unsolvable. Each time we fight, we hurt each other a little bit more, until we’ve damaged each other and the relationship. Once this has happened, it’s hard to regain the good feelings we once had for each other. A relationship can only handle so much pain and hurt before it begins to break down and fall apart. Therefore, save yourself and the loved ones in your life pain by understanding that the first argument — the most crucial argument you’ll ever have — is a tool for healing that will spare yourself years of grief, hopelessness and helplessness in your relationships.