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Dating Diary:
The green-eyed monster...
Dear Diary,
WHERE WERE WE?
So the other day I was getting my weekly dose of online webisodes when I caught “Breaking Up With Shannen Doherty” on the Oxygen Network (because yes, Shannen Doherty does rock). The episode I happened to watch involved a man who wanted to break up with his controlling girlfriend. Let’s call her “Peppermint Patty.” When he sat down for a one-on-one interview with Shannen, he revealed that Peppermint Patty had gone through his cell phone directory to delete all the female names. Shannen obviously found this disturbing, even if the boyfriend regarded the ordeal as the least of his problems. The show sent Peppermint Patty to a fake call-in centre where she would be fielding calls about relationships, and Shannen posed as a caller who had a possessive boyfriend. When she asked Peppermint Patty what she should do about her boyfriend not letting her have any male friends, Peppermint Patty told her that if her boyfriend loved her, he wouldn’t control her. It was pretty clear that Peppermint Patty was seriously disconnected from reality if she couldn’t realize that was the exact same thing she was doing to her poor boyfriend.But haven’t we all, at one time or another, had the urge to clear his call log of every hot girl he’s ever known? Haven’t we wanted to be his one and only, to have him adore no one else but us?
It’s natural to have these feelings in a relationship. It’s called jealousy. Most of the time, this volatile emotion will rarely rear its ugly head, but when it does, it could spell doom for even the seemingly strongest couple.
When I was seventeen and going through my first real relationship, all I ever saw was green. I tried to keep my jealousy in check, but most days, it literally consumed me. I didn’t mind that he had female friends or spent some of his down time with them, but I did mind when even the slightest hint of neglect was construed as his waning interest. In those situations, I felt weird in my own skin, like I was wearing all my insecurities on my sleeve. One day, I was idly fiddling with his glove compartment while he filled his tank with gas, and came across a recent picture of his high school crush. I was filled with dread as blood raised to cheeks. What was he doing with it? Why did he keep it in his car? When was she in his car? Was it all in the past as he had said, or did he still harbour feelings for her? I confronted him with the picture, and after a drama-filled fight, I convinced (forced) him to chuck it out the car window.
But that was only the surface of my immature stupidity. The night that we broke up for good, I was hanging out and waiting for him to finish work with a friend. And so were a gaggle of girls at another table. Feeling my competitive spirit bubbling to the surface, I asked him what the deal was. He said that he had promised to drive them home, and even though my friend was fully capable of also driving me home, I batted my eyelashes and told him that I wanted to spend some quality time with him. In essence, I was demanding that he ditch the gaggle for me. I was surprised and crushed when he hemmed and hawed and stuck with the original plan. That’s when I learned that ultimatums rarely work. I also learned that you can only push so much before the other person stops resisting, and then you just end up falling on your face.
After our break-up, I had a lot of time to reflect and, frankly, I didn’t like myself very much during this relationship. He was a great boyfriend, but I couldn’t look past my insecurities long enough to appreciate it.
My next relationship was the complete opposite. I had vowed to control my jealousy, but I wasn’t prepared to be a victim of someone else’s. The devil’s spawn wasn’t just your typical jealous guy – he practically invented the word “possessive.” I had known the devil’s spawn for years and seen his jealous tendencies with his other girlfriends, but I wasn’t aware that I was only witnessing a shallow pool of what he was capable of.
As soon as we began dating, things instantly changed. He was no longer the easygoing friend that I hung out with all year. To everyone, he was still cool, calm, and collected, but behind closed doors, it was another story. One week into our relationship, a friend called to see what I was doing. As we chatted, I made the fatal mistake of telling him that I was hanging out with a “friend.” This was simply disrespectful, according to the devil’s spawn. What I should have said, he informed me as he pouted like a little baby, was that I was hanging out with my “boyfriend.” Had I written this seven years ago, the devil’s spawn would have made me write “boyfriend” in caps just so you’d get the point.
There are tons of stories I could tell you about the devil’s spawn, but I’d just go on and on forever and then you’d get bored. So here’s the gist of it: he was mistrustful of my relationship with other men, even though they were his friends too; he had to be everywhere I was, and if he wasn’t, I’d have to suffer through an awkward phone conversation where he would make me feel as though I had stolen babies instead of having an innocent lunch with a friend; he had to see me every day, even though most of our time together was spent arguing over who I was lusting after with my eyes; he would often threaten to break up with me if I didn’t yield to his unreasonable demands; he cracked my cell phone code and listened to my voicemails, flying into fits of rage if a man’s voice happened to be on my answering machine. It was as though his only purpose in life was to catch me cheating on him, even though I never did. I guess he got tired of waiting for someone to cheat, so he decided to that he should be the one to do it.
After a year of this, I had no contact with the outside world, I was beaten, and I was resolute that I would never become this kind of monster.
After two failed relationships, here are some things I learned about jealousy:
Jealousy is time wasted. How consumed do we become when we feel our relationship is threatened? And how many times have our break ups been about something else, like a lack of compatibility, a growing distance, or a cooling off of feelings? Being jealous rarely accomplishes anything but make you upset and him feel stifled, so take that energy and channel it into something else.
Just because he has friends of the opposite sex, that doesn’t mean that he’s going to cheat on you. In When Harry Met Sally, the big question was, can men and women just be friends? And really, the answer is yes. You can’t monitor everything he does and, chances are, half of his daily interactions will involve someone of the opposite sex. Unless you want him to wear an ankle bracelet for the rest of his life, give him the benefit of the doubt.
He can’t validate your self-worth. There are certain types of men who treat their girlfriends like crap – they openly try to hump the next girl who walks into the room, they lie, they cheat, they make their girlfriends feel worthless. But unless you find yourself in that type of relationship, take a step back. Are your insecurities caused by anything he’s doing, or are you creating your own reasons? There’s only so much he can say and do to convince you that you’re the apple of his eye. The rest is up to you.
There is such a thing as harmless flirting. By nature, anyone in a relationship will want to see if they still have “it.” You know, that “it” that makes them desirable to the opposite sex. And the simplest way to boost our self-esteem is by testing the waters. A little innocent flirting now and then doesn’t hurt anyone, granted that it’s just a shared inside joke or a cheeky double-entendre, and it might make him feel good about himself. If the flirting or perception of flirting makes you uncomfortable, have a conversation about it instead of automatically assuming that he’s trying to trade you in for another model.
Put yourself in his shoes. If he treated you this way, would you stand for it? Or would you find his demands unreasonable?
Don’t let your past experiences hinder your current ones. So your ex-boyfriend cheated on you with your sister, and now you’re never going to introduce anyone to your sister again. You have to let go of that experience and give your next beau a break. Unless he’s a clone of your ex-boyfriend. Which would be freaky. But you get my point.
If you can’t trust him, you can’t have a relationship. How many times have we heard someone say, “Oh, I do trust him, I just don’t trust the women around him”? That’s a total lie. What they mean is, “I know he’s going to fall into bed with the next available slut ho he sees.” If it’s been a year, two years, three years, and you still fall into a tizzy when you’re not sure what he’s doing every hour of the day, it’s time to re-evaluate your relationship, because things will only get worse.
If he’s going to cheat on you, he is going to cheat on you. That’s the hardest pill to swallow, but if he does end up leaving the relationship, he was going to leave the relationship regardless of that new girlfriend or that one-night stand. Don’t kick yourself for not watching him more closely or deciding against locking him in the basement. It just wasn’t meant to be. Move on.
If he did things in the past that made you doubt his genuineness but you gave the relationship another shot, forgive him and move on. If you say that things are fine but they aren’t fine, this will hang over your head like a dark cloud. Don’t punish him any further if you’re going to give him another chance. And if you find that you’re having a hard time trusting him again, maybe the relationship isn’t as salvageable as you once thought.Learning to let go of my jealousy is a learning process, and it only took me years to do it. But I have to admit that with a laid-back attitude and a laissez-faire outlook on life, Bee made things easy for me. I never have to worry about having an argument at three o’clock in the morning about why I spent an extra five minutes talking to a male friend, or why I missed his call earlier in the day. Likewise, I never had to worry that that weird feeling of insecurity is going to creep up on me again, because Bee has never given me a reason not to trust him. I can take my otherwise spent energy and use it on something productive, like watching “Degrassi: The Next Generation” or rolling pennies. The only thing I’m envious of is his thick, luscious set of hair. ¤ C.Ho.
Next Month: Christine swtiches conditioners to see if she, too, can have a head of luscious hair.