Relationships: How to Stop Being Overly Jealous

Relationships: How to Stop Being Overly Jealous

Do you find yourself getting nagging feelings of jealousy when your partner is talking to other girls?

Do you worry that you're smothering the relationship with your fears? To stop being an overly-jealous girlfriend and start being a dream girl, follow these instructions.

1. Give your partner space

If you've been dogging his footsteps, confronting him with accusations, stalking his social media profiles, or exhibiting any other desperate behavior, your first order of business is to back off. Take a few deep breaths, detach, and play it cool for a while.

Find opportunities to be with friends, go to an event you've been interested in, and turn him down for at least one get-together.

Be very careful not to act vindictive about this, the point isn't to punish him, give him the cold shoulder, or manipulate him into begging for forgiveness, but to give the both of you a break so you can blow off a little steam, get some perspective, and hopefully save the relationship.

2. Learn to feel good about yourself

Most feelings of jealousy come from being insecure and thinking that someone else can make your partner happier or bring more to the table. Remember that your partner chose you, not anyone else.

Stop obsessing over your weight, height, or looks, your constant negativity is draining for you and your partner both. Worse yet, an overactive attitude of insecurity can drive people away, become a self-fulfilling prophecy that drives you deeper into the hole of fear and self-neglect.

Accept yourself as you are. Your partner is with you for a reason and obviously finds you attractive, but even if he weren't and didn't, you should never let anyone else's opinion define or validate yours.

3. Deal with past hurts

Most people have them - and many let them spill over into new relationships by either re-enacting the same unhealthy dynamic over and over again or by looking at their wonderful new partners with a skeptical eye.

If necessary, learn how to cope with emotional pain so that you can feel better about yourself and be able to see your current relationship for what it really is.

4. Learn what it means to have a healthy relationship

Whether you're new to the game or have been at it for years, it's not always easy to know what a relationship is supposed to be and feel like. Many people don't grow up with good examples of healthy relationships among their friends, family, or even parents.

What's worse, having one awful relationship can completely throw off your sense of balance and self-trust, making you second-guess your every move for years to follow.

5. Reassess your current relationship

Once you've done some soul-searching and have a clearer perspective on things, it's time to look at your relationship with a fresh eye.

Do your jealousy, doubt, and fear stem from your own issues with self-worth… or is that something you've been telling yourself to justify your partner's unsatisfactory behavior?

Even if you haven't been as stable a girlfriend as you should be, that doesn't mean you should overlook or write off your partner's transgressions to over-correct for your own feelings of guilt.

It's always possible that your out-of-control feelings were the result of trying to suppress your own gut instincts - or, at the very least, that you both have played a hand in making the relationship what it is today.

6. Breathe new life into the relationship

Before you can do any in-depth work on yourself or as a couple, you need to do damage control on your strained relationship. Start by striking a healthy balance between giving your partner space and increasing the quality of your time together.

Pursue your own interests in a meaningful, enriching way: after all, part of what attracts people to one another is mystery, and if you spend all your time checking in on your partner with calls, texts, emails, and Facebook posts, there can hardly be any intrigue left in what you do.

Split your time more evenly between your partner a