Jealousy

During a tweetversation tonight, I surprised myself by admitting my guilt about being a jealous wife. Now I want to know, WHY?!

I've always been self conscious. In past relationships my jealousy had gotten the better of me. Many times. I often sought the attention of boys whose attention belonged elsewhere to make myself feel better, which had quite the opposite effect. And did wonders for my reputation.

I've long since forgiven myself for the mistakes of the past. I was young, I didn't know who I was yet, and I was grasping for something to hold onto. Silly. Oh so common.

As I entered my relationship with my husband, we both aired ALL of our dirty laundry. On our second date. I mean... ALL of it. There was no stone left unturned. I learned quite a bit about his first love, and longest relationship (to that point). I'm glad he felt that he could tell me his feelings about the relationship, and he was quite candid. He told me how he felt at the time of the break-up, how he dealt with it, and how he felt about her as we entered our relationship. He has always been 100% honest with me, and I didn't feel jealous at all.

Well, at least not for the first few months. We would go out dancing, girls would make eyes at him, and I would be ok with that because he was (and IS) the most truly loyal person I had ever met. Honestly, even in the beginning, I think cheating would have hurt him more than it would have hurt me in the long term. What I mean by that is, he would hold himself more accountable for it than I would in the long run. I would find a way to blame myself, as most women do, but he would know that it was his decision and he would have to live with it. He just doesn't have it in him.

Then we went to a going away party for a friend of his that was moving to California. And guess who showed up? His first love. She had every right to be there, she was still friends with all of these people. I'll tell you, it was the most awkward thing in the world. He felt uncomfortable, and I felt even worse. They hadn't seen much of each other in the two years since their breakup, and I'd never met her. There was no introduction, we just kept our distance. I hated it, and it planted this seed of...doubt? I don't know what the word is, but I had this uncomfortable feeling about her. Like... there was a piece of the puzzles missing.

Of course, being nutty & jealous, (and I can't believe I"m admitting this publicly) I would periodically take a peak at her myspace page here and there. (Yep... this was before the days of facebook, y'all!) In time, my discomfort settled, and I kind of forgot about her. Her name still comes up here and there, and John has no problem answering questions about their relationship when I ask.

Then, a couple weeks ago, out of nowhere, the jealousy came back and hit me like a Mack truck. We had a friend over, watching old roller blade videos of John and his friends from high school. In the middle of one of the tapes was a skit that they did together, with other friends. The minute I saw her face, i was angry. I don't know why, but seeing them together, in a skit depicting family life, for the whopping 5 seconds (literally) that it was on, was too much for me to bear.

Why?
Am I afraid that there's someone else that could make him happier than I do? No... I don't think so. Not only has he told me that no one else could, but his family often tells me how well we fit together. We truly do compliment each other's personalities. That is not to say we don't have our problems, we have to work hard at our marriage, but we do it. And we do fairly well!
Am I jealous of what they had? Absolutely not. That relationship did not end well, and it deteriorated slowly before it finally ended. It was a bad situation, and I'm glad we are not like that.

So what is my issue? He's the love of my life. I'm the love of his. We are happy. We have it really good.
What is my issue with this girl? I'm never jealous when he gets hit on (many times) at work by Mommies dropping off their kids. In fact, I'm flattered when other women find him attractive and flirt with him.

Maybe I need to just watch all the skits, and get over it. I mean, seriously. GET OVER IT!