How to Stop Being Jealous: 10 Tips to Know

Know Your Jealous Actions

The first thing to do to know how to stop being jealous is to target the unnecessary and abnormal steps that you are taking when you feel jealous, such as checking your partner's emails and phone messages, constantly questioning them about their whereabouts and not believing them, following them or checking out their explanations. Some of these actions may seem normal to you because you are used to them and because you haven't considered them to be anything out of the ordinary, but these types of behaviors can cost you a great relationship. Before everything else, you have to learn how to stop these kinds of behaviors that clearly show that you don't trust your partner.

Understand When You Are Afraid

In almost all cases, jealousy is actually fear - fear that your person would fall for someone else, fear that they would lose interest in you, and fear that they may be interested in someone other than you. It is uncertainty and fear that drives a person to be jealous and suspect their partner, leading their relationship to a disaster. It is very important that you know how to distinguish the fear if you want to know how to stop being jealous in your relationship. When you can understand and soothe your fear, the jealous streak in you will also lessen.

Try to Trust Your Partner

It all comes down to trusting your partner to know how to stop being jealous in a relationship. When you don't trust your partner and disbelieve everything they say, that's when the jealousy arises in your relationship. Some people have the habit of not believing everything their partners tell them; every time they hear their partner talking about someone, or see them spending time with a person of the opposite gender, they become jealous because they have trouble believing they could be "just friends" and "just hanging out".

It is very easy to form distrust from this kind of jealousy in a relationship, and it is important that you learn to trust your partner. Instead of immediately suspecting them and checking out their story, try hard to just "trust" them on one occasion, and let the matter go.

Stop Comparing Yourself to Others

If you start comparing yourself to every single person of the opposite gender that your partner hangs out with, you are never going to win. No matter how amazing you are, you are always going to find some flaw in yourself that this other person doesn't have, and that is going to hurt your self-esteem. Instead, remember that your partner has chosen you over everyone else, and that is because of some hidden quality in you that is not present in anyone else!

Don't Bring Past Relationships into New Ones

Your past relationships have nothing to do with your current one, so don't compare them, or judge one based on the other. If you have been hurt at your past relationships, or betrayed and cheated upon by your partner, it doesn't mean it is going to happen again. So, don't be jealous and suspicious of your partner's every move because someone has hurt you in your previous relationship.

Don't Confuse Your Imagination with Reality

You might occasionally imagine your partner lying to you, or hanging out with someone of the opposite gender and not telling you - this is completely normal in a relationship. What you shouldn't do is to act out on a hunch and become jealous without knowing the truth. Don't start suspecting and disbelieving your partner based on your imagination or your fantasy; learn the truth instead to judge whether you have anything to worry about.

Learn to Accept the Truth

It may be hard to imagine when you love someone, but there is a chance every relationship could end in heartbreak. If you are not able to face this truth, it is more likely that you will become obsessive and maniacally jealous in your relationship. You would try to make it work so hard - constantly - that you might be the one to drive your partner away.

Don't Impose Boundaries

Boundaries don't work in a relationship; you cannot tell your partner what they "can do" and what they "can’t do", and neither can they do the same to you. When you trust your partner, there would be no need to limit their activity. If you are secure in your relationship, you won't have to create boundaries for either one of you - and that's what a healthy relationship should look like.

Focus on the Positive Sides

Always focus on what's positive in your relationship. Focus on whether your partner is "caring", "kind", "understanding", and "sensitive"; try to ignore the few times when they had "stayed up too late at work" or "preferred to hang out with their friends rather than with you". If you only focus on the negative memories, it is normal that you would feel unhappy and jealous in your relationship.

Don't Act on It Instantly

Whenever you do get jealous, don't react immediately and forbid your partner "to talk to someone" or "to go somewhere you are not comfortable". Don’t create a scene on the spot that will embarrass you both. Let the anger and the jealousy pass for the moment, and discuss it later in the privacy of your own home; this will save unnecessary heartbreak in your relationship.