Marital Talk

I think all of us are familiar with intentional jealousy. It seems to be the thing to do when we’re young and dating. I don’t know about you, but I can remember when I was in high school and you think that if your boyfriend or girlfriend sees you with someone else it will be a ‘good’ thing. They will be so overwhelmed with jealousy, they will confess their undying love for you and you will feel completely and utterly desirable. Where this ridiculous assumption comes from is still being researched I believe. Because what this actually does is cause mistrust and feelings of insecurity in whomever we’re in a relationship with. It is a fairy-tale ideal that jealousy causes feelings of love and devotion rather than anger and insecurity.

So what do you do if you’re married to someone who thinks it’s okay to commit acts that make you jealous? Maybe they noticeably flirt or check out other people when you’re with them. (I’m familiar with that scenario). Maybe they act suspicious when they receive cell phone calls or emails from people you don’t know. They like to make you think they’re hiding something or could leave you for someone else at any moment. They’re doing this for one of two reasons- They enjoy hurting you and watching you get upset; or they hold that adolescent notion that jealousy makes good things happen. Either way, communication is key in handling this.

You must let your partner know how their actions make you feel. If they truly love and care about you they will understand that feelings of jealousy aren’t coveted and the two of you can discuss a solution. If their intentions are mean-spirited they may not care how you feel. In this case you must decide how much you are willing to take. You could try not letting their actions bother you to see if that solves it. Kind of like the belief that if you ignore the bully he’ll leave you alone. If that doesn’t work, and your partner’s actions are truly making you miserable and they’re not willing to change, you must decide the fate of your marital future.

In our situation, I told my husband that I thought it was disrespectful when he looked at other women when I was with him. Even if he wasn’t doing it intentionally to piss me off and make me feel insecure, I asked him to make a conscious effort not to do it with me in the car, walking behind or next to him, etc… He argued with me for awhile that he wasn’t doing what I claimed, but it’s hard to deny something when your wife has witnessed you doing it. He is making an effort to control his wandering eye when I’m with him, and it wouldn’t be good for me to imagine what he does when he’s with his friends and I’m not around. That would just be feeding the green-eyed monster with a silver spoon and I refuse to do that……anymore. For more tips on jealousy check out this site.
2-in-2-1 - Marriage Clinic - Pressures in Marriage - Struggling with Jealousy

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Author Robert A. Heinlein stated that, “A competent and self-confident person is incapable of jealousy in anything. Jealousy is invariably a symptom of neurotic insecurity.” What do you think of that statement? Is it 100% accurate? If you are completely confident in your marriage will you never feel a twang of jealousy? I have to say that I think I agree with most of this theory. I say most of it because I think even the most self-confident person wavers and feels twangs of jealousy in certain circumstances. But overall, the more confident we are the less likely we will be to allow jealousy to ruin our relationship. Now this doesn’t refer to relationships where one partner is using your jealousy against you. This is more about relationships where one person has a tendency to feel jealous over things that their spouse doesn’t even realize is making them jealous.

I reflected on the last time I felt really jealous over something in my marriage. In the beginning, my husband didn’t realize how much a comment he made about another person affected me. Even now, six years later, if I think about it I get myself all worked up again. So although he has apologized and discussed it with me, my lack of self-confidence in whether or not he’s actually telling the truth allows this comment made oh so many years ago to fester up new feelings of jealousy and anger. So how do I deal with unintentional jealous feelings brought on by a past event? Confidence building is easier said than done. To help myself I need to trust him and what he says, believe that he truly does love me, and let go of the feelings I continue to hold inside about this situation.

When situations that cause jealousy are unintentional, reflecting on the inner source of the jealousy and not the people or things believed to be the cause of the jealousy forces you to look at yourself much more closely. It’s not always an easy task. It can be hard to tell yourself that you wouldn’t feel so jealous if it wasn’t for you. It’s much easier to say, “I wouldn’t feel so jealous if it wasn’t for him, her, etc…” My new goal when I feel that ugly monster start to rear its’ head is to reflect on whether or not the jealousy is intentional or something I’m bringing on myself. If the actions or words causing the jealousy are unintentional, then I’ll try to work the feelings out within myself first before getting angry or pouty.

A reader of the blog sent this story about jealousy to me: Why Do I Get Jealous? — Yahoo! Personals I thought it brought up some common reasons jealousy occurs in relationships and how important trust is. But then I thought longer on the topic of why jealousy exists and how it starts. I realized that in order to grasp jealousy you must do more than just have trust;you must understand what trust is and with whom you have trust issues. Dictionary.com defines trust as: reliance on the integrity, strength, ability, surety, etc., of a person or thing; confidence. Reading this definition made me realize that jealousy is actually quite easy to understand. When the integrity, strength, ability, or surety of our spouse OR ourself becomes unreliable jealousy creeps in.

If we’re jealous of another person because we think our husband or wife finds them more fun, better looking, smarter, or sophisticated it’s really not the other person causing the jealousy. It’s the loss of our own self-esteem or strength that allows the jealousy to creep in. On the other hand, if your spouse has cheated on you jealousy is easily sparked because you’ve lost your reliance on their integrity and surety. Basically, there is a lack of trust. I have told my husband before that if I ever lost complete trust in him I most likely could not continue to be married to him. To me, trust is the most important thing in a marriage or any give and take relationship.

But I am prone to feel jealous if I catch him checking out another woman, overhear him talking on the phone with his guy friends discussing girls they used to know, or even comments on his MySpace page from girls can tick me off. But I realize now that I’m not so much jealous of the other people as I am in doubt of my own self. I don’t have enough trust in my own self-worth to let these things roll of my back. So I think the first step in conquering jealousy is to define where you’ve lost trust. Once you can say where you are lacking in trust, you can determine whether or not that trust can be regained and how to achieve that. More to come this week on the green-eyed monster.

jealousy, trust, marriage, relationships

Well everything is back to normal around here. I spent the weekend cleaning….it’s weird how you clean everything before people come and by the time they leave your house feels disgusting. My in-laws visit was pleasant overall, although it did have its dramatic moments. The annoying cousin that came around more often got pretty close to being punched in the face by my husband. Thankfully, he kept his cool and there was no bloodshed.

Now for a question. How many of you call your in-laws mom and dad? I still call my in-laws by their names rather than mom and dad. To me it feels weird to call people who aren’t my actual parents mom or dad. My husband has made more of an effort to call my mom “mom” but usually he calls her by her name instead. I know my in-laws would like me to call them mom and dad, but so far I haven’t been able to do it comfortably. And it’s not because I don’t love or respect them, it’s just doesn’t feel right to me. My husband is fine with it. He doesn’t feel offended that I don’t call his parents mom and dad like he does and vice versa. The strange thing is I will write mom or dad in a birthday or some sort of occasion card;I just can’t bring myself to actually call them mom or dad out loud. The stranger thing is that both my husband and I call each other’s grandmothers ‘grandma.’ We have no problem with the grandma thing, just the mom and dad thing. Are we alone as a married couple? Do most married couples adopt their spouse’s parents as their own and call them mom and dad? Or are there other couples like us who can’t seem to utter those two simple words?

inlaws, marriage, mom, dad, parents, husband, wife

Sorry for the lack of posts. I’ve been super busy with family stuff and just haven’t had the time to get on the computer, let alone write posts. When I do have time to get on, there always seems to be something to do to pull me away. My in-laws leave in a couple of days. I know they are looking forward to getting back home. Not that they hate us or anything, but it’s nice just to get home to your own bed. I am looking forward to cleaning the house real good and getting it back in order. There aren’t too many occasions where I actually say I’m looking forward to cleaning the house, but after two weeks I feel like it’s in a shambles. There is just so much extra stuff lying around. Then by the time I get it back in order my mother will show up for two weeks and we get to do it all over again. She doesn’t have any family out here though so it’s less hectic when she’s here. Overall the visit has been nice and we’ve all survived without anyone getting a punch in the face or a push down the stairs.

The only bad thing about these visits is that I feel so disconnected from my husband. I rarely get to see him, and we’re so exhausted at the end of the day we don’t talk much at night. Plus, the kids are sleeping in our room on an air mattress to give the grandparents their own room. They wouldn’t sleep in the third bedroom by themselves for some reason so they’re in with us. I know he feels the same way when my mom is here. Oh well, time’s almost up and we’ve all survived and we’ll miss them when they’re gone.

Well my in-laws arrived yesterday. They pulled in around midnight so I was sure they would sleep late in the morning. But, I guess because of their inner alarm clock, they were up at the crack of dawn. My family is not a morning family. I spent most of the morning trying to wake up. The rest of the day was spent at Wal-Mart buying food to feed 3 families. My mother-in-law bought everything the kids asked for and then some. We left the store with two baskets full of groceries, and spent the rest of the afternoon trying to figure out how to stuff it all into my fridge. My husband had the job of lowering his dad’s truck and putting new tires on. There goes my theory that they would be so exhausted from the 16 hour drive that they’d rest all day. It’s only been one day and I’m already tired. I’ve seen my husband for about 30 minutes total. I know the next two weeks will be run, run, run.

On another note, let’s talk about the in-laws that attract other family members you don’t normally see. My mother-in-law is the one with family up here. She has us, her brother, and of course bunches of nieces and nephews. There is one nephew in particular that I don’t see very often, and I can’t say I’m disappointed. He’s an alright guy. But he’s one of those people that invites themselves places, eats all your food, belches, farts, and rubs his big beer belly like it’s the sexiest thing since the bikini was invented. Now that my MIL is in town, I’ve been blessed with his presence all day. He invited himself over to our pool, to stay for dinner, and I even think he’s going to be going to Chuck E. Cheese with us this week. Thankfully, he spared us any farts and belches tonight. I guess he saves that for when his aunt isn’t around. The rest of their time here I will be spending it with people I don’t see and don’t miss when I don’t see them. I don’t think this situation has a solution unless I uninvite myself to every outing or make up excuses for why I can’t go. This is just one of those grin-n-bear it situations and know that it will all be over in two weeks.

inlaws, in-laws, marriage, family, nieces, nephews

My in-laws are visiting for the next two weeks. This made me realize how important in-laws are to a marriage. Everyone says that when you marry, you marry not only your husband or wife but their whole family too. Luckily, I have a good relationship with my in-laws. My husband and mom get along fairly well also, though I would say they’ve had more ups and downs than I have had with his parents. His parents are still married which seems almost like a rarity anymore. My parents are divorced so he gets to deal with my mom and stepdad and dad and stepmom. With the invasion of the in-laws happening this summer, I’ve decided to dedicate this week to in-law discussions. Meddling in-laws, disapproving in-laws, overhelpful in-laws, loving in-laws, and any other sort of in-law you can think of.

To start with I’ll give you a little insight into the in-law dynamic in my marriage. My in-laws have accepted me from the moment I started dating my husband. My mother, on the other hand, took a little longer to warm up to my husband. When we were teens my husband was one of those boys your mom or dad hoped you would never meet. Thankfully, my husband outgrew his delinquent days and turned into a wonderful husband and father. Now my mother can’t say enough good things about him. My in-laws don’t really get involved in our marriage. Occasionally they may ask how things are, or toss us a few dollars if they sense we’ve hit a rough spot we’re not talking about, overall they’re just really great people. My mother is the same way for us. My stepdad and husband don’t really talk. They’ve had some issues that stem from the past so his relationship with his in-laws is mostly just with my mother. My father is around, but not much, so they haven’t really forged a relationship. Overall though, we both have decent relationships with our in-laws. Sometimes when there are rough patches you have to realize that usually their family just has their best interest at heart. It’s similar to that song I Loved Her First….except think of it has They Loved Them First.

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Here is a recipe to try for a romantic meal with your husband or wife. I included a video starring Rita Heikenfeld that shows you how to pan sear filets and finish them in the oven. Add a light salad and some grilled veggis for a great restaurant like meal at home. This is a great meal for a date night at home. If you have a great romantic recipe, use the contact me button to email it to me for publication on the blog. If you want more recipes from Rita, check out the website here:
Eating and Free Recipes from Cookbook Author Rita Heikenfeld.

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