Insane jealousy

[outherealone]

I have issues around jealousy and I know it comes from my traumatic childhood. I try very hard not to show it in my relationship but every now and then something crops up and it preoccupies me and I don’t know how to address it if at all. I’m having therapy and the focus is on healing my past and trying to build up my self esteem .
I’m not sure if I should even be in a relationship because if this and I’m not sure what is worth getting in a state over and what’s just my overactive imagination.
I know that my bf is still in contact with all his exes and flings. When he’s on his phone I try not to look but I can’t help myself and I don’t like doing it but it’s like a compulsion. when he’s scrolling through messages I see various women’s names crop up in his recent messages. Often it’s a particular ex (just good friends) but other exes too as well as other women friends. Every time I look there are some of these women in the list.
He doesn’t show me I just do very indiscreet panic straining my eyes and neck whilst trying to appear nonchalant
Obviously I can’t see the content of the messages but it always makes me feel weird. This weekend we went away and had an awesome time and we got back and he was was messaging a friend and then clicked back to the main message page and I saw the name of the girl before me (ten years younger and very attractive) before we’d got together he’d said how gorgeous and funny and clever she is and how she’d ticked all his boxes but she’d kept blowing hot and cold so they ended it.
The message was clearly very recent. I had no idea they were still in contact.
I have done some paranoid checking of her social media and she posts very sexy videos and photos of herself, has an amazing figure, always showing off her body and is very ‘hot’ , clever and funny, just like he said.
she gets a lot of ‘likes’ and attention and sometimes my bf has ‘liked’ her stuff.
My imagination is going into overdrive about what their messages might entail and I don’t feel I can ask him without it sounding like me being controlling.
I have asked about exes in the past when he’s not been forthcoming about their presence at events where he is and I don’t want to become an interrogator.
Later on he was flicking through his social media and I saw posts from her personal and business pages pop up. I asked him who she is as she often crops up as people I might know and he said he’d been seeing her briefly before me and then changed the subject immediately. It felt a bit awkward but I’m not sure if the awkwardness was because he didn’t like me questioning him rather than anything suspect...
We get on well and he’s lovely in lots of ways. We don’t live near each other but plan to later on. I have been undergoing some physical problems lately with my disability and have put on weight and unable to exercise. Recently I have noticed him checking out other women, which in itself is not a problem but he’s being much less discreet than usual , literally turning his head to look and look back as he’s walking rather than a quick glance (like the oft-used meme of the guy looking behind at another woman while his partner is next to him looking pissed off if you know the one I mean!)
I am probably waffling and sounding a bit mad but it’s really playing on my mind. I don’t like feeling this way at all, it’s tiring and time consuming and I’m too old for it!
I don’t want to end the relationship because of my anxiety and paranoia but at the same time it’s clearly doing me no good being like this.
I’m scared I’m going to be like this forever and unable to sustain any normal relationship. Through therapy it transpires that I’m exactly mirroring my mums jealous and paranoid behaviour and I’ve seen the pathological jealousy in my sister too, it’s very destructive and soul destroying being in this constant state of panic.

In the interest of full disclosure: this is not the first relationship where I have been driven to distraction by suspicion and paranoia. Some of the times I’ve been proven right, some wrong but it is torture second guessing everything and not trusting myself or anybody else. It’s exactly how I grew up so is almost buried in my dna and makes it very hard to differentiate between fiction and reality

@outherealone I think everybody questions their sanity when dealing with these kind of issues. One of my exes was cheating on me but turned it round on me saying I was paranoid, and I started to question my own sanity!

Listen to what @Ozziewozzie said. ❤

@RLEOM thank you I am bearing all the words in mind. It’s so weird being on here as irl most people say it’s me and my paranoia. When I’ve brought up similar with him he’s very ‘reasonable’ one friend said he’s a pig but her partner does all the same things and she was angry on behalf of both of us. Most people think it’s my issue and many of my old friends have seen me like this before. I genuinely have no clue what’s reasonable anymore and I do think that boundaries are becoming more blurred in a lot of relationships as well and wonder if I’m being a bit old fashioned!

Ha! @, there’s NO man that other women won’t find attractive. I’ve learned this from a young age and also in my job. There’s no depths that somebody won’t sink to!
Thank you for offering your alternative viewpoint. I don’t believe he ever tried to upset me by telling me about other women. We hadn’t even met at this point, I just remember everything especially as this particular one has cropped up numerous times on social media.
So what’s your take on the actively checking out other women in my presence? In my eyes , a glance is fine, I don’t expect blinkers and I also notice people but it’s got to the point where I know who’s going to turn his head before he even looks! (Anyone good looking, good figure and well groomed)
And the messaging, would you ignore it or want to know more etc?

Last message meant to be to @WhimToo , mn fail...

Find some one with not too many exes and is not on social media or WhatsApp.

@AnneKipanki I don’t know how that would even work! I genuinely don’t know anyone nowadays who isn’t socially active online somewhere ! Unless you’re being tongue in cheek? I feel like a pathological loon, I know I can’t get to my age and not expecting a man to have exes and significant friendships with women. He meets one semi regularly and I swear they’re messaging pretty much daily. Most recent longish term relationship, before the hot fling. Her name crops up all the time when I’m looking over at his messages and Occasionally he’ll mention she’s coming over or vice versa regarding something he’s helping her with. I don’t particularly relish it as they live much closer together than we do andhave split up and got back together twice. She apparently has a boyfriend and according to him she can’t understand why I’d feel threatened (when I found out inadvertently that she was going away with him with a group of other women in our relationship early days ).
Ive learned to suck it up regarding her but it just adds to the overall unease.

I found condoms in his glove box ages ago in a box, I asked him and he said they were just from when he was single. We don’t use them anymore and they’re not the kind we used. More recently they’re no longer in a box but still there . It’s little things like that which play on my mind...especially when he goes away to to his various music events

I wasn't really . I am sure there are some out there .
My own husband is not on SM .
So , if he were available it would be one ex wife ( me ) .

@AnneKipanki that made me laugh thank you
Let me know when you’re done with him I honestly don’t know... if written off men when I met this one then he was just going to be a one nighter, then a fling and here we are a year later...
I’m not sure really if I can do it again. I’m old, I’m in pain, my kids need me, my job is insanely busy and stressful!
It’s a shame, our relationship really helps distract from the daily grind. It’s genuinely the best most fun and adventurous sex I’ve ever had, we go to beautiful places together and talk for hours about interesting stuff and equally about inane stuff. I’ll be really sad if he’s turned out to be yet another liar and ill be really sad to say goodbye to all the pleasure!

Just my own cautionary tale. When I met my narcissistic ex husband 18 years ago, he had a hareem of ex girlfriend's he kept in contact with. I think I met nearly all of them and thought nothing of it. We even went on holiday with one of his exes and her DH.
But he would call round and see his exes. He would compare mr to women on the telly, in the street, putting me down, my hair was frizzy, I was fat, ugly, stupid, lazy. Text book abuse phrases he came out with, nobody would want me, I was damaged goods. etc,etc.
Then he'd tell me he loved me, I was wonderful, he loved being married to me. Then he would kiss me and say he was thinking of a very pretty friend of mine and had imagined I was her. I had this mindfuckery everyday.
He would go on social media and put flirty stuff up.
His boss put a photo of him drunkenly rolling around on the floor with a 17 year old girl, he was 40 at the time.
He would triangulate me with any woman he could and make me feel insecure , I had been confident and out going before him and he broke me down.
He looked at women all the time and compared me to them, I totally lost myself.
Cut a long story short a woman that he went on about being so beautiful and too pretty for her husband, he was having an affair with during our marriage.
He is now with her, but is trying to Hoover me back in because he is bored of her.
I can't wait to delete him out of my life once the Court stuff is over with.

So be careful of abusive men using triangulation with exes and other women as a form of control and to break you down.

Your DP could be innocent, but if you have problems with MH, this situation vould make it a whole lot worse.
Put in string boundaries and be prepared to walk away.
Love yourself more.

@lexiepuppy thank you for sharing. That’s an awful story. Sounds like exes I have known too. Really glad you were able to sever your connection.
I don’t know how to put in boundaries without admitting that I’ve been doing weird looking over his shoulder stuff and without making myself feel stupid . I thought we already had boundaries as we’d had great discussions where we agreed this stuff then ‘little’ things keep cropping up

I would just suggest that anytime he makes you feel insecure you tell him.

If he continues making you feel insecure and jealous , even though you have asked him to stop , I would walk away.
I stayed because of my children and they saw too much and it deeply saddens me that i put them through this.
My son definitely acts like his father, so he has learned his behaviour, but I try to pick him up on things.
Don't make yourself ill over a man.....They are not worth it!

Thank you @lexiepuppy definitely not worth mking myself ill over. I think the sick feeling partly comes from not trusting my own judgement and partly because I’m currently so over sensitised (partly to do with my condition) that just about anything and everything is triggering. I blush horribly at work for no reason, I’m too scared to talk to pin case I start crying, it’s a horrible state of affairs!

Do you trust him? Really?

Agree with PPs that the very obvious turning of his head to check out other women sounds pretty intentional. It's extremely rude for one thing!

Regarding the condoms - they were in the glove box in a box, now they're in the glove box but no longer in a box? So he's removed the box but chosen to leave the condoms in the car? This to me seems very hard to explain.

I say you prepare for a very honest conversation and prepare yourself to walk away.

I'm usually quite harsh towards these jealousy threads OP, but you come across as nice and honest about your own issues, so I say this kindly- why have you subconsciously chosen a man with more than average baggage, who contacts exes regularly and keeps in touch with everyone he's ever shagged? This was always going to be torture for a jealous person. You've almost set yourself up to fail here, regardless whether he's genuinely "just friends" with these women or not.

It's much more normal for people to be no contact with the majority of their exes (excluding those with children), and you could have looked for someone with a less complicated past.

I don’t know @BeeHopeful. I’ve been in so many relationships with dishonest people that I have huge anxiety around people lying to me and hiding stuff. I don’t know what to react to and what to ignore! When I first saw the condoms i had previously put some keys etc in glove box and various other bits then another day I was in there checking to see if anything of mine was in there. It’s a huge glove box rammed with crap so when I saw the jonnies I was a bit but immediately thought they’ve probably been there for ages. He has a camper van and uses it a lot at all the festivals etc so I presumed they were from before ‘us’. I asked him and that’s pretty much what he said. I then checked the other day as all this has been in my head and saw they’re still there but now unboxed. Of course now I’m asking myself if they were boxed to start with or if I misremember it!
He’s very plausible but then reading posts on here, they always are! I don’t know how to start the honest conversation

@SouthernComforts yes it’s very weird, why the hell would I want to torture myself in this way? I’m going round the houses asking everyone’s opinion, acting like a weirdo trying to read over his shoulder etc. I would love to have full access to his messages once and for all so I’d know for sure if I needed to worry or not but of course I can’t ask for that because it’s policing someone else and I’d be highly pissed off if anyone asked that from me so it leaves me completely in the dark and not knowing how to address it in a mature non psycho and controlling manner. Everything I think of saying to him sounds emotionally abusive in my head.

I think you know this one isn't going to work, you are aware you want a level of control over his phone that is unreasonable and unhealthy. You're aware enough not to ask for it, so the only two options are to torture yourself in limbo and be miserable, or move on and continue with your therapy.

@SouthernComforts thank you for being so frank and succinct. Bleurgh to life sometimes. It’s a real big struggle parenting and running a house with disabilities and no family blah blah . He was bringing me lots of joy and pleasure until I started caring and noticing stuff

I don’t know how that would even work! I genuinely don’t know anyone nowadays who isn’t socially active online somewhere

They are out there. My husband doesn't do social media. Most of the time he doesn't even know where his phone is or, if he has it on him, the battery is flat. He is a member of a few blokey forums but that is as far as it goes.

However, he does have an ex and he was in fairly regular contact with her for a while although it has dropped off now. He is really open about it and it has never bothered me in the slightest. I'm not so sure that I would be quite so cool with the level of contact between your bf and his exes though.

"he's just not into you" is a surprisingly excellent book - elements of this thread remind me of the chapter titled;

"Too many queens in the castle".

Everyone has the right to have friends of the opposite sex, of course, bug when.intetaction with them goes beyond true platonic friendship with lots of contact flirtation, liking sexy SM pics etc etc - it's too much, it's inappropriate and it's not remotely surprising that their partner feels uncomfortable and unhappy. I do not think.hid behaviour is appropriate/kosher for someone in a committed relationship (not even looking into the condom question etc) ... That's not your problem, that's his.

Also really visibly checking out other people; many of us do it to some extent but try to be discrete FFS. If he's actually showing he's doing it on purpose, thats a whole other problem.

In any case he just sounds like he liked having a little harem (whether he's actually doing anything physical or not) a bit too much and is therefore not good relationship material.

I'd be very interested to see the if you were behaving in the same way, whether it would all be fine and dandy and he'd be ok with it.

I think not somehow.