"I know that my boyfriend loves me, but he has a lot of women friends. I don't get why he has to have so many women friends. I get scared and jealous when he spends time with another woman. I know I should trust him, but I don't, and I don't know what to do about this."

"My wife is a very social person and makes friends easily, with both men and women. I keep feeling that one of these days she is going to meet a man who offers her more than I do. I feel insanely jealous whenever another man even looks at her. What do I do about these feelings?"

I frequently receive questions from people asking how they can stop feeling so jealous.
 

Jealousy is caused by not knowing who you really are.

By who you really are, I mean your true self, your essence - the soul aspect of you that is created in the image of God. Your essence is a beautiful and perfect individualized expression of the Divine - deeply lovable and loving. But if you don't know your own essence, then you think you are your wounded self.

Your wounded self - your ego - is your conditioned, programmed self. This is the self we developed as we were growing up to try to have control over getting love and avoiding pain. Our wounded self may be insecure, angry, depressed, anxious, controlling, weak, addicted, and judgmental. Our wounded self is generally not lovable. When someone loves us, it is our essence that they love, not our wounded self. However, while people who love you see your essence, you might not. If your parents were unable to see your essence because they could not see their own, then you grew up thinking that your essence is unworthy and that you are your wounded self. There is no way to feel secure when you think you are your wounded self.

Healing jealousy means that you need to learn to see and value your beautiful essence. When you know and cherish your essence, then you know why your partner loves you - and your fears of being replaced go away.
 

How do you get to know your own essence?

We cannot see our essence through the eyes of our wounded self. Our wounded self sees ourselves through the filter of others' perceptions of us, so we may end up seeing ourselves in the distorted way our parents, other caregivers, siblings, peers, teachers, religious leaders, or relatives may have seen us as children.

In order to know your own essence, you need to be able to see yourself from a higher perspective - from the eyes of your higher self, your older wise self. Right now, imagine an older, very wise part of you that can see the truth of who you are. Imagine this part of you looking at you as small child - before you developed much of your wounded self. What are you like? Are you loving, kind, alive, and curious? You might have to go back to seeing yourself as a baby, or even before you came into the world. Go back as far as you need to, to see the essence of you - the truth of who you are.

If you practice Inner Bonding and learn to embrace the truth of who you are, and begin to treat yourself as you would treat any lovable and cherished being (such as you hopefully would treat your children or a pet), you will start to feel much more lovable and secure. When you do this long enough and consistently enough, you will discover that you no longer feel jealous!

Join Dr. Margaret Paul for her 30-Day at-home Course: "Love Yourself: An Inner Bonding Experience to Heal Anxiety, Depression, Shame, Addictions and Relationships."

Image by Wolfgang Eckert from Pixabay