Several decades ago I was married and deeply in love with a woman who had unreasoning jealousy. If I was out of her sight, she often thought that I was involved with someone else, or at minimum I had had sex with another woman. I never did either. The worst case was over a 3-day weekend. I was all stressed out from my job and I needed to get away to relax. I asked her to go with me to the mountains to go camping/fishing. She, however, said she had made plans to be with her teenage son. I told her I really wanted her to go with me, BUT I was going alone if necessary. Off I went and spent 2 1/2 days alone in the high mountains. As I was driving back down from the mountains, I spotted a phone booth and I pulled over and called my wife. The 1st thing she said to me was , "I know you were with another woman. Don't bother coming home. I won't be there". CLICK ! I returned home anyway. For 4 days, she had disappeared. When she finally did show up, I asked her where in the world she had been. She immediately said, "You were with another girl. So, I was in a motel with another man". It did not matter one bit to her that I said I was completely alone in the mountains, fishing and relaxing. She "knew" better. Because of my love for her, I did not end the relationship immediately, but it was certainly the beginning of the end. The odd thing is that 28 years later, I still have feelings of love for her. If she were to suddenly come knocking at my door, I would have a terribly hard time sending her away.
That kind of jealousy is hard to understand and to live with someone who is that way. My first husband was the same way, and I was afraid to even answer the door to the Fuller Brush Man because every night when my husband came home, it was a half hour interrogation about where i had been, who I had spoken to, and on and on. I was home alone, no car, lived out in a country area, and all l did , every day, was take my young son and we walked to the post office and back. I was terrified to talk with anyone, and even that didn’t make it any better, because he was sure I had to be lying that i only did what I did. Many years later, we had a counselor who helped us deal with this. He explained to my husband that it was not me causing the problem, but his insecurity. Because I had gotten really mad and stopped answering the phone when he was working away and called me at 2am , that only made it worse. So, what the counselor said , was that my ex had to acknowledge his insecurity, and instead of asking me if I had been unfaithful, he had to say that he was feeling insecure, and would I please reassure him. When he asked like this, then I was to reassure him that I was being faithful and not be snarky or refuse to answer. It seemed like I did this 20 times every day at first; but gradually, it lessened over time and he finally pretty much stopped asking me. The whole thing was ridiculous to me. We married when i was 18, I had never even kissed another man, but had to live with him distrusting me no matter what I said to reassure him.
I worked with a woman whose husband was like that...and way worse. He was one of those guys who worked out all the time (actually hung from gravity boots.) I discovered he was stalking her at work when she rode with me to pick up something for lunch and take it back to the office. We pull in to the deli, and he appears out of nowhere by my driver's door with his hand out for me to shake. He squeezed just shy to what felt was the point of breaking my hand and says "So you're the man who spends all day with my wife." She had stories. While no one "deserves" that kind of stuff, you gotta hope that (a) people can get out of those situations, and (b) once they do, they come to understand how & why they got into them in the first place so they stop doing it to themselves (which ties back to the other thread regarding how we were reared.) I've had my share of train wrecks. Live & Learn...if you're lucky.
yeah, i knowingly married an unreasonably jealous person... and learned to sleep with one eye open. we laugh about it because she knows. it's very much a part of latin culture. being a foreigner in the philippines (usa born) people can really get out of hand and you can't ever really tell who's gonna blow their lid or when. jail sometimes seemed like a remote possibility. she can be batshit crazy but is an incredible mom to our son möbius, who's much like his dad... loopy with a twist.
I also had a coworker with a crazy jealous husband. She was humiliated so many times I don't know why she stayed with him. He was escorted out of the office building on several occasions by security and finally banned from entering. I remember that he died of H1N1, and when going through some of his things after his funeral she discovered that HE had been having an affair.
people tend to project their curious tendencies upon other people so that if "they are of a certain way", others would have to be that way too...
once in my youth, a new acquaintance for some reason used me as a cover for some of her scandalous manuouvers, telling her boyfriend that she was in my company. it was left up to me to prove a negative. things got stupid and weapons were involved so it wasn't very pretty. dude was just blinded by rage. this delighted her even more.
It took me years before I discovered that my wife had grown up in a Filipino family where the father routinely had mistresses. My ex saw, many times, young girls actually coming to her home looking for her father as she cried, "But I'm pregnant". Not only that but HER ex cheated upon her. If I had known those facts earlier, I might have been able to get my wife into couples therapy with me.
Still, to this day, 29 years later, I too often think of her and miss her terribly. Yes, I have dated many others but no-one has even come close to capturing my heart. I wish I could find a way to put my thoughts at rest. I don't want to end my life, STILL thinking of her.
I am fortunate in that I have had no such experiences. Marrying at the age of forty-eight reduces such problems, I suppose, but I have a hard time identifying with that kind of thing. Working in EMS, we had male and female EMTs and paramedics, although more males than females. We usually assigned female medics to work with a male partner, and these two-person crews would be assigned to stations throughout our service area, often rented apartments or, in some cases, rooms that we could get the use of at local hospitals or other medical facilities. These stations had sleeping facilities because medics worked 24-hour shifts, and a double would be a 48-hour shift. But it's not like they slept in the same bed or anything. Some medics were single, but most were married, yet, in the twenty years that I worked in various capacities in EMS, I don't recall ever hearing of anyone having marital problems connected with working 24-hour shifts with a partner. We got to know one another pretty well, including, in many cases, other family members because EMS is a pretty close-knit group. It could also be that people who had jealous spouses didn't get involved in EMS.
More often, it is the accuser who is cheating or has desire to.As for me and mine...told him out flat, ...I will not waste my time chasing you down to see what you might be doing. What you do in your mind is between you and God. What you act out on - you be mine. He asked would you divorce? Lets just say you sure wish I would Never have had a problem
I remember the first time I experienced it. I really had no idea what happened. My girlfriend and I were driving home from something, along a dark, country road. Up ahead, I saw a woman, in a dress, carrying a handbag and wearing heels, walking along the side of the road. I said, “What the hell is she doing out here, dressed like that. Think we should give her a lift?” She went absolutely nuclear, yelling about not dating men who pick up strange women off the street at night. I couldn’t believe it. I would have thought she would have been concerned but instead, as someone explained to me later, “the ugly green monster reared it’s head”. I had to have that explained to me that it meant being jealous. I’m still baffled by that sort of reaction under those circumstances.
Though I didn't understand it at the time, I now believe that such jealousy is the result of insecurity.