9 Ways Jealousy Destroys Your Relationship

Jealousy has its way of destroying relationships once it gets out of hand. To understand the issue better, here are the ways it affects you and your relationship. These are the consequences of toxic jealousy that can happen to both sides of a relationship.

1. You start feeling insecure
This is the first cause of jealousy and it can manifest either consciously or subconsciously. When it’s conscious, you feel like you’re not enough, like you don’t deserve your partner. But unconsciously, deep down you feel that you don’t deserve happiness, when on the outside it seems to you like you’re fine. You’re so sure that he can do better that you start looking for signs of infidelity, you start waiting for something bad to happen. Even when things are going well, you still feel that something is off.

2. Your fears grow
You’re constantly afraid of him cheating, of you ending up alone, of you getting hurt again. Jealousy feeds on your fears, which then control you. You prepare yourself for the worst and unknowingly pave the way for wrecking your relationship, thus making your fears come true.

3. You become obsessed with spying
When you fear that someone might hurt you, you either distance yourself from them or have the need to know every single detail of their life. You become obsessed with his free time, with his time at work. You have the need to know what kind of emails he sends, or what he’s laughing at while he’s looking at his phone.

4. You start suffering
Your obsession starts draining you, giving you constant fears and hurting you because you have no idea what’s going on. Soon, you’ll start suffering physically because of the jealousy that’s gotten out of hand. The best thing to admit here is that there is a problem, then sit down and try to deal with it. If it doesn’t look like it’s going to work, the best thing to do is quit. If you stay, there’s a huge possibility that both of you will leave the relationship broken.

5. Possessiveness appears
When you’re jealous, you start feeling like you own your partner (or the other way around). Nobody owns anyone and possessiveness is a sure way to kill your relationship. If you start feeling possessive over your partner, or your partner starts feeling possessive over you, address the issue before it becomes too late.

6. Your past comes back to haunt you
Sometimes jealousy can stick with us from our previous experiences. You’ve already been cheated on, so what’s stopping him from doing the same? You start having flashbacks and signals from the past start mixing in with your current relationship. You get stuck in a loop of painful memories and doubts, seeing only the worst in your relationship.

7. The relationship turns into a controlling one
Possessiveness gives birth to the need to control your partner. Besides wanting to own them, to know every detail about their day and waking hours, a need for controlling them comes next. You need them to behave in a certain way, to ignore certain people and to spend every single second of their free time with you on your terms. Controlling can severely hurt and damage the person being controlled. If you feel like you’re the victim of this, walk away. That relationship is long gone.

8. You lose your peace
Whether you’re the victim or the jealous one, it’s inevitable that you’ll lose your peace. If you’re jealous, how can you have peace if you’re constantly worrying about losing them, about their behavior, about their free time? And if you’re the victim, there’s no single possibility of having peace while you’re being tortured, with your feelings and loyalty questioned. Either way, jealous relationships are toxic for both sides.

9. It wrecks your relationship
If you’re unable to address the issue, if there’s no communication between the two of you, that’s a lost relationship. Constant arguing, guilt-tripping and lost trust are sure signs of the end of the relationship. If you truly love your significant other and want to make things work, make sure to act upon jealousy the moment you notice it appear. Jealousy out of control turns relationships into toxic ones.