Jealous? How to Take Back Control…

Hi, guys, it's Matthew here. So I'm coming to you right now from Cyprus, which means we have a beautiful view, but we have really loud crickets. So we're going to have to take the bad with the good. But I have a really interesting subject today. There is something that is always said to me by people who are either in the beginning of a relationship or they're deep into a relationship with someone really attractive, they come to me and they say, what do I do when someone else approaches my partner? How do I deal with that situation? Someone approaches our partner in a bar. It might be we're out dancing and somebody comes to dance with our partner. It could be in the daytime and you're just over here and your partner's over there and you see someone hit on them. The first question is, how do we deal with our own jealousy? And the second question is, how do I practically deal with the fact that my partner gets a lot of attention? How do I seem like I'm not needy or high maintenance or insecure, but at the same time assert my standard with this person so that it doesn't look like I'm just okay with whatever happens over there? Well, here's the first thing. In terms of jealousy, we have to understand that when we get an attractive partner, and I'm not just talking about physically, but when I'm talking about someone who is a catch, when we have someone like that, they are going to get attention from other people. That is the nature of it. If we don't want our partner to get attention from other people, we better find a really unattractive partner. It's outside of our control that other people will be attracted to our partner. If we always view that through the lens of it being a threat, we're going to be exhausted in our relationship. We're never going to want to leave the house because every time we do, our partner is going to get looked at by someone, even if not hit on. You know, they're going to get looks, people are going to wonder about them and that's going to always be affecting you. Instead, turn that threat into pride. Okay, I'm not looking at the world through this threat tinted lens. Instead, I'm going to look at it through a pride tinted lens. I'm going to say I'm really proud of my partner. I'm really proud of the fact that I have someone who's great, who other people are intrigued by or attracted to. The second step is to say I also can't control how my partner reacts to people hitting on them. I can influence it by the conversations I have with my partner about respect and standards and loyalty. But I can't control the way my partner reacts. When people come over to your partner to hit on them or show they're attracted, if anything, it's a chance for you to see what standard your partner has for loyalty, whether they even have a standard for loyalty. Now, if they have no standard for loyalty, I would argue your partner isn't the all attractive person that you need to be worried about losing. Because the real person we should be worried about losing is the person who is loyal, the person who is a beautiful person, the person who's kind, the person who would never hurt us in that way. That's the person that's really scary to lose. The person who's not loyal in the first place is not that scary to lose. Because they may be attractive in other ways, but they're unattractive in one of the ultimate ways to that we need them to be for a relationship. If they are going to be disloyal in this moment, this is a good opportunity for you to see it. Now, I'm not saying test your partner. You're not testing them, you're just observing. You're just getting the chance to see how they react to a different situation. Now, you may be asking, should I go over there if someone is proactively hitting on my partner, Should I actually go over there and make clear that they are with me? I kind of have an easy way of looking at this. If you're going to go over, go over as a hero to save your partner from an awkward situation. Don't go over as the police trying to break it up. Going over the hero means I can sense that my partner's feeling awkward. I can sense that he would like to remove himself from the situation, but maybe is being polite and trying to just be kind and not say anything too hurtful. So I'm going to go over there and make this really easy. And that might mean just going over and saying hey and introducing yourself, saying, how's your night? You might say to the other woman, how's your night going? You having a good time? This isn't a situation you need to go and break up. Let your partner lead the way. So for the first part, just let your partner lead the way. Don't feel the need to rush over. But if after a while you feel, oh, my partner maybe would like to be out of this, but they don't know how right now, or they're Finding it slightly awkward. Then you go over there and you give them some help. You play the hero. Maybe you involve the third person. Maybe they even become part of your night with their group. Or maybe they just leave. Doesn't really matter. But don't go over there as the police like, oh, I need to break this up. I need to show that I'm with him. Because as soon as you do that, you look like the insecure one. And why are you doing his job for him? He's perfectly capable of telling someone that he's got a partner, that he's with someone, that he has a girlfriend, without you going over there to break it up and looking insecure in the process. One of the most attractive, sexy things in a relationship is real trust. Real trust, where you can watch your partner talking to someone and not have to go over there to break it up because you feel insecure. As I said, you only go over there because you care about your partner. And maybe they're feeling a little awkward right now. But don't go over as the police. Let your partner take lead. Now, let's say your partner does something disrespectful. Let's say you. He ends up dancing with someone in a way that you don't like or flirting with someone in a way that you don't like. Then there's an opportunity for you, either that night or at the end of the night. Certainly not in front of anyone. Because part of loyalty is having these conversations in private. But taking that person to the side and saying, look, what you were doing there didn't feel good to me. I didn't like it. And it might have been harmless, and if it was harmless, so be it, but that didn't feel good for me. And I have a different standard of loyalty that I want from you. You're not trying to create an argument. You're just showing him what your standard is. That way, from then on, he knows what the expectation is with other people. But always put your attention where you can on your partner, not on the person coming up to your partner. If you can have a pact for loyalty with your partner, if you guys understand the loyalty you expect from each other, then that's one conversation with your partner so that you don't have to have a thousand conversations for the rest of your life. In other words, it's far easier for you and your partner to educate each other on what you want than for you to educate the rest of the world of women or on what you want from them. Because every time you Go out, there's going to be a new woman. She may be someone who's just looking for a man and doesn't know that he's yours. It may be that she's disrespectful and doesn't care about you. Those people exist as well. But you can either put your energy and your attention on them, or you can put them on your partner and say, as long as my partner knows what is okay, what is acceptable for me, then I'm happy. Then I know that I can trust them when I'm with them or not. And always remember this. When you're rushing over there to break up every situation that happens, always remember that your partner goes out without you sometimes and that when they do, you're not there to break it up. So you have to have a level of trust, even if you're with them, to know that whether you were there or not, they would be respectful to you. And it's up to them to prove you wrong in that fact. Your partner is entitled to talk to other people of the opposite sex. That's fine. That's not something that should incriminate them any more than you talking to a guy should incriminate you. If you want to be frustrated or jealous of every woman that your guy talks to, then you better be ready to be held to the same standard with every guy you talk to. And that cancels out your conversation with 50% of the population. The bottom line is this, guys. We feel out of control in those moments where we see our partner talking to somebody else. We're literally watching something happen between two people, both of which we don't control. That can make us feel jealous. It can make us feel vulnerable. It can make us feel like we're kind of helpless. There's nothing we can do. But here's where ultimate control lies. Ultimate control lies in the knowledge that you decide every day whether you want to be with this person or not, whether you want to be with a person that behaves in the way that your partner does. And when you realize that the ultimate control is in choosing someone or not choosing them, we can begin to stop micromanaging all of the little insignificant situations along the way that are actually outside of our control and will exhaust us and make us old before our time if we keep trying to control them and micromanage them instead. Understand, you don't need to control the small stuff when your ultimate control is over the big stuff. Do you want to be with this person or not? Thank you, guys. I'll see you in the next video. Really appreciate you watching now. It was a slightly longer one this time around, but I felt like I wanted to cover this in some depth. I hope I did for you. Leave a comment for us and let you know. Let us know what you thought and I'll see you next time.