Jealousy destroys relationships, but you can fix it ✅
In this 20‑minute relationship‑coaching video, Sami Wunder explains what jealousy is, distinguishes healthy (normal) jealousy from excessive, destructive jealousy, and explores the underlying causes—childhood wounds, past betrayals, and partner boundary violations. She shares personal stories (her husband Chris’s exes, a client’s cheating trauma) and examples from her ELEVATE coaching program to illustrate how obsessive thoughts develop. Sami then offers a three‑part empowerment framework: (1) practice vulnerable, open communication with your partner, using specific language that affirms trust while expressing discomfort; (2) build a strong identity and self‑confidence outside the romance through career, hobbies, health, and social circles; (3) challenge irrational jealousy thoughts by checking factual evidence. She emphasizes the importance of clear relationship agreements and boundaries, and encourages women to trust their instincts rather than be labeled “crazy.” The video concludes with a call to action for viewers to share their experiences and subscribe.
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If you're looking to remove jealousy, the most important thing you can do is create an identity outside of your relationship and find your self-confidence in that. Because if you're going to stay hyper-focused with building your confidence through your partner and through your relationship, then you're going to be obsessed with the fear of losing them, with the fear of being replaced by another hot woman. And that is just no fun, not for you and not for your man. Now, in this video, I want to speak to you about what jealousy is, what is the difference between normal jealousy and excessive jealousy? And then we're also going to talk about how you can manage the emotion of jealousy in your relationship, whether you're single, dating, in a relationship, or married for many years. This is dating and relationship coach Sami Wunder. So glad you found me! Make sure to like the video and hit the subscribe button so that you get regular updates on my relationship coaching channel. So let's talk about the emotion of jealousy. What is it? The emotion of jealousy is basically when you experience the fear of losing something that is valuable to you. Now, in a marriage, in a relationship, or even in a dating scenario, of course, the fear of losing that person you like or love is what brings up jealousy, especially for women. Now, there is the difference between healthy jealousy and excessive jealousy. Healthy jealousy is basically when you get that pang of pain in your belly when a hot-looking woman is flirting with your guy, or when your guy tells you that his ex is coming over to town, and would it be okay for the two of you if you all went out for a drink to catch up? You feel that weird feeling in your belly. This is normal jealousy. It can actually be a sign of healthy attachment. It can be a sign of healthy insecurity. It can be a sign of healthy boundaries, when we know our boundaries and we know that The person our man wants us to meet has slept with him in the past, you can just have a womanly gut instinct around this not feeling good for you. I remember when my husband, Chris, and we were freshly married back then, told me that we were going to this wedding and his ex is going to be there. And it wasn't just an ex, it was an ex that was really hot. She's Italian, I've seen her, and I was like, oh my God, she's going to be there? And he was like, I just want us all to be civil. Maybe I can introduce you to her. And I really felt that pang of jealousy, and I really felt like this discomfort of being around a hot woman that my husband found desirable in the past. So I would say this is normal jealousy, and I think all healthy men and women experience this. I don't think there is a problem with this. I think jealousy is a very commonly experienced emotion, and at the first sign of jealousy, we don't have to judge ourselves or make ourselves feel bad about feeling this emotion. However, there is a difference between normal jealousy and excessive jealousy. And I think excessive jealousy can be a real disturber in a relationship, and excessive jealousy can actually destroy relationships. What is excessive jealousy? Excessive jealousy usually comes when these feelings of losing your partner, or not feeling good enough because your partner is talking to another attractive person of the opposite sex, when these feelings, and thoughts start to become obsessive in your system, and all you can think about is whether you're good enough or not, whether they are going to leave you, are they cheating on you. So what we find is that excessive jealousy is usually coming from some kind of compulsive thought process. It's coming from some kind of root cause of insecurities in our childhood, which I will get to in just a moment. Now, the manifestation of excessive jealousy usually looks like starting fights with your partner about where they're going, what they're doing, keeping quite a tight tab on your partner, snooping on their phones, checking who they're talking to, checking their location on your iPhone, what they're doing, where are they, and also just sort of trying to control their social interactions. So this is extremely unhealthy. This kind of jealousy can border on control, and it can, of course, speak to both genders. So I, as a love and relationship coach, work only with ambitious women, But this form of jealousy can also exist within men, and it is a very unhealthy way of being with a woman, being with a partner. And of course, it has the potential to destroy relationships. So if you are going through jealousy, if you're just going through normal jealousy and it's not a big deal, well done. But if you're going through excessive jealousy, I think one of the most important things is to sit with yourself and ask yourself not the question, why am I like this? Because that's a very judgmental way of dealing with yourself. and your emotional state. But what I like to tell my ELEVATE clients is that you have to ask yourself, what happened to me that I feel this way? So usually when I work with my clients, what I found is that we've had some traumas in our childhood that actually go on to give us those obsessive, excessive jealousy thoughts. So for example, one of my ELEVATE clients, she feels like she's extremely jealous in her relationship, and she's always watching out for, you know, who her partner is talking to, what's his phone messages saying? And she always wants to know. She always wants to ask him and make sure he's not lying, because in her previous relationship, she was cheated upon. And basically, that was so traumatic for her because she fell in love with this guy, they got married, and 3 years in, she found out that for a whole year, he had been cheating. He had been sleeping with another woman. And so it completely broke her self-esteem. It completely broke her sense of self-trust. You know, when have bad and traumatic experiences like this, you lose confidence in your ability to distinguish whether or not you can trust yourself to see whether or not your partner is being faithful to you or not. And so when she came to us inside Elevate Relationships group, we were able to see that it's not that this person is an insecure, crazy, jealous person. It's just that they've had a past history with cheating, where they completely lost trust in their own ability to understand whether or not they were in a healthy relationship. And whether or not their partner was reliable or not. And so ask yourself, if I am feeling excessive jealousy, where is this coming from? It could, of course, come from very early childhood years. So I can speak for myself, I don't see myself as a very jealous person, but of course, in my early childhood, I had a bit of a jealousy equation in friendships, because in early childhood, friendships are so easily replaceable. And so I remember as a little girl, feeling like, this girl is my best friend. And then a week later, another new best friend shows up and she's bringing chocolates and she's bringing these colorful crayons and pencils. And suddenly I'm like, Sami's not important anymore. She's been replaced, right? So sometimes I feel like that energy of easily replaceable comes up in my friendships, and I'm still very cognizant of it. I really notice it. However, thankfully, in my marriage, in my love life, I don't I don't feel like this excessive jealousy. I would say I feel more like the normal jealousy. So I recently remember one of Chris's exes, and he's like had 3, 4 before me, so he's got a more flamboyant past than I do. And they messaged him recently, one of his exes, and she's very hot. He's only dated hot girls. Good for him. And it was a very innocent message. It wanted some childhood photos for her partner. But I was like, oh my God, what is this woman doing on my husband's phone? And, you know, and he was like, so innocent about it. I don't think men overthink this stuff. But as women, we always have this instinct, you know, when we find our partners close to women that they find hot. And we know that, you know, women can think this way. And so I was like, there is absolutely no need for her to contact you for those photos. She could have contacted X and Y for them as well. And that is weird. And are you going to answer? So I was like, okay, Sami, you know, calm down. He gets to do what he wants. wants to do. You have to trust him. But yeah, I don't think I've ever felt that excessive jealousy. But for those of you who feel excessive jealousy, you may want to ask yourself, like, is there a feeling of not being good enough? And is there a feeling of being easily replaceable that comes from childhood? Because if you've had, for example, experiences where you had a boyfriend and then within 2 weeks another hot girl showed up and you were replaced, I think the body keeps score. You know, I always say the body keeps score, the body stores the emotions. The body stores the memories. And even though we feel like we've moved on from those experiences, those experiences may have scarred you in a way that you are still acting from them, and you're still trying to make sure that that doesn't repeat itself. And so if you're feeling that excessive sense of jealousy in your relationship, it could be coming from those traumatic experiences in the past, or it could also just be very early childhood. If we've had primary caregivers who were more critical than they were loving, who were less validating, who never let us believe that we're good enough just the way we are, and we always had to do more, be more, be more perfect in order to receive love. Even then, the feeling of excessive jealousy can be triggered inside of a relationship because basically, no matter how good you look, no matter how much you achieve, no matter what you bring to the table, you always wonder if you are worthy of love and if you're good enough or not. And of course, that will leave you with the threat of feeling jealous. Now, last but not the least, the root cause of excessive jealousy can also just be A partner who is misbehaving and doesn't know where healthy boundaries in a relationship lie. I think this factor is so often overlooked. Women are made to seem crazy. Women are made to feel irrational, insecure. That's one of the first cards men pull on women when women say, I don't think as a married couple or as a couple in a relationship, it's proper for you to go meet a female girlfriend for dinner alone. But they'll just say, you're crazy, you're jealous, you're insecure. And I I think this is where we all have to come to an agreement on what is allowed within our own relationship. We have to have agreements, rules, and boundaries around this. And so often in ELEVATE, one of my clients, her boyfriend is giving his home, giving his car to 2 of his female friends who are coming to visit. And he also was honest enough to tell her that he had a romantic interest in one of these women, and it would never work out because it's long distance. But of course, my client felt bad. And of course, my client was also doubting herself because he's such a great boyfriend in every way and regard. But then, you know, on one of the calls in ELEVATE, she said to us, Sami, but it feels bad. And I was like, I hear you. I would not like this myself. And I think there comes a point in a relationship where we just have to say, as women, we are gifted with instincts. And if our instincts are saying something is off, Then it's not because we are crazy and we have insecurities, but because we have to learn to trust those instincts. And so basically what I asked her to do in this case was to tell her boyfriend that, you know, she loves him and she knows he's a very generous man and she has absolutely no doubt about his character or his intentions. And yet this whole situation feels off and she just wants to be honest about it, that in a relationship it feels very strange that 2 young females will live in their home and use his car. And whatever he decides to do, it's his life and she trusts him, but she would not like to be a part of this equation, because, of course, he wanted to involve her as well. And so she's actually in the process of giving the script. So I think it's important when we talk about the root causes of excessive jealousy that we don't just look at, you know, what is it that we need to heal, which, of course, we need to take responsibility for. But we also need to look at, is our partner showing up in a healthy way? And do we have an agreement of healthy boundaries in the relationship? Because it's impossible to be secure, relaxed, and trusting if boundaries are constantly violated and there are no agreements around how we are going to deal with the opposite sex. So having said that, once you've explored your type of jealousy, normal or excessive, and then you've explored why you're feeling the way you're feeling, let's talk about 2 places you can focus on in order to deal with jealousy in a more empowered way. So the first is to embrace open communication with your partner. This is the scariest part, because what I've experienced in almost a decade of doing this work and having helped 900+ women attract healthy, partnerships and create amazing marriages is that women respond to jealousy either by swallowing it down. And so we're not going to say anything. We're going to feel bad. We're going to feel yuck, or we're going to then later explode. Okay. So our dealing mechanism with jealousy is usually to censor it and then feel awful about it, and then to scream, shout, blame, get angry, get nagging, get controlling, and explode. Now, neither of these are helpful. Neither of these work. If you try to swallow it, if you're like any of my clients, you swallow the feeling, but you're still anxious all the time, right? You're still worried. Who is he talking to? Is he really worth trusting? Where did he go? Why didn't he inform me? Can I snoop at the phone? Can I see, you know, who his attractive colleague is? And so even though we try to censor the feeling, the actions keep coming up till one day we explode, till one day that energy really trickles out of us. Or what's going to happen is that we just deal with jealousy by blaming, complaining, making our men wrong. Now, these don't work. So please notice if you're doing them and stop doing them. Instead, what I invite is vulnerable communication. And vulnerable communication usually looks like, you know, I trust you. So affirming your partner. I trust you. I trust your character. I trust who you are. I trust in your love for me. And this feels off for me. And I will not control your choices. But I feel like it's important for me that you know that this doesn't feel good to me. This, what's happening right now, the situation we're in with your friend, this business trip you have to go alone on with your beautiful colleague, it feels strange and it feels weird and it feels off to me. Now, if you can start to speak this way, if you're with the wrong person, they're still gonna call you crazy. They're still gonna call you jealous because that's the hallmark of the wrong person, right? Your needs don't matter, your feelings are going to be gaslit. But if you're with the right person, if you're with a man like my husband, they're gonna soothe you. You know, I remember there was a time when Chris was going for a business trip with a really attractive young colleague, and it was the first time ever, you know, being home alone. And I had put the kids to bed, and, you know, I was alone in the bed, and I was like, wow, he's gone for 3 days, and he's got this super hot, German woman next to him on the trip. I could feel like my mind was racing and I had all these irrational thoughts, and then I had to stop my irrational thoughts. And I also felt like I was going into my masculine because I wanted to pick up the phone, check on him, and do all those snoopy things. But I just like took a deep breath, focused on myself, took a bath, you know, put a face mask on, and I was very happy to hear from him at like 10 o'clock at night where he said, can I call you? And, you know, how are you? And it It was a great day, but busy day. Sorry I didn't message before. And I was like, haha, soothing my heart. He's all good and he's there. And then we had a quick phone call. But long story short, you know, when he came back, I told him, honey, that, you know, I had like a few irrational thoughts about like, you know, the things steaming up between the two of you. And he's like, oh, that makes me feel so loved. But don't worry, you know, there's nothing and nobody but you. So I think this open communication is so important. And of course you feel scared because if you are feeling excessive jealousy especially, not the normal jealousy, but excessive jealousy, you may be judging yourself, right? But this is the muscle you have to build, because if you're with the right man, he's actually going to soothe you. He wants you to be happy. He wants you to smile. He doesn't want you to be anxious around him. And of course, the second strategy is what I started the video with, which is, build a relationship with yourself outside of your romantic partnership. It is so important to know we are valuable, within ourselves without our men. Because men can come and go, but we must always live with ourselves. And we can only release the fear of rejection, release the fear of replacement, when we know that what we bring to the table is really valuable. And that confidence cannot come by just focusing on our men all the time and what they're doing and whether or not they're validating us. That confidence actually comes from from building a great career, having great hobbies, looking healthy, looking after your body. You know, that is the confidence. And being an interesting person, having the ability to have rich conversations, having a good social circle, having good friends around you, so that you have a life that is beyond your partner. I think so much jealousy comes from this hyperfocus on our men and them being the only source of joy and validation in our lives. And so building that confidence in who you are and what you bring to the table outside of relationship is actually one of the most powerful things a woman can do if she's looking to heal her jealousy. And last but not the least, I think I'm going to invite every woman to challenge irrational thoughts. You know, when we coach you inside ELEVATE and we work with you so intensely over the 6-month period in ELEVATE, what we teach our clients is to ask yourself the question, you know, if I'm having all these thoughts like, he's going to sleep with somebody, he's going to replace me, he's going to meet somebody younger than me, you have to ask yourself, You know, do I have factual evidence for my thoughts? Is my husband or my boyfriend or my date actually behaving in ways that I have reasons to think this way, or is this self-created? And usually what we find is that it's self-created. And when it's self-created, you can stop creating it. That means you have the power to shift your own emotional experience with jealousy. I hope this was helpful. If it was, make sure you Leave me in the comments your own experience with what I said, with jealousy. How do you deal with it? Are you a jealous person? Would you call yourself a jealous person? And of course, if you want to keep hearing from me, make sure to subscribe to the channel, hit a like. I love hearing from you, and see you next time!
