Excessive jealousy is one of the most significant red flags in any relationship.
Your friendships and social life are threatened by your partner’s jealousy.
Why doesn’t your partner want you to have friends? Because he is overly controlling, insecure, and afraid that you will leave him for someone else.
Some boundaries in the relationship with friends must exist, and you respect them, but your partner still makes jealous scenes.
Whether it is your boyfriend or husband, you must ask yourself where you see the future of that relationship.
Jealousy is often just the tip of the iceberg of relationship problems.
What should you do in this situation?
Let’s get into why your partner is jealous and how you can deal with that problem.
Your Partner Doesn’t Want You to Have Friends – 5 Possible Reasons
Your partner has already made jealous scenes so much that you were highly uncomfortable and embarrassed too many times.
You don’t understand why he behaves like that when you don’t give him any reason.
What are the major reasons for your partner’s jealousy:
1. Your Partner is Extremely Jealous
This is the worst case of jealousy and is called pathological jealousy.
Your partner is preoccupied with thoughts of you cheating on him and leaving him for someone else.
A person suffering from pathological jealousy is burdened by obsessions and delusions.
This kind of pathological jealousy leads to your partner trying to limit and distance you from friends.
Panic and jealous episodes from this kind of partner can seriously disrupt your life.
You can’t even explain the situation without him getting angry at you.
Someone who is so jealous tries so hard to micromanage all of your time.
He wants to know where you go, who you see, and how much time you spend everywhere.
All this can create enormous tension and stress for you.
This kind of partner will not respect your privacy, don’t be surprised when he starts searching through your phone or even follows you to see who you’re seeing.
2. Your Partner is Insecure
Jealousy is a product of insecurity.
Your partner thinks you’re better than him, so he’s constantly afraid you’ll leave him.
He has a massive fear that one day you will wake up and realize that you are much better than him and dump him.
Maybe he thinks you are more good-looking than him, and perhaps you are more successful in your career or some other aspect.
This creates complexes in him and a lack of self-confidence.
A lack of self-esteem leads to that excessive jealousy.
He sees your friends as competition, compares himself to them constantly, and always tries to diminish their value.
It probably tells that they are ugly, and if they are successful in their career, it diminishes their success.
If he happens to be in the company of your friends, he behaves extremely competitively and wants to prove in every way that he is better than them.
3. Your Partner Has Been Cheated on in The Past
Everyone learns from their mistakes.
Your partner considers it his fault that his previous girlfriend cheated on him.
He thinks he was too relaxed and didn’t see the clear signs, and ended up getting hurt.
He doesn’t want the same thing to happen to him with you. That’s why he’s extremely jealous now.
Maybe he wasn’t ready for a relationship when you started dating because he still thinks about her even though she hurt him.
But you’re not his ex-girlfriend, and you don’t need to put up with his jealousy just because he’s been hurt in the past.
4. Your Partner Does Not Believe in Male-female Friendships
According to your partner, men and women cannot be friends; it is unnatural.
Your partner has no problem with your female friends, but only with male friends.
He believes that someone will make the first move in every male-female friendship and thinks you are naive because you don’t think like him.
As for your job, you are expected to act super professional at work.
So no fun at work, team building, and similar. After work, you should hurry home immediately.
Hmm, and does he have any female friends? Does he respect boundaries with female colleagues at work?
These are some of the questions that appear when he behaves like this.
5. Your Partner Thinks That Your Friends are Not Good For You
This is a slightly different reason, but it can be related to jealousy.
Here, it is not necessarily only friends of the opposite gender but also female friends.
Your partner thinks your friends are a bad influence on you.
Because of them, you got into trouble more than once.
He thinks that they don’t respect some of your decisions and that you often make bad decisions because of them.
Let’s say you hate drinking alcohol, but you always consume it when you’re with them.
He also thinks that your friends don’t respect your relationship status enough. They put you in uncomfortable situations with other people.
Maybe it’s because he thinks your friends aren’t good enough for you.
He believes you deserve to have much better friends and social circle because you are a quality person.
Is he right, or is he exaggerating?
How to Deal With a Jealous Partner? 5 Excellent Tips
Jealousy can easily lead to the breakdown of any relationship or marriage.
It is a sign of mistrust and creates resentment between partners.
It spreads quickly, so if one partner is excessively jealous, the other can become too.
Here are the best tips on how to deal with a jealous partner:
1. Define Jealousy Together With Your Partner
A certain amount of jealousy in a relationship is normal.
There are situations in relationships when other people want to destroy your relationship.
Total disinterest in what our partner is doing signifies that we don’t care.
But where is the line drawn between normal and unhealthy jealousy?
Discussing this topic with your partner would be best because you may have different views.
It may be expected for you to go out with your friends to have fun without him, but it is unthinkable for him.
How is your relationship in general? Are you two opposite persons?
We think you and your partner have plenty to talk about.
2. Think About Your Behavior
You know what they say, “don’t do to others what you wouldn’t like them to do to you.”
Is there anything you do that you wouldn’t like your partner to do?
Are you a flirty person by nature?
Or even if you are too nice to people, especially the opposite sex, your pleasant nature can be taken as flirting.
You can keep your personality the same, but put yourself in your partner’s shoes.
Would you feel jealous, too, if he behaved like you?
3. What is The Root of Your Partner’s Jealousy
We talked about the partner’s insecurity as a significant cause of jealousy.
Is your partner unhappy in life and unfulfilled?
That’s why now he doesn’t like happy and accomplished people.
He even considers them a threat because they can separate you from him.
The best thing would be to talk with your partner and try to help him in his condition.
He can overcome it, and overcoming personal insecurities also overcomes jealousy.
But if he’s not going to work on himself and change the things hindering your relationship, you don’t have to put up with it forever.
4. What is More Important to You, Friends or a Relationship?
Tricky question, what if both are important to you?
Know that you don’t need to choose that in a quality relationship. You can have both.
What if these are the friends you’ve been hanging out with all your life.
Now your new partner has a problem with them.
You know them better than him.
He has just come into your life and is already trying to dispel those who have always been there.
However, the opposite situation is if your partner really means you well and has recognized that your friends are not as good as you think they are.
You know deep down whether he is right or wrong.
Do you usually not like hanging out with them, or do you think they don’t care enough about you?
Your partner may be right in those cases.
5. Recognize When Jealousy Has Become Abusive
You absolutely do not need to put up with abusive and possessive jealousy.
What are the signs that your partner is possessively jealous:
- He has unreal obsessions about how you will cheat on him and leave him;
- he tries to distance you from every person in your life;
- he made too many public jealous scenes that made you and others uncomfortable;
- he tries to control and micromanage all your activities;
- he follows you to see where you move and who you see;
- He digs through your phone, looking for some sign that you cheated on him.
All Things Considered
“While some say there is no true love without jealousy, know that jealousy is a powerful emotion that can destroy any relationship.”
The fact that your partner doesn’t like you hanging out with your friends can point to more significant problems in your relationship.
You may be completely opposite people, and maybe he is irreparably jealous, and you don’t want to change your personality and friends because of him.
And why would you? Anyone who wants to change you is not the right person for you.
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