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The signs jealousy in your relationship has turned into control
Your partner's phone buzzes on the table, a name you don't recognize lights up the screen, and something tightens in your stomach. Few people have never had that moment. On its own, the tightening proves nothing: not that they're hiding something, and not that you're a bad partner.
Most of the time, jealousy says one thing: I'm scared of losing this. That's why a little of it turns up in most relationships, and it doesn't make anyone a bad person by default. What wears a relationship down is where the fear goes next. Into a conversation, or into a phone unlocked the moment they step into the shower?
Feeling it and acting on it
"That message just now made me a bit tense, and I wondered who it was" is sharing a feeling. Opening their phone while they're in the shower and reading their messages is walking into their space. The same fear can sit under both, but they do very different things to a relationship.
With the first, your partner gets a chance to understand you, and maybe to settle your mind in two sentences. With the second, you both lose whatever you find. If there's nothing there, you feel awful. If you get caught, you're the one who broke the trust.
When is it too much?
These behaviors go past ordinary jealousy, whoever is doing them:
- Going through your phone or asking for your passwords
- Constantly asking where you are, or making location sharing a condition
- Making it hard for you to see your friends, or even your family
- Telling you what you can and can't wear
- Conditions that start with "if you loved me, you would"
- Demanding explanations by shouting or scaring you
If one of these happened once, in the middle of a fight, it can be talked through. If it has become a pattern, jealousy is no longer the right word for it. The word is control.
If you're scared, or someone is hurting you, you don't have to deal with it on your own. In Turkey, the ALO 183 line run by the Ministry of Family and Social Services is free and open around the clock; in an emergency call 112, and the police's KADES app alerts them with one tap. In Germany, the Hilfetelefon on 116 016 is open day and night, with counselors who speak Turkish and English. In the UK, the National Domestic Abuse Helpline is 0808 2000 247. In the US, call the National Domestic Violence Hotline on 1-800-799-7233 or text START to 88788. Anywhere else, your local emergency number is the place to start.
How to say you're jealous
A sentence that opens with an accusation gets a defense back. Ask "who are you texting now?" and you'll find yourself facing a lawyer. Say "that message got to me a little, I wanted to tell you" and you're far more likely to find your partner.
Say what you need, too. Usually it isn't proof, it's a sentence: "I'm with you, don't worry." Admitting you want to hear that isn't weakness. It's a much shorter road than waiting for them to guess.
And set the boundaries together. Texting an ex now and then, messaging someone late at night, whose posts get liked... Every couple sees these differently, and the right answer is wherever you're both comfortable. That's a lot easier to work out on a calm evening than in the middle of a fight.
If you're the one being questioned
Living with someone who's jealous of you can be exhausting. Reassurance is part of a relationship, but if you have to clear your name every single day, you're well past reassurance.
There's also a line between being open and being watched. "You can look at my phone whenever you like" is your choice to make; someone demanding it is something else. Protecting your own boundary doesn't take anything away from your love.
Screens make it harder
In 2009, researchers in Canada asked 308 university students how much time they spent on Facebook and how much jealousy the site stirred up in them. Even after accounting for personality and relationship factors, the more time people spent on Facebook, the more Facebook-related jealousy they reported (the study). The researchers' explanation makes sense. The platform shows you ambiguous bits of your partner's life you'd never otherwise see: a like, a comment, a friend you don't know. So you look more to clear up the ambiguity, and the more you look, the more you find.
Distance does the same thing. When your partner says "I was out with friends", you weren't there, so you build the evening in your head, and the evening you build is usually more crowded than the real one. We go into this a bit more in our post on long distance.
One light question, one hard one
The Tomurcuk question bank has two questions about jealousy, one light and one not. Start with the light one: "When it comes to me, what makes you jealous the fastest?" People laugh while they answer it, and the answer is usually true. Once things have warmed up, try the other: "Has jealousy ever made you do something you were ashamed of afterwards?"