There you are, stuck at home while your partner has a successful, rewarding career and suddenly the old green-eyed monster called jealousy rears its ugly head and threatens the whole relationship

Healthy relationships are all about loving, caring and wanting the best for each other but it can be hard when your partner’s success leaves you feeling insecure and unwanted.

Normally, when one of the partners is doing well at work or in some other area of endeavour the other partner is glad for them but an insecure partner will see this as making them feel inferior and spark off feelings of jealousy. This usually stems from a lack of self-confidence on the part of the jealous partner because they feel that they are becoming less important to the successful one but they are not looking at the situation realistically but emotionally.

If the success occurs quickly, the feelings of being left behind can be overwhelming and create intense feelings of jealousy. The jealous partner may resent the fact that their partner meets with other people more than they do with them and get feelings of being ignored and unimportant but they have to realise that their partner has to do these things as part of their daily work. This doesn’t mean that they prefer the company of work colleagues more than they do their partners.

They may feel left behind and rejected when their partner is doing so well and this may develop into a deep jealousy of their success, which will poison the relationship unless they deal with it in a rational and less emotional way. The jealous partner has to realise that the successful one is not only working hard to achieve success just for themselves but for both of them so that they can share the benefits together.

The very basis of any relationship is trust, and jealousy is based on a lack of trust which is the very opposite of how things should be.

If you really love your partner then you have to let go of your irrational feelings of jealousy, learn to trust your partner and be happy for their success or the jealousy will drive a wedge between you. You need to talk about your fears (irrational or not) with your partner before they become all-consuming and drive you apart. You may find that your fears are baseless and you are imagining things that are not actually happening and it is up to you to tell your partner about them and allow your partner to give you the reassurance that is needed to allay these unsubstantiated fears. Don’t be unrealistic and expect them to change everything that they are doing just to make you feel less insecure because that will only lead to resentment on their part. Pressuring them to change when they feel like they are doing nothing wrong only make things worse in your relationship, not better.

All relationships need to compromise over certain issues and home and work is one of the major areas where this is necessary. It is not easy balancing a successful professional life with the needs of ones personal life and being forced to give up on a successful career just to make ones partner feel better about themselves is bound to cause problems in the relationship. This could surface every time there is a dispute over something, which was initially trivial, and then turn it into a major argument.

If you don’t discuss your jealous feelings with your partner and come to an understanding between you then sooner or later they will make you do something you will later regret.

Anthony Bradley is a writer for http://saveyourmarriage.co.uk which has many more articles on the subject of marriage which you can find on the articles page

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