Relationship Advice

Therapy. She needs it bad. She desperately needs to get that jealousy under control

I had a girlfriend that was almost like that, she'd always accuse me of hiding something if I didn't want to show her my phone. She asked "who is she?" for half of my contact list. I told her she was being toxic, she acknowledged and got slightly better with time, but one time I got a long text message from an ex while she had an old tablet of mine, which had a synced telegram account. I deleted the message without viewing it, but she came to me asking if I was talking to my ex.

It's weird how we can put up with this kind of shit for years. I lasted 5 with her.

Get thee to a therapist. Maybe a couple therapist and she needs an individual therapist for sure to work through this. Along the way if both of you are interested I recommend Mating in Captivity by Ester Perel. Its focus is on maintaining erotic tension and sexual chemistry during long term relationships. However, there is a huge section about the "Other" as part of this. The "Other" will be anyone else either of you might be attracted to outside your relationships. There will always be a "threat" of this other but it should be used to help see each other from a strangers perspective. Its fascinating and might help her reframe other women not as threats but as something that can help your relatioinship.

Hey, it sounds like your wife has a deep seated fear of... what, I don't know, but it follows too many patterns to be a coincidence. You need to get her professional help, like extensive therapy and some help from a psychiatrist.

"How can I help you?"

She's come to you for help. Ask her how you can.

If she has no idea, offer to help her find a professional who can help her.

Don’t divorce. Yet. Bugs me when people jump right to that. But…

Separate. Get your own little place if you can, give her, say, six months, to get professional help, and tell her if she doesn’t, or if she does and doesn’t take it seriously, it’s over, for good, no takebacksies.

Or, if you don’t want to be the one to leave, tell her to get out and report back in six months. Either way, it’s her job to seek out help, not yours, so don’t let her dump her shit on you to figure out for her.

Nothing outweighs this. I don’t give a fuck what you say, brother. I was there and I know how this ends if you just grin and bear it.

Therapy would be a good first step.

First two wives did that!

Do you just love weddings? Going for a high score?

Don’t. Marry. Crazy.

You’ve done it three times now. Maybe park the old ring finger for a while, like forever. This is the kind of distrust that should sink a relationship before it gets to the “let’s move in together” level.

She’s crazy suspicious because she knows she’s your third wife. And whatever fucked history shes got, too.

She’s probably coming off previous relationships with lying cheating bastards, so consider that. And therapy.

Welcome to Attachment Theory 101. It should be required learning for everyone. Remember, just because it's divided up doesn't mean people are exclusively this.

3 attachment styles.

1. Secure (about half of people).

2. Avoidant (about 1/4)

3. Anxious (about 1/4)

4. Disorganized (very small)

Get to a couples counselor based on the importance of the relationship before this becomes a bigger problem is the real advice.

Because at best it sounds like anxious, at worst it's disorganized. Only avoidant is next to impossible to work with. Good luck

Divorce.

You're in an abusive relationship. You need to get out, now.

My wife will show me pictures of hot women to get my opinion and wants to discuss which video game chick is hotter. She helps make my third person female characters so they look hotter since she has a better eye than I do for art.

Just be aware that it's not something you can argue your way out of, or prove to her once and for all. The problem is emotional, not logical.

She's feeling unstable, anxious, possibly afraid. Maybe you're causing her to feel that way without realizing it, maybe something external is making her feel that way and she's projecting that onto you without realizing that's what she's doing, maybe it's just baggage from past relationships.

Ultimately the source doesn't matter too much. You can't "win" the argument, and any approach that comes from trying to win, or prove yourself right, will only make things worse. It's a cry for attention. And remember, her feelings are valid even if the suspicion she's projecting onto you is not. You can't argue her out of her feelings. Trying to invalidate her feelings will make things worse between you.

If you want to maintain this relationship, you need to set some practical boundaries that you can both live with, and then stick to those boundaries because consistency will help you both feel more stable. Have that conversation when you're both calm, not when either of you is feeling upset.

And then you and your wife need to address the emotional issues. Maybe that's just the two of you making time to sit down and talk about what she's feeling and why. Maybe it's actual therapy. The fact that she's acknowledging that she has a problem is a good sign. Self-reflection on her part is the key. When the moment of crisis comes, when she's starting to get upset, that's when you need to try to work past whatever she's latched onto in the moment and try to address the feeling itself. Ask her to stop for a moment and breathe. Ask her to try to describe what she's feeling, specifically, and then why that feeling at that moment. Listen to what she says. Remember, you're not trying to win an argument, you're trying to understand her feeling, and more importantly you're trying to help her understand herself.

Also, this is very important - at some point when you try to work through this with her, she should have some concern for how she's made you feel. It might not happen right away, you should be patient, but if it never happens then there's really no balance and it puts you in the position of doing all the emotional labor of addressing her feelings with no reciprocation. That's not a relationship.

I told my ex something like,"We can never know exactly what is going on in someone else's mind. And I, along with everyone else, have the right to privacy of my own thoughts." Something along those lines. It was a couple of decades ago, but it helped for a few months.

Look at cute guys together.