Jealousy or Insecurity?

It was time for lunch, so we went to the nearby restaurant. I can say that we had a double date. My boyfriend, I and a lovely couple from Hungary, Zsolt and Karolina. I'm so happy that we met here, in Denmark, because we spent so many happy days together. 

A young smiley lady approached to our table, so that we could order some food. She noticed that we were foreigners, and so she started a conversation with my boyfriend Gregor and his co-player Zsolt. When she left the table, I quietly mentioned my remarks to Gregor. At the same time Zsolt started to laughing, because Karolina said something to him ... but  I couldn't understand it... they were talking in their language. Then Zsolt said: »She's crazy… she thinks that this girl was flirting with us!« We all began to laugh, because this was the same thing that I told to Gregor just a few minutes earlier… A coincidence or a truth? 

No, my darlings, this is just  jealousy. Thank God that it ended with smiles on our faces. I think that we all know how can jealousy leads to horrible arguments in romantic relationships. The social networks are often the reason for fighting with our partner. They can cause a lot of negative emotions in your relationship… The jealousy is the most common one. It's an emotional reaction, which appears when a person thinks that something or someone of his loved ones is treatened… This is a psychological definition… But in my opinion, the jealousy is a result of a low self-esteem. Can you believe it?

Experts found out that self-esteem and need for popularity have a great impact on jealousy (we are here talking about jealousy because of partner's activity on social networks). Individuals with lower self-esteem surly experience more jealousy, then people with higher self-esteem. And if people have low self-esteem and high need for popularity, jealousy will be even bigger. 

How can we recognize this need for popularity? For example, you want to show social media users, that you are perfect, you want to display an idealized photo of yourself or show others a happy relationship and so on… In short, you want to present oneself to one's best advantage. However, this can be prevented, when your partner leaves a nice comment on a Facebook photo from an attractive member of the opposite sex. This will induce your jealousy. 

So, what can we do? You have to work on your self-esteem. Need for popularity doesn't have a major impact on jealousy, when people have a higher self-esteem. Those people find a quality of the relationship more important then things shown on social networks. They will only feel more jealous when they won't be satisfied with their relationship. 

Do you believe me now, that your self-esteem have a great effect to your feeling of jealous? Things are actually really simple. In case that you are not satisfied with yourself, you will be constantly meeting people or things that will remind you on your 'inferiority complex'. This way you will feel jealous… You will desire their personality traits or capabilities. Admit it, that your jealousy is a product of your uncertainty. So leave and forget all others around you and focus on yourself. Why do you think that you aren't good enough? Find out if your doubts are based on real facts… then improve them! … but if your doubts are only imaginary … then forget them! And believe me, your jealousy will disappear very quickly. 

Don't let your jealousy to lead you to what kind of extremity, such as deleting Facebook profiles. I can cheer you up that researchers found out the positive side too… Social media actually brings more happiness then jealousy to user's romantic relationship. Interesting fact right? We can say that social networks strengthen partnership more often then they destroy them. Do you want to know why? Social networks enable us to publicly express emotions and affection … and that apparently suits us. And maybe this will sound funny to some of you, but psychologists discover that most of the users of social networks found the public announcement of their relationship as very important and decisive step. 

However, if you decide to stop using social networking, then tell your partner to remove Snapchat firstly. That one triggers more jealousy then Facebook. We all know that Snapchat gives users more privacy, which can quickly become too mysterious for your partner. Messages or photos, called »Snaps« disappear after a few seconds… that means that Snapchat communication is more intimate then Facebook posts. It allows more private communication, which can activate a lot of negative emotions within your romantic relationship. 

I hope, that you learn something new! 

Love

Saša 

          

Source: Utz, S., Muscanell, N. and Khalid, C. (2015). Snapchat elicits more jealousy than Facebook: A compersion of Snapchat and Facebook use. Cyberpsychology, Behavior and Social Networking, 3(18), 141-146. 

Utz, S. and Beukeboom, C. J., (2011). The Role of social network sites in romantic relationships: Effect of jealousy and relationship happiness. Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, 4(4), 511-527.