Few qualities are more unattractive in a person and are unhealthy to a romantic relationship or even casual dating than jealousy. Jealousy leads to insecurity, anger, unfounded and unnecessary fights in relationships and painful break-ups. Thus, learning how to overcome and abandon jealousy can be crucial to a person’s dating life and romantic relationships.

I remember asking one of my female classmates to go out dancing a few months ago. We have been talking and studying together once in a while. She had a boyfriend and she knew I had a girlfriend. My behavior around her was not flirtatious or suggestive in any way, so she had no reason to suspect that I was romantically interested in her. Despite that, her response to my invitation to go dancing was very surprising to me. She told me that she couldn’t go because her boyfriend wouldn’t allow her to go to a club without him. I was shocked. There was so much I wanted to tell her about this, but I didn’t know where to start.

Jealousy is one of the worst poisons of any relationship. The devastating effects of jealousy are twofold: first, jealousy ruins good communication between people, causing a multitude of unfounded arguments and fights; secondly, jealousy conveys some of the most unattractive qualities in a jealous person such as lack of confidence and insecurity which are some of the biggest turn offs for both men and women.

Jealousy and auspiciousness indicate insecurity in a person’s self-worth and lack of confidence in his ability to attract and keep a partner interested. A lover who suspects his partner of unfaithfulness without having real evidence of that will literally “terrorize” him by questioning and constantly treating him as a suspect of the crime of cheating.

Ironically, we are more likely to develop jealousy and let it adversely affect our behavior if our relationship is great and we are very happy with our partner. Our jealousy and our possessiveness is a side effect of our desire not to lose something that is very special and very precious to us. And the more precious our partner is to us, the more carefully we guard him / her by being jealous. That concern and fear of loss of someone very rare and special leads us to overprotecting it. Being suspicious, lack of trust, and questioning your partner about his whereabouts in an investigating manner cause unnecessary fighting, conflicts an eventually break-ups of relationships that otherwise had great potential to develop and prosper. Don’t let this happen to you. If you believe that you subject your partner to your jealousy, start working on eliminating it immediately. Eliminating jealousy is not a quick process. Jealousy is a trait of character, a frame of mind and an emotion, and as such – getting rid of it is a gradual process that requires work, self-reflection, patience, and persistence.

The great news is that the rewards of dealing with and overcoming jealousy will likely keep you free of jealousy for the rest of your life and will make your future relationships much more successful.

So, what are the steps that you can take to deal with and overcome jealousy and possessiveness? The first and the most important step in dealing with jealousy is, like with many other issues is recognizing that you have a problem. Most people who have jealousy issues are in denial and refuse to admit that their behavior and perception are irrational and their lack of trust is unsubstantiated by any real facts. Recognizing that you have a problem is essential to your motivation to work on it and to your success in overcoming jealousy. Once you have passed this crucial first step and have recognized that you are jealous, I suggest that you adopt the following, proven-to-be-effective beliefs which will gradually eliminate your jealousy and all of its manifestations:

Become aware and accept the fact that whether you trust the person you are with or not, whether you question his actions or not, and whether you “spy” on him has no positive effect on his behavior and faithfulness. If a man or a woman wants to cheat, he / she will find a way to cheat, and there is nothing you can do to prevent it. So, stop it! Stop assuming the worst about him. Stop wondering where he is and what he is doing at any given moment! Assume the best about your partner and his faithfulness to you until and unless you have real reasons to believe otherwise.

Keep in mind that the only reason, the only thing that keeps your partner around you is his desire to be with you. Nothing else keeps either of you near each other. And his desire to be with you comes NOT from your pressure, your being jealous or your attempts to convince him to be faithful to you but from your other qualities that make you attractive and desirable. Your efforts to keep your partner have no positive effect on your relationship. If anything, it might put excess pressure on that person – something that no one enjoys and tolerates for very long. Remember that the best “leash” is the loose one or even better – a total absence thereof. To remove your mind from jealous thoughts, become a little more selfish. Spend more of your time and your emotional and intellectual resources on building yourself as an individual rather than perceiving yourself as part of the relationship. Work on your career and your other goals. Take a class in a field that you have an interest in, learn a new language, engage in a form of creative art, take a dance class, and do anything else that you have or might have an interest in, so that there is more to your life than just that relationship, and so that your life does not revolve around any given person and his faithfulness to you. Pursuing other objectives of your life will prevent you from obsessing over your partner and will keep you in a much healthier emotional state, free of jealousy.

By getting rid of jealousy, you will exhibit some of the most attractive qualities in you: your common sense, your confidence in yourself and in your ability to attract the other person and maintain his exclusive romantic interest in you, your value as a wise person, and your confidence in your partner’s feelings. Don’t miss out on such an easy way to demonstrate those great qualities by rising far above jealousy.

Remember, there is no insurance policy or collection agency for any relationship and jealousy certainly won’t help make it more stable. Whether you are casually dating someone or are married, whether you have been together for one month or twenty years, it’s possible that your relationship will end at any time for a hundred possible reasons. I do not want to sound negative, but I do want you to be aware of the reality of all relationships. What does this mean to you? This means that you should enjoy and appreciate your relationships as long as they last but at the same time accept and embrace the possibility that any such relationship might be over one day. And if it is, it will be tough, but you will get over it. It will not be the end of the world for you. Your duty is being the best you can be in a relationship that you want to have. The rest is NOT up to you. The rest depends on your partner and you have no control over it, and whatever you have no control over, should not concern you or be a cause of your anxieties.

As you are successfully fighting jealousy, you will start experiencing tremendous freedom – the freedom to enjoy your love life without the taxing pain of jealousy and insecurity and the pleasure of giving your partner a better, wiser, stronger, and happier you!

Despite all the negative things that can be said about jealousy, it seems that this emotion is part of human nature. For hundreds or even thousands of years jealousy and desire for revenge lead to murders, wars, and other smaller-scale conflicts. Perhaps accepting that we are all prone to jealousy to some extent is an important step toward knowing how to handle it and how to not let it negatively affect your personal, professional and romantic life. After all, being jealous of a co-worker who was promoted over you is just as bad as being jalous of your dating partner or that other person who managed to attract the one you wanted to be with.

Once you free yourself of jealousy, you will come across as a more confident person. Your partner might be used to seeing more jealousy in the opposite sex, and might mistake your non-jealous nature for not caring. If that’s the case, you should remind your partner that the reason you are not jealous is because you do care but you also have trust, and you realize that jealousy will not prevent any problems if they are bound to happened.