Jealousy in a Relationship

05 Oct Jealousy in a Relationship

Her photograph is still on the hall table. He mentions her easily, the way you mention weather. Last week his daughter said something about how she used to do the garden, and everybody laughed, and you did not.

Almost everything written about jealousy assumes a rival who is available, reachable and doing something. At this stage of life the more common version involves someone who is not there at all, and the standard advice does not fit it.

Three different things get called jealousy

They feel similar and they need completely different responses, so it is worth separating them before doing anything.

Jealousy of a history. He had thirty years with someone. You have fourteen months. There is a shared past you can never be part of, and no amount of time fixes that arithmetic. This is the most common version and it is not really jealousy at all.

Jealousy of a person who is gone. Where the previous spouse died. This one carries extra weight because it feels unspeakable, and the unspeakability is most of the problem.

Jealousy of present behaviour. He is still in close contact with someone, or something in how he acts now is producing the feeling. This is the only one of the three that is about the present, and the only one where the answer might involve him changing something.

Comparing yourself to someone who died

Worth taking on its own, because it is widespread and almost nobody says it out loud.

It is widespread because the circumstance is. Census Bureau figures show that among people aged 75 and over who had ever married, 58% of women and 28% of men had experienced the death of a spouse. A great many later-life relationships involve at least one person with a marriage that ended in bereavement rather than choice.

Two things make this version harder than ordinary comparison. The first is that a dead spouse does not do anything irritating, so the version of her that exists is improved by time in a way a living person’s would not be. The second is that you are not permitted to resent her, which means the feeling has nowhere to go and is usually turned on yourself instead.

What helps is naming it once, to him, without asking him to do anything about it. Not as a complaint and not as a request for reassurance, which is the usual shape and the least useful. Something closer to: this is odd and I occasionally feel it, and I wanted you to know rather than have you guess. Most widowed people have anticipated this and are relieved it has been said. The wider ground is covered in our note on dating a widower.

The question that sorts it

One question does most of the work: is this feeling about something he is doing, or about something that happened before I existed?

If it is about the past, there is nothing for him to fix and asking him to fix it will make both of you miserable. The work is yours, and it is mostly tolerating a fact rather than solving a problem.

If it is about the present, say so specifically. Not “I feel jealous” but “you speak to her most days and I did not realise that”. The first is a mood and cannot be answered. The second is a fact and can be.

What makes it worse

Asking questions whose answers you do not want. How long they were happy. What she was like. Whether you are similar. The information does not settle anything and cannot be returned.

Collecting evidence. Looking at photographs, reading things, counting mentions. Every bit of it produces a small relief and a larger appetite, and it is the same loop described in our note on how to stop overthinking a new relationship.

Asking for reassurance repeatedly. The first time it works. By the fourth, he is reciting, you know he is reciting, and it proves nothing.

Trying to win. Being better at the things she was good at. It is exhausting and it concedes the premise, which is that there is a competition.

What helps

Say it once, plainly, then let it be. Named feelings shrink. Unnamed ones look for evidence.

Notice what is actually yours. You have something she does not, which is the present. That sounds like a consolation and it is a factual observation about where he is.

Let the house be the house. Photographs and keepsakes are about his children as often as about him. Asking for them to go is the request most likely to be remembered badly, and a year or two usually changes things without anyone negotiating.

Give it eighteen months before concluding anything. This feeling reliably fades as you accumulate your own history. The problem at month eight is partly that you do not have enough shared past to stand on yet.

Frequently asked questions

Is it normal to be jealous of someone who died?

Yes, and it is more common than the silence around it suggests. It does not mean you lack sympathy for his loss. Both can be true at once and usually are.

Should I ask him to take her photographs down?

Generally not, and especially not early. If you are living there eventually it becomes a reasonable conversation about the shared rooms rather than the whole house. Ask about a space of your own rather than the removal of hers.

He compares us. What should I do?

Tell him, once, specifically, including the favourable comparisons. Many people doing this think they are paying a compliment and stop immediately when told how it lands. If it continues after that, it is a different problem.

I am jealous of his friendship with his former wife. Is that reasonable?

It depends on content rather than frequency. Logistics about children are a requirement. Emotional reliance, or contact you are not told about, is worth raising as a specific observation rather than as a feeling.

When is jealousy a sign I should leave?

When it is constant after two years, when it is driving you to check things, or when the thing producing it is current behaviour he has declined to change. The first two point at something worth discussing with a therapist. The third is a decision about the relationship.

Meeting someone who has already done this part

Most of the sharper versions of this feeling come from meeting someone before they had finished with their last marriage, whether it ended in a divorce or a funeral. Readiness is assessed directly at a consultation, and it is the single most useful thing to establish before an introduction, because it is the thing you cannot assess yourself over dinner. It does not remove the ordinary business of having a history. It does mean you are not competing with an unfinished one. If that appeals, you can begin with an application.