Dear free Moon:

I understand you feeling jealous and uncomfortable about your boyfriend’s female friend. Some women are uncomfortable about their boyfriend having any female friends. From all the incidents you shared here, I see no indication that they are more than brotherly/ sisterly friends.

There are women that act flirtatiously with almost everyone, it is their style. The words they exchanges, including the heart, don’t lead me to think there is anything more than strictly friends going on. The way she interacted with you leads me to think there is nothing at all going on between them, other than close friendship.

This gut feeling that you have, I wouldn’t trust it to point to reality, not at all. Most of my gut feelings, personally, were not congruent with reality. Your jealousy is real, your discomfort is real, but no indication in your post taht there is a romantic relationship, or any such inclination between the two of them.

anita

Dear Free Moon:

You are welcome. To feel better, perhaps, see it this way: if you and your boyfriend have this relationship past a year, two years, longer… if you get married, you will be with him for a lifetime. Some time during that lifetime his friend, the one this thread is about, is likely to get married herself, move to another location (or you will), and their relationship will fade into the past. Try to see this friendship as the temporary thing it is likely to be. Focus on your relationship with him, aim for the long run.

For as long as they are friends, no matter how driven you may be to ask him for reassurance, don’t. Practice self discipline and don’t ask. If he tells you about her, listen, ask for clarification (in a casual manner) if you don’t understand something he said, but resist initiate questions about her. This resisting will weaken, over time, your desire to ask. Every time you think about her, distract yourself and think about something else- every time. It too, will get easier over time.

That gut feeling you are referring to is called “emotional reasoning” in Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT). It is one of the Thought Distortions people often entertain. Emotional reasoning means because we FEEL something, we believe it is true. Often it is not.

Do you suffer from anxiety otherwise?

anita

Free Moon,

I’m going to give a different opinion from Anita.

At one point in my marriage my husband and I were not connecting or intimate. (All relationships ebb and flow), however I could ‘feel’ my husband was going through the motions yet couldn’t put my finger on what was bugging me. I was feeling suspicious but had no proof. Until one night I went thru his phone that he accidentally left in the bedroom. I found texts from a female co worker about how they liked hanging out together, and my husband was looking to his Care Bear time – here name was Carrie…Made me sick to my stomach. Although he didnt have an ‘affair’ he was in the flirtatious initial stages of a new relationship with her…. Trust your gut. Always. WhenI don’t I regret it, my instinct – gut is always right. I’d hold your breath and stay calm, and talk to your boyfriend. If he loves you and cares about your feelings and how this is affecting you, he will modify his behaviour and stop the flirting and if his ‘friend’ cares about his happiness and wants him to be happy and secure with his relationships, she will gladly stop the flirting. If all is done in love then everyone walks away happy. But if she or he has alterior motives/hopes for the other then they will not change or will resist changing. It won’t matter that you are unhappy and anxiety – they are getting the payoff they want which is attention from the other. Have a gentle and calm loving talk about how YOU feel about the situation. Use ‘I’ phrases and see how he responds. Let him know it would make you feel better if the flirting stopped – he can still be friends but the flirting has to stop.

Good luck, Full Moon. Let us know how it works out. <3

Dear Free Moon:

Anxiety is exhausting. I was anxious from a very early age, seriously anxious, so much so that I was so tired most of the time, my brain foggy, lying down a lot, resting. I started my first competent therapy (CBT with a heavy dose of Mindfulness) six years ago. This is when my healing process started. I’ve been working on healing every day since, three years in therapy and three years after. It is only in the last couple of months that I am experiencing increased energy, my brain is not foggy, I am attentive to my surroundings, etc.

I still feel anxious but mindfully allowing the slow-slow-slow… slow process to take place. It is ongoing. Every day, and this very evening. There is a lot to it, way more than I can share in one post.

Anxiety is very powerful, but healing is part of nature, plants, animals get injured and, if they don’t die, they start healing right away. They don’t have to manage their healing, nature does it. In my Healing Path, as I call it, I am finding out that I too don’t have to manage or micro-manage my healing. It is about making my brain congruent with reality, and so, with nature. Then nature does the healing.

This probably reads vague. There is so much more to it, and much of it I shared in the hundreds of posts on the Forums.

Post anytime.

anita

Dear Free Moon:

I re-read and studied your posts on this thread so to gain a better understanding of your situation, hoping to be helpful somewhat. This is my understanding:

Your boyfriend reads like a decent, loving man. The relationship between him and his female friend reads appropriate to me. Her flirting style reads to me like her interacting style and nothing more.

Regarding your great anxiety and distress regarding this woman:

As is, for as long as she is in your boyfriend’s life in any capacity, I believe, you will continue to feel anxious and distressed. All your assertions regarding the nature of their interactions (that they no longer use nick names for each other, see each other only in group settings) will not take away your distress because like you wrote in your original post: “my anxiety stems somewhere from him… or someone else”- I think your anxiety stems from someone else.

What I see is a pre-existing, unresolved issue demanding to be resolved; a past hurt, a past jealousy, fear, anger, all tangled up from before you met your boyfriend, being triggered presently.

Clues to what that issue is, in your writings (not necessarily in order):

“I’ve been anxious and paranoid about them talking, and I’d have these thoughts of, ‘What if he leaves me for her?’ and other similar thoughts like that…”- you were afraid to be left by someone, a parent, maybe, because of some competition for the parent’s love?

What “other similar thoughts” did you refer to, these can be a clue.

If the pre-existing issue is not attended to, something about the relationship will continue to distress you even if this woman is out of your boyfriend’s life completely.

* Making your brain congruent with reality, at this point, would be looking at and examining the past unresolved issue that keeps trying to get your attention, your awareness.

anita