My boyfriend is super friendly and loves to talk to people. He also has female friends and enjoys going out for coffee or lunch with them. He insists this is all completely innocent but I feel threatened and that his behavior is flirtatious on some level. I can’t shake the fear that he will cheat on me. I know it comes from my father, who cheated on my mother with other women and even had an alternative secret sex life with men. My boyfriend’s personality is like my dad’s, although the variable is the intention. My boyfriend says he has good intentions when he engages with women. My father didn’t. Is it better to stay in the relationship with my boyfriend and keep putting my negative energy and accusations out into the world? Or is it better to end the relationship and work on myself?
It would be best to stop living in the past. You’re haunted by the trauma you endured as a witness to the disintegration of your parent’s marriage. Growing up, you learned to protect your heart by sleuthing out evidence. You became skilled at finding proof of moments where healthy boundaries could blur into infidelity. Like an overused muscle, this hypervigilance has weakened your overall spiritual health because you’ve stopped trusting yourself.
Did you believe the primary issue was that you didn’t trust others? That’s a common relationship fear, but it’s superficial. Dig deeper and another answer appears, the one we hide from ourselves. We only trust others when we trust ourselves. Self-trust fails when we’ve developed a habit of lying to ourselves. Radical honesty heals. Start here: Your boyfriend and your father are not the same person. Say this out loud to yourself every time your mind argues otherwise. Yes, both men are outgoing and that appears to be a quality you admire and want to develop. Yet, in the face of your man’s social confidence, you shrink. Stop making yourself small. You’re shrinking back into the shell of your history to reenact childhood pain. You’re hoping for a different outcome. A happier ending is only possible when you change. But stress results when you try to control your boyfriend’s gregarious personality. Let yourself fully embody the beauty of being an adult in the present time. Doing so will put your negative energy to rest for good. Your father’s outgoing personality may have meant he needed to be the center of attention in his life. This is your life. Center stage is available to you, whenever you are ready to step into the light.
Choosing to stand in your adulthood will also give you the power to maturely determine what concerns about your man are legit versus residue from your mother’s relationship with your father, and his relationship with you. So don’t ditch your boyfriend to work on yourself. Be grateful that you are in a relationship that permits you space to heal old wounds, to see that you are no longer a child, and to transmute negative energy of the past into a golden peace for now.
