Is Social Media Making You A Jealous Partner The Jealousy Spiral
The jealousy spiral
If you feel threatened or jealous in a relationship, then social media makes it easier to monitor your partner’s activities. However, sadly, this partner monitoring often comes from jealousy and results in more jealousy!
If your partner likes and comments on people whom you deem a threat – perhaps you think someone is prettier, sexier, fitter, or more talented than you – then attachment anxiety can quickly become apparent.
Partner monitoring: The gender divide
An investigation analysed both men and women with their partner monitoring habits. Both men and women spend, on average, the same amount of time monitoring their partner’s online activity. This partner monitoring is also known as ‘creeping’.
So if both men and women spend time looking up their partner’s online activity, then is there a gender divide? Interestingly, the difference comes with the emotions the person is feeling. If women report feeling jealous, then they spend more time creeping on their partner’s social media. Men will usually spend the same amount of time, regardless of how they’re feeling that day.
For women, monitoring their partners is intrinsically linked to their emotions. Feeling down and jealous – more likely to spend more time pouring over social media. Feeling happy and positive – less likely to check and be fixated on social media checking.
Another difference in the time spent checking out your partner and their social media contacts is whether the person is known or not. If there is an unknown friend that your partner is talking to or ‘liking’ on social media, this spikes jealousy and makes us more likely to spend more time with partner monitoring.
Why do we monitor our partner’s online activity?
When it comes to new relationships, social media interaction will likely play a large part at the beginning of the relationship. This could be because you are friends on social media, or you were perhaps completing background social media checks before meeting them for a date.
The problem this creates is that everyone portrays a different perception online compared to what they are like in person. When you start to notice the discrepancies between your partner’s offline and online activities, doubt and jealousy can begin to kick in.
Social media is a chance to portray your best self and offers a degree of confidence that you cannot always give off in person. This means that your partner may feel more confident in telling someone what a great picture they have on social media than they would in person. For example, if your partner complimented someone in front of you, would you be jealous? Or would your jealousy only kick in if you saw a complimentary comment on a sexy Instagram picture?
While lots of people check up on their partner online, it typically does not offer any reassurance. As mentioned earlier, partner monitoring comes from jealousy and often creates more jealousy. So, before you stalk that new colleague at your partner’s work, think about the reason you are doing so. Will it provide any comfort? Probably not. Will it stop your jealousy? Unlikely. If you can think about this before you start looking, you may save yourself a lot of pain and worry.
If you worry that your partner monitoring is unhealthy, these are the key signs to look out for;
Checking your partner’s feed and friends multiple times a day
Arguing or feeling upset by how your partner acts online
Feeling a need to look through the profiles of people that like and comment on your partner’s posts
You become obsessed with checking on people that you suspect are exes or that you believe your partner fancies.
You find it impossible not to look through a person’s profile who is friends with your partner.
In the next post, I will talk through the best ways to manage jealousy and self-esteem in the age of social media
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I use a potent mix of hypnosis, NLP and powerful coaching interventions to help you overcome feelings of jealousy.