When his jealousy isn’t about you, but his need to compete with absolutely everyone, including the dead
Let me paint you a picture of male jealousy at its most spectacularly unhinged: I once dated a man I loved deeply. I called him precious and beautiful every single day. I left little notes in his lunch box and tucked them into his pockets to make him smile at work, hid them around the house for him to find. I prioritised him in my life, made sure he knew daily how much I cared. And then he future faked and ghosted me. Not gradually either, he built me up with promises for ‘our’ future, then dropped me from a height overnight. Eventually, I discovered through some truly charming messages from his mother that he was jealous of a dead man. And here’s the really special bit: he was jealous over things that man didn’t even do for me when he was alive.
I’m not even joking. Though admittedly, there was probably more psychological carnage at play there than jealousy alone, but it’s too wild a story not to share.
When it comes to ex romantic interests in my life, you’d think even the most paranoid individual would struggle to find jealousy material. One lives several thousand miles away. I have a court order against another that prevents us ever legally communicating again. One, after doing the long-distance thing, ran a mile the moment it came time to meet in person. And one’s dead. And yet somehow, I’ve still managed to date men who found reasons to be jealous – of men, women, both dead and alive, even of ladies I’m Facebook friends with who have “male-sounding names.” So yeah, I’m keeping the jealous ones at a considerable distance these days, preferably measured in postcodes.
Here’s the uncomfortable truth about male jealousy: it has absolutely nothing to do with how devoted you are, how transparent you are, or how carefully you manage your behaviour to avoid “triggering” him. It’s not about you at all. It’s about him, his crippling insecurity, and his fundamental inability to believe he’s worthy of being loved – which he then makes your problem to solve by monitoring your every interaction and treating your basic humanity as a threat.
The Psychology of Why He’s Competing With Everyone (Including the Deceased)
Male jealousy stems from low self-esteem and defining one’s worth by external validation. Men who derive their value from being with a “desirable woman” are particularly prone to jealousy – they believe their worth increases with their partner’s perceived value. When she has a past, interests, or friendships that existed before him, it feels like an attack on his sense of self.
Here’s the bit that’ll make you scream: this isn’t about love. It’s about ownership. He’s not afraid of losing you; he’s afraid of losing the self-worth he’s outsourced to you. Any threat to that arrangement – real, imagined, or deceased – triggers panic.
Research shows men who feel inadequate project their fears onto partners, imagining scenarios of betrayal that are completely unfounded. The jealous man sees his partner as validation; if her attention shifts anywhere else, his self-worth crumbles. This creates dependency on constant reassurance, making any perceived shift a threat – even if that shift is towards grieving someone who’s literally dead and therefore not competition by any reasonable metric.
What Male Jealousy Actually Looks Like (Spoiler: It’s Exhausting)
Let me walk you through the predictable patterns, drawn from both professional observation and the joy of having lived through this nonsense myself. Not every jealous man does all these things of course, and they may be hard to spot if done covertly.
The Surveillance State
Some may monitor your activities obsessively. Checking your phone, scrolling social media, interrogating you about whereabouts. Who were you with? What did you talk about? Why did that person like your post?
Normal partners don’t put every move under the microscope. Love doesn’t scour for evidence – insecurity does. If he’s treating you like a suspect, that’s not devotion; that’s paranoia with control issues.
The Possession Performance
He may become intensely focused on marking his territory. The type who is all over your social media, insisting on couple photos and status updates. Giving you jewellery or personal mementos that he wants you to wear constantly so people know you’re “taken.” He may be big on public displays of affection, particularly if an ex or any male acquaintance is within visual range – in my example case we were literally complained about at my gym, he turned into an overly-affectionate octopus when we were there. He could be hostile to anyone he perceives as a potential threat, which is essentially any human with a pulse and the correct chromosomal configuration.
This isn’t romance. This is a dog pissing on a tree to establish ownership, except somehow less dignified.
The Comparison Trap
Jealous men compare themselves to everyone – your colleagues, friends, exes, random men in coffee shops. In exceptional cases, they’ll compete with people who aren’t competition: the deceased, people you’ve never met, professional contacts.
I’ve watched jealous men get threatened by male therapists, gay best friends, and polite delivery drivers. The problem isn’t the “competition”; it’s that his self-worth is so fragile that anyone could represent a threat.
The Accusation Olympics
Baseless allegations become routine. Accusations of flirting when you’re being professionally cordial. Questioning your fidelity despite zero evidence. Interpreting your basic friendliness as romantic interest and your reasonable explanations as lies. Every interaction is scrutinised for hidden meaning, and somehow, you’re always guilty of something.
These accusations stem from his insecurities and fears, not from your behaviour. You could be a nun in solitary confinement, and he’d still find a reason to question your loyalty – probably to Jesus.
The Isolation Project
He may openly criticise your friends, particularly male ones – or even female ones with “male sounding names.” Or question why you need to spend time with other people when you have him. He may make plans difficult by sulking when you’re out, bombarding you with texts, or creating crises that require your immediate attention, return, or simply you to soothe him. Some are hostile to people you care about, finding flaws in everyone whilst positioning himself as the only person who truly understands you.
This is textbook controlling behaviour dressed up as devotion. Love doesn’t isolate you from your support system; insecurity does.
The Inevitable Ending (Because This Never Works Out)
You exhaust yourself trying to prove your loyalty. You modify your behaviour – stop going out, limit friendships, check in constantly, provide endless reassurance. You make yourself smaller and smaller, hoping that if you can just demonstrate your devotion clearly enough, his jealousy will subside.
It won’t. Because jealousy stemming from deep insecurity isn’t about evidence; it’s about his internal landscape.
Eventually: You leave (the healthy choice), recognising you cannot love someone into feeling secure. Or he leaves (the self-fulfilling prophecy), his jealousy creating the exact scenario he feared. Or you stay (the tragedy), internalising his jealousy as reasonable until you’re a shell of who you were.
The Special Case: Jealousy of the Dead
Being jealous of deceased people reveals the depths of male insecurity. He’s competing with a memory, a narrative, a past he wasn’t part of. Because he can’t win that competition (you can’t erase your history), he spirals into jealous paranoia over things that are completely immutable.
When a man is jealous someone no longer living, he’s revealing he believes he can never measure up to whoever came before. That’s not your problem to fix. That’s years of therapy he needs on his own sense of worthlessness. You could spend every day reassuring him – I tried that, with the notes and daily affirmations, with commitment, loyalty, and love – and it still won’t be enough because external validation cannot fix internal inadequacy.
The truly maddening bit? He’ll be jealous over things the deceased person didn’t even provide. In my case, jealous over romantic gestures that simply didn’t exist. He wasn’t even competing with reality; he was competing with his own catastrophic imagination of history.
Why You Cannot Fix Him (And Why That’s Not Your Job)
Here’s what every woman dating a jealous man needs to hear: you cannot love him into security. You cannot be transparent enough, loyal enough, devoted enough to cure his jealousy. Because jealousy at this level isn’t about you; it’s about his relationship with himself, and you didn’t break that, so you cannot fix it.
Jealousy can be addressed through therapy, cognitive-behavioural interventions, and genuine self-work. Insecure men need to develop their own sense of worth independent of external validation. They need to learn that other people’s attention doesn’t diminish their value. They need to stop projecting their inadequacy onto their partners and start addressing the root causes of their insecurity.
But here’s the kicker: most won’t do that work. They’ll move from relationship to relationship, blaming each woman for his jealousy whilst never once examining why he feels so fundamentally inadequate. They’ll collect a string of “crazy exes” who were apparently all untrustworthy, never noticing the common denominator in all those failed relationships was their own pathological jealousy.
The Red Flags You Should Never Ignore
Jealousy often starts small and escalates. Initially you might find it flattering before realising you’re dealing with someone whose insecurity will consume your entire existence.
Watch for: constant check-ins disguised as caring; criticism of friends and family; subtle efforts to limit your independence; making you feel guilty for having a life outside the relationship; accusations with zero evidence; comparing himself to everyone; treating your past as a threat; demanding phone access; sulking when you spend time with others; explosive reactions to perceived slights; framing his jealousy as proof of love.
Crucially: if he’s jealous of circumstances beyond your control – dead partners, distant exes, professional relationships, platonic friendships – run. If he’s competing with people who aren’t competition, his jealousy has nothing to do with reality and everything to do with pathology you cannot fix.
The Uncomfortable Conclusion
You probably hoped this would tell you how to manage his jealousy. How to reassure him effectively. How to modify your behaviour to make him feel secure. I won’t, because this isn’t how it works.
His jealousy is his to manage. His insecurity is his to address. You can be supportive of that process, but you cannot do the work for him, and you absolutely should not sacrifice your autonomy trying to soothe an insecurity you didn’t create.
Don’t date jealous men. Don’t convince yourself your love will heal his insecurity. Don’t make yourself smaller to accommodate his paranoia. Don’t accept surveillance as devotion.
And if you’re being compared to deceased individuals, people thousands of miles away, or anyone with a pulse? Leave. You cannot reason with that level of insecurity. In my case, the flags were thrown like confetti after the relationship had ended…by his mum…in a public comment on my Facebook page…so yeah, there’s that, and it’s your signal to breathe a sigh of relief that you’re no longer connected, and to keep well clear from all involved.
His jealousy tells you everything about him and nothing about you. Remember that when he’s accusing you of crimes you haven’t committed, competing with ghosts, or treating your basic humanity as betrayal.
You deserve a partner who trusts you, who celebrates your friendships, who doesn’t see every interaction as a threat. Some jealous men may tell you their jealousy is proof of love. It’s not. It’s proof of insecurity, and making that your problem is how you lose yourself entirely whilst he remains exactly as broken as when you found him.
Written from a woman’s perspective about men because that’s my lived experience – but jealousy and insecurity aren’t gendered issues; they’re human ones. They just happen to manifest particularly visibly in heterosexual relationship dynamics where masculine socialisation equates control with care and possession with protection.
Mistress Mind 
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