This is, I think, one of the most difficult things for people to overcome in a new/pre-existing relationship. I know I am lucky, as I am not a person who feels jealousy as such, so I didn’t find this a big issue – but I am aware that for many people that is can be one of the more difficult challenges within the relationship.

I did find initially that I was surprised at Lou’s beauty and niceness (not traits spoken about by my partner), so there was some initial trepidation, but luckily for me this didn’t last. I actually saw similar characteristics in Lou that I also displayed, and I am a confident person, so rather than feelings of jealousy, I decided that we would get along well and chose to focus on the positives of this, rather than self doubt and allowing jealousy to creep in.

If you have feelings of jealousy which is quite a normal feeling in these situations, I would challenge your thinking…why are you jealous?, does it stem from insecurity, is it because society has made this the norm? You have a choice – you can choose to confront these feelings and work through them logically and put the emotions to the side – you may not then be affected by the jealousy you initially felt.

Everyone has a past and present and a future. Your partners ex is his/hers past, but you are in the present and planning for the future. Work through thoughts of jealousy, see if you can break it down – remove the emotion. Quite simply, after the emotion is removed all that is left is the fact your partner has a history – this won’t change, but you can. Accept the past for what it is and you can move forward.

I think there’s 3 major components under this topic:

• Jealousy
• Competition
• Forgiveness

Jealousy

For me, jealousy is a key component of a successful or otherwise step-wife relationship.  Both Rachel and I are fairly confident people, so insecurity has not played a part for us, and neither of us really have jealousy as a key personality trait. I can’t really comment on why that is or isn’t, except to say that I think both of us at heart have empathy and the interests of others as key.

I have seen many divorces go along quite nicely until the entrance of another partner for either party.  At this point things go down-hill fast as jealousy kicks in.  That might be for a number of reasons;  the left-out partner is feeling lonely; it signifies that the party has moved on; the new partner is not liked by the children, and any other number of reasons.  At this point, it is really important to take jealousy and personal emotion out of the equation and focus on facts only.

If you are having feelings of jealousy, I suggest trying to work with someone to overcome these.  They are only affecting you and not the other parties, so it’s in your best interest to work out how to alleviate those feelings.

Competitiveness

As humans, we are naturally competitive, I guess that’s why we’ve evolved to the level we have.  In my years, I’ve seen these things first hand:-

• Competing against your x partner for the children’s affection: “Jillie likes my place better than his”, “Billy prefers me to read bed time stories – I’m the favourite parent”, “Jillie likes the way I drive better”
• Competing against your new step-wife; “Jilly says she is not as good a cook as me”, “Billy says she swears a lot”
• Competing against other people’s x-partners: “oh, you think yours is bad, wait until you hear my story”, “oh, yours doesn’t pay child support, mine pays support but never comes to pick up the kids on time”
• Competing against other people’s legal costs: “most people have 1 folder of documents, we had 7”, “my friend tried for 80% of everything, I got 85%!”

Comparing and competing with other people’s stories is not productive. Try to do the best you can for yourself, your children and your x-partner regardless of other people’s situations.

Forgiveness

Forgiveness is key element to letting go of jealousy.  Forgiving your x and yourself for whatever mistakes you made in the past means that everyone can move on.  Forgiveness eliminates the need or desire for revenge, and in my experience a lot of damage is done through x partner’s enacting revenge on the other partner to ‘get pay back’ for wrongs they fell they have been dealt. Revenge leads to nowhere, however:

The reason our relationship didn’t work wasn’t because he was a bad person or I was a bad person, it was simply that we weren’t amazing together.  To me that didn’t mean that he would never find anyone else who he could be amazing with, and it also didn’t mean that I wanted him to be unhappy.  To continue to be a good dad to our beautiful children, I wanted him to be happy and in love.  All parents are better parents when they are fulfilled and in a good place.

Rachel clearly cared about Marc a lot, and in turn cared about his children.  Jealousy didn’t even cross my mind – I was just happy for them both.

1. Focus on what’s best for your children
2. Accept your partner has a past
3. Forgive yourself and your partner for mistakes made and move on
4. Don’t even for a minute entertain the idea of revenge – it leads nowhere
5. Remove the emotion of jealousy and try and work out exactly why you have these feelings – work through the logic
6. Trust that your partner’s x doesn’t want to mess things up for you, she just wants her children to be happy