Marital Jealousy And How To Let It Go Ep 16

Marital Jealousy And How To Let It Go | Relationship Coach

Jealousy is an emotion that most of us have felt on some level in our romantic relationships and is quite different from envy, a word often used interchangeably. Today I’ll chat a bit about the difference between the two while focusing on jealousy within romantic relationships and how it can bring up emotions that can push our relationship apart if we don’t recognize the root of why we are feeling this emotion. I will also share how to address jealousy to best support our own mental health and wellness. Let’s dig into what marital jealousy is and how you can start the process of letting go and building a more connected relationship with your partner.

Let’s first look at the definition of envy:

Envy, from Wikipedia, is an emotion that occurs when a person lacks another’s superior quality, achievement, or possession and either desires it or wishes that the other lacked it.

First, let’s look at our reasons for wishing someone lacked the quality, achievement, or possession. Wishing someone else lacked that quality that we are feeling envy over is us thinking that we can’t have what they have and because we think we can’t have it, we could feel better about ourselves if that other person didn’t have it.

I actually love being curious when I notice feeling envious of someone’s achievement, quality, or possession. Typically, I will initially notice a feeling of discontent around what someone else is doing or something they have. I notice myself judging them as possibly being irresponsible or maybe better than I am, making me feel inferior. When I become aware that I am judging them, myself, or the circumstance, I enjoy asking myself what it is about what the other person is doing, or what they have, that I wish I could do or wish I had. At this point, I can decide whether I want to pursue what they are going after and doing or if I want to admire them and let go of envy. At this point, I can actually reach out to them from a place of admiration and gratitude. Gratitude because their accomplishment has pushed me to become better and to become aware of a weakness in myself and admiration for their ability to step into fulfilling a desire in their life.

All of our emotions are signals that we want to be aware of, just like the traffic signals; if we ignore them, we will eventually get to a place where we are hurting and become victim to the emotion or a place of dissatisfaction in ourselves because we aren’t stretching and growing into our capability. When we can slow down, pause, use the signal to help us decide where we want to go next, we can let the emotion guide us to a place of spacious, conscious thinking that allows us to let go or open up to a new adventure in our life. When we’re able to process the emotion of envy, it can open us to inspiration around something we’ve been wanting to do but haven’t allowed ourselves permission to do so.

The definition of jealousy:

Jealousy, according to Wikipedia, generally refers to the thoughts or feelings of insecurity, fear, and concern over a relative lack of possessions or safety.

Jealousy is a human relational experience that becomes evident in the early ages of human development and envelopes other emotional aspects like anger, resentment, fear, inadequacy, worthlessness, disgust. When we look at jealousy within the confines of marriage, it can tear a relationship apart and cause a couple to create distance between themselves. Still, when we look at it from a different perspective, we can see jealousy as a place where you can work on your own personal growth.

Oftentimes, jealousy is rooted in low self-esteem, lack of self-compassion, self-trust, fear of unmet needs. It is often insecurity within ourselves around our desirability, ability, and worthiness to be a good partner, and we project that insecurity onto our partner. Seeing this fear within ourselves opens up a beautiful opportunity to dig in, explore, look inward and grow.

Going back to listen to episode 1 (How To Start Loving Yourself), episode 10 (One Simple Way To See If You Trust Yourself), and then episode 12 (Three Steps To Building Self Trust) will help you start taking steps to build your self-confidence and allow you to start the process of letting go of the grip jealousy might have in your marriage relationship.

When we start looking at our jealous feelings, we start looking at what is going on within ourselves and see what is triggering the emotional response. Learning how to process your emotions helps you to see where the weak link inside of you might be and then opens up your mind to the possibility of creating a conversation around what you are experiencing without putting the blame on your partner.

When we start looking inward, becoming aware of the fear that is arising within ourselves, and then do the work of processing through what thoughts are coming up for us, we can start separating out what is simply insecurity within ourselves and possibly something we might want to discuss with our partner. If we choose to have a conversation with our partner, it will come after taking time to access and manage, coming up with what you might say and how you will say it in a way that centers around you and your thoughts and feelings, without placing any blame on them for creating how you feel. We can state the circumstance, and what thoughts it generated for us, and how those thoughts made us feel; we do this process through a thought download (read more about this tool in my post “A Daily Tool To Manage Your Mind”) and then running some of those thoughts through a thought model (learn about what the thought model is and how you can use this tool in my post “Self Coaching Model”) so that we can see how we are producing our current result. When we discover the result that WE are producing and see that it is all being created within ourselves, this is often the point where we can start exploring a different option, an option that feels better for us.

When we’re open to having a conversation about what we are experiencing it opens up a vulnerability in our relationship which helps us create a more deep intimate connection with each other and helps create awareness for both parties. These conversations will often open us up to a different option for ourselves and for our partner. We went through an intimacy series recently and this type of conversation where you are opening up to how you are feeling helps build emotional intimacy, you can go back to episode 6 to learn more about emotional intimacy and how to increase it in your marriage.

Let’s briefly talk about three different types of relationship jealousy:

Projection jealousy

Projection jealousy is when we are projecting our own thoughts onto our partner. For example, we are being overly aware of our partner’s actions, jealous of things they are doing or saying, and then turning around and seeing how we might be doing the same thing, creating insecurity around ourselves and our relationship. We are projecting ourselves onto our partner to find evidence of how they may be doing the same thing. Possibly we are looking for validation outside of our marriage because we don’t feel like we are getting it within our marriage, so then we are looking for the same thing in our partner’s actions instead of focusing on ourselves, validating ourselves, and treating our partner the way we want to be treated.

Protection jealousy

Protection jealousy comes when we want to protect ourselves from something that we think might hurt us. It could show up as us attempting to control our partner’s actions to feel better and feel safe. An example could be checking your partner’s email or text messages to protect yourself from something that might be happening that could tear your relationship apart. When we build trust in ourselves, we start letting go of the control we have been placing on our relationship; we’re not ignorant to what is going on in our relationship, we’re actually more in tune with what is happening because we are engaging with our partner instead of sneaking around, focusing on something that isn’t building up the relationship and not trusting them.

Building our self-trust and self-confidence brings us awareness when we feel negative emotions and helps us dig into the why’s of that emotion versus placing the why in the hands of our partner. It empowers us to create the change we want without waiting and needing our partner to do it for us. We actually have a clearer focus of what we are creating in our relationship and trust that we are building a loving, connected, intimate bond with our partner.

Competition jealousy

Competition jealousy is when we are jealous of what we see other people getting and feeling jealousy that we aren’t getting that attention. When we look at this in our marriage, we could look at it from the perspective of scarcity, that we feel like there isn’t enough love and attention to go around, that it all has to be directed to us and if it’s being directed towards our spouse it means we are lacking. I really believe that there is plenty of love to go around when we manage our minds, and we see how emotions like jealousy are limiting our ability and capacity to love. When we take a look at the thought creating this type of jealousy, we will often find that we do not share the love that we wish we were getting, thus depriving us of the love in return.

Feeling the green eyes of jealousy isn’t such a bad thing; it means that we want something from our partner that we feel we aren’t getting for ourselves. We can let this green monster make us angry and resentful, have us pulling away from our partners, taking us further away from the relationship we want or, we can use it as a sign of love and compassion we have for our partner. A signal of an area for us to grow and a way to share with our partner how we would like to be treated and shown love and affection, an opportunity to be the one to take the action that you wish he would take.

Today could be the day where you take your jealousy and use it to pull yourself closer to your partner instead of pushing them away. If you are feeling jealous of your partner and are struggling with how to move out of it, I would love to have a conversation with you about the ways you can turn that jealousy into learning more about who you are and what you want in your marriage. You can book either a free coaching session or a program inquiry call today and notice how that action alone will create some ease in your life!


I am a life coach who works with individuals to break down relationship barriers by awakening their true self. My process isn’t about changing your partner, it’s about discovering who you are so that you can AwakenYou in your marriage. If you’re ready to take your life and your love relationship to the next level then schedule your program inquiry call today and let’s decide together if this is your next step to creating the life you’ve been dreaming of.

When You’re Excluded

Last night I was excluded from a family girls event.

What?!? Can you even believe that?

“They left me out.”

“I must not matter.”

“I’m not important.”

“They don’t like me.”

“Whatever, how rude!”

Yep, it really happened and that’s how I would have reacted in the past. I would have blamed, pouted, felt sorry for myself, beat myself up, been sarcastic, (try to) make everyone feel bad. Of course, if you’ve been following me, we know that we can’t make other people feel bad.

You see, two years ago us Bongiovanni women decided to finally follow through with our Christmas banter about getting together outside of the holidays.

Thanks to my Aunt Mari, we’ve followed through.

Except this year they left me out.

I was actually at a meeting during this get together and after the meeting I had a message from my daughter and a voicemail from my Aunt.

I responded to the text of “Where are you?” with a tapback “?” and then read the transcript from the voicemail and immediately felt a bit sad.

Turns out that the email invitation went to an email that I haven’t used for over 10 years and for a moment I did have a thought that made me feel indignant and cause me to blame and complain. I noticed it, allowed it and then started to look at how this was no big deal.

They went without me and it was awesome.

It was awesome because I got to watch how my new brain handles these new situations, first hand.

I had new thoughts like:

“What a bummer!”

“This is not a big deal.”

“Everything is ok.”

“Nothing has gone wrong here.”

“I am fully worthy, enough, complete.”

You know the best part?

I get the result of loving myself, as well as everyone else, instead of not mattering to myself, or anyone else.

I love my new brain!

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My Awaken(TheTrue)You program is for strong, success driven women who want to discover their true self, discover the missing key, find their purpose and then start building a legacy from pure power. I have made it may mission to show you how.

I’d love to offer a free call for you to work out whether or not my program and life changing promise is a fit for you. Either book your call now or send me an email with your availability before your subconscious primitive mind tells you to run and hide.

Please share this message with anyone who you think might benefit from hearing this message and I highly encourage you to get on my mailing list where I send out weekly tips on how to start building love and confidence within yourself.

Why Our Marital Handbooks Don’t Work

Why Our Marital Handbooks Don't Work | Relationship Coach

When I first heard of the concept of an operating manual for people in our lives my eyes became focused on a key problem I had going on in my life.

I had these manuals for so many people in my life.

I had all of these expectations of how people should show up, how they should act in order to make me happy.

When they didn’t act the way I expected them to then I would get angry, frustrated, annoyed, sad.

I was putting the power of how I felt in the hands of other people.

This is when I started working on changing.

I decided to work on not judging others for what they do and I decided that when I wanted someone to do something for me I would do it for them.

I didn’t want to share my  manuals with other people, I wanted to throw them all away.

I want people to be themselves, whatever that looks like for them, and for me to not have an attachment to that.

I’ll admit that this is a journey and a process that I have not yet perfected and probably never will 100%.

If you have people in your life that aren’t doing the things you want them to do then I would ask you to consider asking yourself why you want them to do the things. If it’s to create happiness for yourself then take action and do the thing for yourself, make yourself happy.

We can ask people to do things for us in our lives but having an attachment to if they do it, how they do it or even when they do it is just manipulation.

I would guess that you don’t like being manipulated, so the sooner that you can end doing it to others the sooner you will start creating your own happiness.

I’d love to talk more about manuals and how they might be interfering with your own happiness.

I’d love to help you take your power back by showing you how to throw those manuals you have away.

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My Awaken(TheTrue)You program is for strong, success driven women who want to discover their true self, discover the missing key, find their purpose and then start building a legacy from pure power. I have made it may mission to show you how.

I’d love to offer a free call for you to work out whether or not my program and life changing promise is a fit for you. Either book your call now or send me an email with your availability before your subconscious primitive mind tells you to run and hide.

Please share this message with anyone who you think might benefit from hearing this message and I highly encourage you to get on my mailing list where I send out weekly tips on how to start building love and confidence within yourself.

If you’d like to get more empowering emails delivered straight to you and never miss another post please get yourself signed up for my newsletter!

Pride, Women, My Mission And How They All Tie Together

As I was doing some coaching work on my past eating addiction the idea for this post was born. I was doing the work of looking at an event, this was one long event, from the past and re-writing my story about it. This practice allows you to take a negative story from your past and release it by telling the story in a way that empowers you.

If you haven’t done this work, let me tell you, it is life changing.

While doing this work my brain exploded a bit around pride, so let’s just talk about what pride is and how you can use it for or against, not only yourself, but others.

Let’s start with just two different types of pride, positive and negative pride, and then dig into how they not only affect you but others.

Positive pride.

Positive pride is when we have confidence in ourselves, self respect. When we are proud of our achievements and the achievements of others.

I also had a bit of brain explosion as I went deeper into my reflection when I realized that the opposite of positive pride is to be ashamed of yourself or someone else.

Let me tell you a truth right now, if someone else is ashamed of you that means absolutely NOTHING about you and your worth. You are fully worthy, no matter what anyone else says or does to you.

Negative pride.

Negative pride is when we have a false sense of superiority over others. It comes from a place of conceit and arrogance.

Note the word false.

This ultimately comes from lack of self confidence and self respect because we are insecure in ourselves. We are afraid of exposing ourself because of what others might think.

This kind of pride will keep us from seeking out help for ourself, or even our close loved ones. It makes us think about what others will think, keeping us from doing what is right for ourselves or for others who might need our support.

How can this affect others?

If you are asking this question then congratulations, you have been not just reading my content but doing the work of applying it.

Most people would believe that if we are proud or neglectful of others that it would affect them by causing them to either feel good or bad. If you have been reading my content you know that another person cannot make us feel a certain way, it is our own thoughts that create our own feelings, actions and results.

Here is where my mind exploded a bit.

As parents we have a responsibility of raising the next generation. As parents we come into this role with all sorts of our own hurts, habits and hang-ups which will influence how our little ones will start to make decisions for themselves.

This is why I am so on mission to help as many women as I can end their life of insecurity, worthlessness and self loathing.

When a woman gets out of her own way, starts loving herself, starts honoring herself, starts becoming proud of who she is and what she does, she passes that on to the next generation.

My true passion is children and ingraining in their developing brains that they are fully lovable, no matter what they do. My way of being able to do that right now is through the women who are influencing these beautiful minds.

If you change who you are today into the woman of possibility, what an impact you will have on the world.

This is why I do what I do.

Let’s change the world, one brain at a time.

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My Awaken(TheTrue)You program is for strong, success driven women who want to discover their true self, discover the missing key, find their purpose and then start building a legacy from pure power. I have made it may mission to show you how.

I’d love to offer a free call for you to work out whether or not my program and life changing promise is a fit for you. Either book your call now or send me an email with your availability before your subconscious primitive mind tells you to run and hide.

Please share this message with anyone who you think might benefit from hearing this message and I highly encourage you to get on my mailing list where I send out weekly tips on how to start building love and confidence within yourself.

Why Avoiding Conflict Creates More Conflict & How To Get Good At Resolution

Conflict is a struggle, or opposition, of ideas or interests.

The conflict may just be within yourself or it may be with one or many other persons.

It’s possible that you are the only one aware of the conflict because you are avoiding bringing it out in the open. Maybe you are agreeing, apologizing or even accommodating the person you are in opposition to.

It’s possible you were never taught how to deal with conflict effectively. This can be true if you watched parents scream and yell at each other, never coming to resolution verses watching them sit down and discuss the struggle out loud and openly. Even the opposite can be true with one parent avoiding conflict by never addressing their struggles therefore again, never allowing you to witness healthy conflict resolution.

Healthy conflict resolution is something that is important for us to develop so that we can start cultivating more strong, trusting relationships with everyone in our life.

Here is how avoiding conflict can create more conflict:

  • You resisting what is going on by avoiding and not processing
  • You build up negative emotion
  • You don’t figure out how to clean up your thoughts

When we take the time to look at what is happening for us with any struggles or opposition we are having with someone it is healthy for us to do a few things:

Take a look at our thoughts, what is going on in our brain, by doing a thought download.

Look at how these thoughts are making us feel and then how these feelings are making us show up.

This will show us the result we are getting.

At this point we can decide whether we are wanting to change our thoughts so that we get a result that we want or not.

Possibly we do want to change our thoughts to get a result that we like, yet it’s also possible that we will want to talk to the other party and discuss what is going on for us.

The one thing you must always remember is no one else is in charge of your happiness, so the objective is not to control them by telling them how they need to act to make you feel good. 

That is your job.

Still, you may want to clarify what is happening for you.

Let me give you an example.

Let’s say you have a husband, I may or may not know of one, who has committed to dog sitting a puppy during time, two days to be exact, when you, that would be me, will be at home working and husband will be away from the home working.

I could get angry and just let it happen, maybe take it out a bit on said husband.

I could do a thought download and decide how I want to handle the situation out of love for myself.

Then make a decision as to what I’m going to do and be all in and in love with my choice

The latter is what I have chosen to do. The old me would have taken it out on husband from the time it was announced until who knows when.

With choosing the way I did, making the choice to think I am going to enjoy this little puppy, which makes me feel helpful, which allows me to take the action of planning my days so it works for me, loving the puppy, ask husband to clarify story of how this came about so that I fully understand scenario, ask husband to, in the future, please check with me before volunteering my time but also recognize that he may not follow through, decide how I will deal with the situation if it arises again.

If you are a conflict avoider like I used to be and would like to discover how to start feeling better about how you deal with the struggles that life will always present to you, then I would love to offer a free mini-session to help you feel some freedom. All you have to do is grab on to some courage and send me an email, the feeling of fear will vanish once you hit the send button.

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My Awaken(TheTrue)You program is for strong, success driven women who want to discover their true self, discover the missing key, find their purpose and then start building a legacy from pure power. I have made it may mission to show you how.

I’d love to offer a free call for you to work out whether or not my program and life changing promise is a fit for you. Either book your call now or send me an email with your availability before your subconscious primitive mind tells you to run and hide.

Please share this message with anyone who you think might benefit from hearing this message and I highly encourage you to get on my mailing list where I send out weekly tips on how to start building love and confidence within yourself.

Why You’re Feeling Like A Fraud

Imposter Syndrome, let’s start with a good old Google definition.

The persistent inability to believe that one’s success is deserved or has been legitimately achieved as a result of one’s own efforts or skills.

Friends, listen up.

It does not matter what you do to create value in this world: full time (part time) moms, entrepreneurs, corporate partner, CEO, baristas, bank manager, doctor, nurse, police officer, fire fighter, teacher, professor, artist, yoga instructor, athlete, keynote speakers; anyone can experience imposter syndrome.

Let me share a story with you and get super vulnerable, again.

I launched On Track Training, which morphed into Team On Track, a highly successful coaching and sporting event promotion business, thirty years ago. Before people even knew what personal training was.

I spent most of those thirty years embarrassed of what I did. I told the story of how I was so much smarter than that. How went to school for Chemical Engineering then went into the School of Journalism and got a Graphic Design certificate, worked as a Graphic Designer before stepping into this role as an expert at transforming people’s lives. I was smart.

I still totally thought I was a fraud.

After all of the work I have done these past two years I shake my head at all of this because I know how much of a lie it was.

Thirty years!

I share that with you because those of you who know me from that business would never even guess that I felt this way.

Of course you wouldn’t, I had the outer facade game down!

I knew how to play the role of looking like I knew what I was doing.

Of course, now I know that I knew what I was doing, I knew well, I just didn’t have the self confidence needed to believe it.

In a nutshell imposter syndrome comes from us thinking that we’re just not enough, that soon someone is going to figure it out and call us out on it.

Probably even fire us, put us out on the street, unemployed, ruined and broke

It’s ok because there is a solution.

Once you build up your self worth.

Once you build up your self confidence.

Once you learn how to start loving yourself.

Once you start being willing to let people be wrong about you.

Once you stop rejecting yourself.

Once you become unwilling to reject yourself because of others who may reject you.

Once you step on this journey to discovering the true you and start stepping fully into that, the imposter syndrome slowly fades away into the distance.

Oh, your brain will want to remind you that you’re not good enough but you can’t blame it. You’ve spent your whole life conditioning it to believe this lie. No fear though, once you’ve done this work you will recognize the lie.

You will know how to love your brain for reminding you and then gently be able to tell it that it is wrong.

That you are no longer that person.

You are no longer going to allow yourself to listen to that lie.

The other thing I will tell you, you can put this all into The Thought Model, that the thought that you are an imposter is just that.

A thought.

Not a circumstance.

When you think that you’re an imposter it will generate a feeling of something like incompetence which is going to make you show up less than you truly are capable of showing up giving you the result of acting like an imposter.

It’s way better to just believe that you are completely qualified for what you are doing and feel confident. This will make you show up knocking it out of the park which creates the result of doing quality work.

If you are getting tired of fighting yourself. If you are tired of getting in your own way. If a solution to this problem sounds like hitting the lottery but better, then I would love to talk to you about my Awaken (The True) You program.

My program will take you from not fully being on board with yourself to being your best asset.

The impact this will have in your life is to give you the freedom you have been desperately yearning for.

You can book your free consult here or send me an email with some days and times that work for you, I’ll make one of them happen.

You can also get more help by getting my newsletter directly in your inbox, sign up today so you can start feeling better today.

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My Awaken(TheTrue)You program is for strong, success driven women who want to discover their true self, discover the missing key, find their purpose and then start building a legacy from pure power. I have made it may mission to show you how.

I’d love to offer a free call for you to work out whether or not my program and life changing promise is a fit for you. Either book your call now or send me an email with your availability before your subconscious primitive mind tells you to run and hide.

Please share this message with anyone who you think might benefit from hearing this message and I highly encourage you to get on my mailing list where I send out weekly tips on how to start building love and confidence within yourself.