Every now and again someone comes along who I feel threatened by in my relationship and this is a longstanding pattern. It’s not every woman we meet, but it’s a fairly regular occurrence where someone will come into our lives and for no clear reason my hyper-vigilance will set off and my brain will send me thoughts that my husband is attracted to her.

These thoughts create feelings of insecurity and anxiety. I’ll then spin and my thoughts will obsess and look for evidence and patterns and reasons to be suspicious. Sometimes this has caused tension in my relationship where I have behaved insecurely and jealously and then my husband has felt distrusted.

Often I will hold these thoughts and just not say anything and try to ignore them. I love my husband, he’s a really good man and I don’t want to have these thoughts anymore. I want to be someone who feels so secure it doesn’t worry me every time a new attractive woman comes along.

I want to be someone who can accept that my husband will naturally be attracted to other women and that’s okay because he’s chosen to be with me. I just can’t seem to get my brain to fall into line with that without triggering the feelings of insecurity and anxiety. Any suggestions?