I have long had a struggle with jealousy. I'm not sure when it started, or why. I don't have a huge history of being cheated on by boyfriends (though it has happened occasionally, to be sure). I just have a really hyperactive imagination. In the Catholic tradition of blaming folk for sins ruminated on, but not necessarily acted on, I worry, endlessly, about the possibility of my loved one entertaining lewd thoughts about someone other than me.
I have a distinct memory of a boyfriend admitting to kissing a female coworker at an
apres-work happy hour. It happened before he and I started dating, and he even went about setting the female office mate in question with a close friend. But the thought of this kiss
tortured me. I wasn't sure if I desperately wished I had never been told of it, or if I would rather know every gory detail. If someone had offered me a Zapruder-style film of the event, I would've watched it until my eyes bled. I was afraid to ask for more information, and so I worried myself sick (sometimes literally) thinking about it. It didn't help matters when, after he and I broke up, he dated her for a time. It
really didn't help when I found out about it after he and I went out on a tentative get-back-together date, and we had to change plans to hang out at his apartment after he pulled his car in only to discover
her car parked in the lot. Coming back from that relationship cliff was pretty tough, and I never felt completely trusting around him again.
Early on in my relationship with Booby, there was a woman he knew, a stringy blonde, who seemed to crop up everywhere. She worked in the same building as he did, and would ask him to lunch. She was friends with some of the same people from his callow youth and had plenty of hilarious stories to share with him from those times. She had dated the ex of a female friend of his, and in doing so had temporarily ensnarled herself in a sort of hipster soap opera drama. Booby would go to hang out with guy friends and then I would find out later that she had been there, too. I heard her name for what felt like every day for several months. She "really, really couldn't wait to meet [me]," but when she did, she gave me a perfunctory "hello," and then snubbed me. We would go out to meet friends and suddenly
boop! she would stride through the door, the only other female in the group, but no one's girlfriend. I felt left out and ill-at-ease, even though I trusted Booby more than I'd ever trusted anyone. I got pretty upset about it. I felt like history was going to repeat itself, and I would eventually run into my ex-Booby on the street and he would tell me all about how he was moving into a great, hip rowhome in an edgy neighborhood with Stringy Blonde and their two dogs with bandanas tied around their adorable, scruffy necks.
I told my future husband of this fear. We fought about it. He told me I was silly, and he didn't like the constraint I was putting on him. I think maybe a lamp got broken. But he took care not to socialize with her since it upset me so much. She moved across the country or something, and that was that.
Now I find I'm having this problem in a more theoretical way. There is no Stringy Blonde popping up at odd intervals. All of my husband's colleagues are lovely and friendly. But lately, I worry, groundlessly. I know my husband would never, ever leave me. But I worry about what would happen if he
wanted to.
I'm pretty sure these feelings directly correlate to my ingestion of medication meant to suppress ovulation through the use of hormones. Because of this treatment, I've had about a month's worth of PMS, symptoms rolling together week after week like rocks down a hill, injuring anyone who gets in their path. I have not been easy to live with, but I am trying not to allow my brain to make me sick with worry over things that won't ever happen, or even be considered as a possibility.
For anyone wanting to try that Colcannon recipe, 
