How to Deal with Instagram-related Jealousy and Insecurities

Let me just start off by saying that in my logical, reasonable mind, I trust my partner with all my heart. He’s been perfect, never makes me feel worried about the possibility of him cheating, and reassures me that he cares about me by texting me constantly throughout the day and giving me his full attention when we’re together.

But no matter how much I love and trust him, the less rational part of my mind still worries occasionally (which I think is natural for everyone). When I look through my Instagram newsfeed when I’m bored, I’m afraid I’ll see that he liked a hot girl’s picture and I’ll discover that the happiness I had was all temporary. It’s like I’m just waiting for him to prove that my worst fears are true: that love doesn’t work out and that I shouldn’t trust anyone. I feel incredibly petty worrying about something so superficial as a “like” on Instagram—I know deep down that it’s 100% harmless. And I can’t really get mad at him because I follow way more pretty girls and models than he does, and he never says anything about it (but in my defense, I follow them 50% for inspiration and self-love by seeing more beautiful brown women who make me feel better about myself by extension… 50% because they’re hot as hell and I like to admire them).

When I see he “likes” some girls’ photos, I get this painful feeling in my gut. I imagine him fantasizing about how much happier he would be if they were his girlfriends instead of me. I worry that he is comparing me, with the mole on my face, the rolls on my stomach when I bend over, my meager B cups, to this image of a girl with a perfectly contoured face and a push-up bra.

I know none of this is true. Anyone who uses Instagram scrolls through basically mindlessly, “liking” pictures in a second, then instantly forgetting the previous post once it leaves the reach of their thumb. These worries are part of a story I’ve made up in my head that is a manifestation of all my insecurities and trust issues I’ve developed from past relationships, with exes who had wandering eyes. Seeing the person you love give validation and attention (even in the smallest form, a “like” on social media) feels like a betrayal, in a world where a large part of the construction of self-worth relies on how many “likes” you get and who gives them to you—as much as we’d like to think we’re disconnected from social media, it affects everyone.

When I stop and think about it, my worries have nothing to do with my partner. He could tell me he loves me every day, never hang out with any other girls, do literally everything right, and I still would feel this way (and it makes me feel terrible that I do).

At our very core, when we feel jealousy, it’s not about our partners being disloyal about something so small—it’s about our deep need to be loved and to be given attention and loyalty from the person we love. The jealousy stems from the small child in each of us who needs love and worries that the flaws we see in ourselves will prevent other people from loving us (sorry, I know I sound Zen-y like my dad here, but it’s true).

The best solution when you’re feeling insecure about your partner “liking” other people’s posts is to realize and remind yourself that your relationship with a person is much more than what goes on in social media, and shouldn’t be defined by “likes,” especially if it’s with someone you have a deep connection with personally. You shouldn’t compare one “like” on a picture to the weeks/months/years of getting to know each other that you’ve had with your partner (and if he/she really wanted to be with that other person instead of you, don’t you think they would?).

Don’t compare yourself to others, especially not you in real life, right now, vs a staged photo. I feel like shit when I compare myself to a picture of a girl with her makeup done, while I’m lying in bed wearing my oversized “I [heart] gays” t-shirt and no bra. Your partner doesn’t love you because you look on point all the time, they love you because you have a real connection and because of your personality. Plus there’s no way those girls online look like that 24/7. Instagram is performance (repeat that to yourself 100x every day and you might turn out okay).

Some steps to take when you get into a negative mindset with these insecurities:

Get off Instagram! Be productive, take a walk and enjoy nature and keep your phone on “do not disturb” if you use it to listen to music, interact with the people who are around you in real life, work on a project. Create, don’t get into a negative spiral.

Do something that makes you feel good about yourself. Don’t base your self-worth off of whether a person double taps on an image of you. Remind yourself why you are a good person, why you are beautiful, and why you are attractive and worthy of love—most of all, your own love.

What I do:

lift weights (makes me feel strong and proud of myself)
go for a walk (sunshine makes me happy, gets my sun-kissed skin back)
put on a little makeup or curl my hair (doesn’t take that much effort and ends up making me really happy and feel pretty)
wear something I wouldn’t normally wear (anything besides work/bum clothes)
write (makes me feel smart and capable)
tidy my room (makes my living situation more comfortable)

Also, it’s hard to be in a happy relationship with someone who is insecure and doesn’t see their own self-worth (me at times, in this case). You need to remind yourself why you are valuable as an individual and as a partner, both for your own mental health and for the sake of your relationship.

Talk to someone (or at least write it out to yourself). Saying your fears out loud makes them sound a lot less real and will show you they aren’t actual reasons to worry. It helps a lot to get out of your own negative self-talk and train of thought if you have to explain it to someone else, and they can tell you you have nothing to worry about.

Make a list of things to be grateful for in your life. You have more going on for yourself than just one person, anyway!

Make a list of ways your partner has shown they love you. If you’re in a good relationship, these will outweigh the minor slight of Instagram “likes” by far. After I write my lists, I feel so much happier, more in love with my partner, and appreciative of what a good person he is.

Overall, the best thing you can do is to just not look at the feed.

The urge to prevent your partner from looking at anyone else but you (which is impossible) is possessive, and makes me feel small for being controlling in that way. If you want to keep your relationship healthy, you need to just trust that your partner is a good person who does not want to hurt you.

Even more importantly, you need to trust that you are a good person who deserves to be with someone who loves you and will be loyal to you (even if you don’t always believe it, it’s true). The stress of stalking your partner online constantly is bad for the skin anyway, so don’t detract from your physical beauty, and in turn the source of your value as a person (just kidding! internal beauty all the way! *smirking emoji*).

Rituals of Self-Care in My Post-Grad Life

If it wasn’t already apparent in my other posts or depressing Facebook statuses, I haven’t been having the best time in my post-grad life. Though I am fortunate enough to have my parents support me and let me live with them while I figure out what the next phase of my life will look like, it’s a struggle every day for me to be happy. I often have anxiety attacks and breakdowns worrying about how I don’t know what I’m going to do with my life, for the first time in my life. It’s difficult, but I’ve been trying to be patient and gentle with myself as I’m going through this confusing in-between stage. I’m trying to focus on taking care of my physical and mental health while struggling with post-grad depression.

Diet

When I lived in an apartment with my friends and had to take care of my own meals for the first time, I spent most of my grocery money on sour patch kids and party-sized bags of hot cheetos. I ate at McDonald’s or Costco at least a few times a week because they were a 5-minute walk from my place. Eventually, I got sick often and couldn’t get the taste of salt out of my mouth for days.

Since I moved back home, I made a few changes to my diet. I stopped letting myself eat so much dairy because I became lactose intolerant, and tried to just push through the pain whenever I had a milkshake before. I created a ritual of drinking tea in the morning, which makes me happy by doing this small act of self-care. I started switching out sugary cereals for oatmeal for breakfast. If I add some walnuts, cinnamon, and banana slices to it, it’s a lot more filling and tastier than cheap cereal. I also eat a lot less junk food, which is a luxury because now I have my parents to either cook or provide food for me, and don’t have to fend for myself like I did while I was in college.

Exercise

This is what made me feel the best about myself as a person since I graduated. For my whole life I felt like I was weak and couldn’t lift anything heavy or protect myself. I saw myself as frail and clumsy. And while I am still a bit of a klutz, I no longer see myself as a weak person. Lifting weights and seeing how much I can handle makes me realize how strong I truly am, and gives me confidence in other areas of my life. I started getting scheduled to work shifts in the back room at my retail part-time job, and before working out, I wouldn’t have thought I could hold my own in there and would have been really nervous. But since I know I can lift 100 lbs, I’m not afraid to carry heavy boxes, although I still ask for help when I need it.

Beauty

I wear less makeup now that I don’t go to school—I used to wear lipstick, mascara, and do my eyebrows almost every day last school year. Living in Davis, where—let’s be real—people don’t really care about their appearance and walk around wearing spandex and North Face jackets, it’s much easier for me to let go and not keep up my appearance. I go for days now where I stay in gray thermal pajamas (much like a tribute from The Hunger Games) and don’t put effort into my looks.

However, I try to make a point every now and then (at least once or a few times a week) to do the bare minimum of curling my lashes, swishing on some mascara, and fixing my eyebrows. Taking just 10 minutes of my time makes me feel better about myself for the rest of the day.

Social

Before I left Santa Barbara, I was worried about how I wasn’t going to have any friends when I graduated. It was scary to think that I would go from having all my closest friends live within walking distance of me, to having nobody to hang out with when I moved back home with my parents. When I moved to Davis in 2010, I came to a new high school during my senior year not knowing anyone, and spent the year eating lunch alone and reading Harry Potter or studying for the SAT. I dreaded coming back to this, especially since my new skill for making so many friends in college had become one of the qualities I liked best about myself.

While I enjoyed the fact that I couldn’t walk through campus without seeing at least 5 friendly faces, I did miss my family terribly sometimes. Moving back home gave me the opportunity to spend time with my kid siblings, who are now my best friends since I graduated. Driving my 17 year old brother home from cross country practice, we got to talk about his feelings about going to college and growing up, which I’m grateful for because we barely spoke when I was in college (besides a few short texts now and then about Game of Thrones). Helping my 9 year old sister write her blog posts, watching Tangled with her, and cuddling makes me happy and fulfilled with my social life in a different way from hanging out with my college friends did. Being back home gives me the chance to reconnect with my brothers and sisters and with my identity as an older sister and mentor.

Reading List for 2016

Seeing as I didn’t finish a single book for pleasure this year, this list is pretty ambitious. In my defense, I did have a lot of reading to do for school and I also started a lot of books and read many of them about halfway through.

I doubt I’ll read every book on this list, but here are some that I’m excited to start (and hopefully finish):

Why Not Me? – Mindy Kaling. As per my mom’s recommendation, I borrowed this book from the library and read a couple of her short essays on the last day before I had to return it on a 7-day loan. I wish I’d started reading it earlier because her writing style is personal and funny, and her sense of voice is great. Reading her writing makes me want to write and develop my voice to be as good as hers.
Modern Romance – Aziz Ansari. I loved Master of None and his stand-up, so I figure this book will be a fun read and insightful.
The Bell Jar – Sylvia Plath. I’m ashamed to admit I was supposed to read this for an English class and never got around to it, but I liked what my T.A. said about The Bell Jar in our discussion section, so I made a mental note to get around to it. Then at the end of Master of None, the quote Aziz used from the book stuck with me. Fate brought the book to me at a used book sale at the library (thank baby Jesus everyone in Davis is so well-read and discards treasures like The Bell Jar).
Lair of Dreams – Libba Bray. My step-mom introduced the young adult novel The Diviners to me in 2013 and I loved it. The story follows a New York City teenaged socialite in the 1920s who can touch an object and divine information about its owner, and communicate with the dead or with spirits. The sequel finally came out this year and I haven’t gotten around to reading past the first chapter.
Truth and Beauty – Ann Patchett. I’ve been half-reading this book for over a year now and am afraid of finishing it because I know Lucy will eventually die, and I’m not emotionally prepared for that. But reading about Ann’s (I notice I refer to her as Ann even though I refer to other writers on this list by their last names because I feel so familiar with her and her writing. Plus I was fortunate enough to meet her after a talk she held at UCSB this year!) post-grad life makes me feel more hopeful about mine. If she can become a best-selling author after having to spend an off-year waitressing at a T.G.I. Fridays after she completed her graduate writing program, then there is hope for me too. All I need now is her talent…
Patron Saint of Liars – Ann Patchett. I’ve read a few of her other books and her writing style is beautiful. Ann Patchett is easily my favorite fiction author.
One Hundred Years of Solitude – Gabriel García Márquez. I picked up a copy of this at a tiny bookstore in Madrid over the summer!
Perfume: The Story of a Murderer – Patrick Süskind. Yet another half-finished book I have sitting in my room. I bought this one at Shakespeare and Company in Paris.
A Spy in the House of Love – Anaïs Nin. Love me some erotica (just kidding. Kind of). Bonus books: Delta of Venus and The Diary of Anaïs Nin.
The Time Traveler’s Wife – Audrey Niffenegger. I’ve already read this two years ago, but it was so interesting that I’d read it again.
The Goldfinch – Donna Tartt. This was recommended by both my grandma and my dad, and the first chapter was immersive and emotional.
The Blind Assassin, The Edible Woman – Margaret Atwood. Feminism! I read an excerpt of The Robber Bride in my fairy tale literature course in 2014 and found it intriguing.
Norwegian Wood – Haruki Murakami. They say judge a book by its cover, and I do so with the unique, aesthetically pleasing artwork on Murakami’s novels. The cover of Norwegian Wood stood out to me at City Lights in San Francisco, and the first few pages hooked me.
Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows – J.K. Rowling. I’m not sure if these count because I’ve read them several times before, but they’re of my favorites and I’d love to reread them at this point in my life, and see what new meaning I can find.
A Casual Vacancy – J.K. Rowling. If this book isn’t about Harry as grown-up, I’m demanding a refund.

Image credits

Goals for 2016

Get a real grown-up job (making more than minimum wage, please) and hopefully in an area that interests me—anything dealing with writing.
Save up enough money to feel safe living on my own and move out of my parents’ house.
Read at least one book a month. This is so embarrassing as a former English major, but I barely read any books for pleasure this year (although I read long-form articles daily, so at least I’m learning…), and now that I have a lot of spare time, I can use my post-grad transitional year as an opportunity to get back into reading. I’m sure I can do this if I just go to bed a little earlier and read, or substitute an hour of reading for an hour I would’ve spent watching TV. Here’s my 2016 reading list.
Keep working out at least three times a week. I’m not going to set any lofty goals for fitness that I can’t meet, but staying consistent with exercise is a difficult task in itself. Luckily my parents are all fitness nuts and lift weights with me or try to get me to run or do yoga with them.
Deadlift my own body weight—which is an increasingly difficult task because the more weight I can lift, the heavier I get. I just recently started lifting 100 lbs and while I assume that’s pretty light for people featured on fitness Instagram accounts, I’m still really proud of myself for getting this far!
Blog consistently throughout the year. At least one post a week would be great.
Start writing a book.
Spend less money on things I don’t really need. I’m going to start keeping a running Google Doc with all the items I purchase with rationalizations on why I bought them so that I can be more conscious about my spending habits—and hopefully guilt myself out of buying unnecessary things.
Try to slowly transition into eating healthier. This is hard for me because I love sweets so much. I highly doubt I’ll be anyone’s vegan clean eating inspo, but I’d like to at least eat more fruits and vegetables, and a little less processed food.
Spend more quality time with my younger siblings. They’re only going to be kids for a little while longer, and I want to take advantage of living near them for the first time in 4 years to hang out with them more, especially if I’m planning to move away for a job eventually.

What I would do differently if I could go back to college

Last week, I had dinner with two of my good friends from college—which was the first time I met up with any of my friends from UC Santa Barbara since I graduated in June (besides hanging out with my one friend who also lives in Davis now). One of them asked us if there was anything we would do differently if we could go back to undergrad. For the most part, I thoroughly enjoyed my time in SB, and most of the mistakes I made turned out for the better, because (as cliche as it sounds) they helped make me who I am today. But in retrospect, there are a few things I wish could advise 18-21 year old Chloe about, and would extend this advice to anyone new to college too. Because if there’s anything I’ve learned during my few months of post-grad life, it’s that you only get to experience that part of your life once, and it can suck living the regret of knowing you could have gotten more out of that special time.

Branch out and join more clubs, especially starting in freshman year, or actually stick with the clubs you check out. This was probably my biggest mistake (as I wrote about in my post with advice to my 18 year old self).
Make use of the unique resources your school has to offer. I’ve wanted to get scuba certified for a few years and went to one class in a series offered by my school’s recreational center, but gave up after I didn’t pass the swimming test on the first try. I regret not going through with the classes or going surfing at least once, especially since I so fortunate to go to a school that was literally on the beach.
Put yourself outside of your comfort zone as much as possible.
Live as close to campus as possible. It’s a drag having to take the bus to class and either having to stay on campus all day or go back and forth and take up hours of your time.
Don’t just choose your acquaintances you met on your dorm floor to be your roommates for the next school year—chances are you won’t even be friends by the end of winter quarter.
Stop worrying about getting a boyfriend—love will find its way to you eventually. When you’re focusing on becoming the best version of yourself, people will notice and be attracted to your positivity and ambition. As soon as I stopped looking for a boyfriend and worked on figuring out who I was as an individual, that’s when I seemed to get asked out the most, and in a few months I met the guy who I would date for the next two years (and counting).
What you want at 18 will be completely different at 22 (and at 26, and 30, probably). When I was planning to marry my boyfriend in freshman year (I know, what was I thinking) I read this in an article and I couldn’t imagine wanting anything else. This piece of advice made more and more sense every year throughout college as I noticed myself changing as a person, and is still changing to this day. It’s hard not to, but you should try to focus on enjoying the good things you have in the present instead of constantly worrying about the future, because you’ll never enjoy yourself that way, and you’ll be disappointed when the future comes and it isn’t everything you expected.
Take advantage of every free event possible—and standing in line for a couple hours is worth the memories you’ll have forever of the concert you went to by waiting for those tickets. I missed out on some cool free events in my freshman year because I lived in the farthest dorm from campus and didn’t bother to go out very often.
Get over your lazy tendencies and go out with your friends. I barely drank at all until I actually turned 21, and even then, I hardly went out to parties or the clubs with my friends. Although I enjoyed my nights in my warm bed at night when the idea of a night of taking too many shots and vomiting outside after dancing in a room full of sweaty strangers didn’t sound appealing, the individual nights of binge-watching my favorite shows don’t stand out as clearly in my mind as the ones when I actually went out with my friends. I didn’t enjoy getting my toes stepped on by sloppy drunk girls’ stilettos on the bus home at 2am, but I do remember having fun dancing to Taylor Swift’s “22” on my birthday and the time my friend and I saw our 40-something year old Spanish professor at Tonic Nightclub.