My expectations are probably too high. I don't look at other men or form personal relationships with them. My husband is a people watcher. I was married to a man who had affairs and don't want to bring in baggage. How do I deal with my feelings if I see my husband look at a woman? I don't want to push him away or accuse him. He is faithful. He looks at all people and finds them interesting to watch. Yesterday he looked (too long) at a very large breasted blonde dressed to attract attention. I pretended not to notice. I just want to have peace and do the right thing before God and give Him time to work on me and him. We have only been married 7 months. I think I am too jealous but I need to know where to draw the line and not just blame myself for overreacting when there really is something to address. Thanks! <img border="0" title="" alt="[Frown]" src="images/icons/frown.gif" />

A friend and I were talking about just this thing yesterday at work. She said that whenever her boyfriend did this she told him that when he was with her she expected him to respect her and not look. At least not so obviously. So think of it as being respected and not jealousy.

Dear Its Me,

Silence is the right answer when you don't have anything pleasant thought out to say.

So let's think of some pleasant, yet poigniant things to say.

"You know, I was trying to define the difference between looking and oggling."

Another approach is to use the example of the blond, and mention to your husband, that you would like to have a signal to communicate to him, to put his eyeballs back in their sockets, and to pull his tounge back off his chest.

I mean just some kind of remark, so he can realize that you are feeling upstaged.

I had a lovely girl friend who would become dejected, when my eyes got rivited on some bouncing boobs. She would not really admit that it hurt her, but I could see the hurt. That was part of love, and I was lucky to have that much love from her. I would ordiarily be able to find some way to divert my attention, by doing something with her, away from the line of sight of the distraction.

It is nice that you are directly in touch with your feeling uncomforable with your husband's looking turning into oggling. I could suggest a thousand phrases for codes, but you and your husband should have fun coming up with some secret code, and changing the code as the need arises. In additon to the code for oggling, there should be a suggestion for an activity which move you, as a couple, out of the line of sight.

My wife sometimes rags on me a little bit too hard in front of other people. So I asked her for a back-off code. She said I could use the word RED.

Nice Ideas in your post,

Quipper
Husband of 28 years, raised 2 challenging kids, still struggling

<small>[ November 18, 2003, 12:48 AM: Message edited by: Quipper ]</small>