Girlfriend [23F] gets super jealous when I [22M] go out or hang out with friends. Getting worse due to covid restrictions ending. [1.75 yr relationship]

Tldr: gf gets super jealous and pissed off when i go out with friends. Including drinking or getting high with friends (note she does drugs too occasionally and has gotten high without me). Or if there's a girl she thinks is my type. How can I help her work through this?

My gf cannot stand it when I go out with friends or hang out for a night in (with some exceptions). Basically if alcohol or drugs are involved she will usually hide it pretty well leading up to it and then get passive aggressive afterward or sometimes just normal aggressive.

Also if there are girls that will be there that she doesn't know well she gets upset about that after too. She says it all stems from her past relationship which by all accounts was pretty traumatic and toxic for her. He didn't cheat on her but apparently he would really obviously gawk at girls in public. She said she would also get the same emotions as she gets when i go somewhere involving alcohol or drugs as she did with him. She says it's an extremely overwhelming feeling and she doesn't know how to stop it.

Example: I am in school and she isn't currently and I'm part of a club and one of the members suggested we have our next meeting to plan a field trip in the future at a bar since we've all been holed up due to covid. I told her about this and she didn't really say much. I went to the meeting only had 2 drinks but we stayed there a while chatting after the meeting stuff was over. Was just 4 of us. There were girls there and she knew one of them but the other she doesn't know as well.

When i got back she was texting me and was clearly unhappy and responding minimally. So i tried to talk to her about it and she basically just didn't want to communicate what was wrong. We eventually started talking about it. And she went off about how uncomfortable she felt that whole evening i was at the bar and how she really doesn't like it when I go and do stuff like this. She also said that she doesn't want to be that person and tell me how to live my life but she also didn't really provide me any assurances she was trying to change this.

She knows what my type is and the girl she didn't know fits it spot on so she also told me she gets upset because she thinks I'm flirting with this girl or other girls at other outings. When i probe deeper she says she has no hard reasons to believe i am doing this and has never witnessed me do it and that it's coming from her experiences with her ex.

I don't really know what to do. I dont know what to suggest to help her work through this. I reinforce that i love her and am attracted to her pretty frequently I'd say. She says she needs more reassurance that i am not flirting with these other girls but idk how to go about that. Like did she expect me to say as I'm going to this bar "oh and btw I am not going to flirt with ________" to me that would seem super sus.

Neither of us have been super social since COVID and we only dated a few months before lockdowns started but I'm worried as things start to ramp up now this is going to get worse and worse.

Any advice appreciated.

Submitted November 20, 2021 at 01:47PM by row_awayyy https://ift.tt/3nD3iLz