I am a Latino man and I come from a long line of very jealous and possessive men. It is all I saw growing up.
I remember my father telling me when I was very young that you never let another man into your home. Not just when you were away, but ever. Sometimes my mother would wear what I would consider completely conservative outfits and my father would convince himself that she was trying to attract attention from other men. Arguments would follow. There were moments where something as innocent as the way she wore her purse would set things off. That was the environment I grew up in. That was my normal.
It did not stop there. I carried those same lessons into how I treated my little sister growing up. I was fiercely protective of her, far beyond what was reasonable or fair. I had been taught from a very young age that it was my job to watch over and guard the women in my life, and I took that seriously in the worst possible way. It created a lot of unnecessary conflict between us during our childhood and into our early teens. Looking back, I understand how suffocating and frustrating that must have been for her. She was not mine to guard. She was her own person. But I did not have the tools or the awareness to see that then.
It would be reasonable to expect that kind of upbringing to shape how a person moves through the world, and it did. My default has always been toward jealousy and possessiveness. I do not trust easily when it comes to the people around my partner, and I tend to view most men as potential threats given the right circumstances. That is the honest truth about where I come from.
What has changed is what I do with that. I trust my partner. That trust is why I am comfortable with her having male friends and why I do not make it into something it is not. I also recognize that control is an illusion. I cannot and would not want to impose my will on another person. I have seen where that road leads and I want no part of it.
The more honest conversation is about what happens internally. Because those old instincts do not just disappear because you decide they should. They were put there early and they were put there deeply. What changes is the decision you make in the moment when something triggers them. The conscious choice to pause, to check yourself, to remind yourself that what you are feeling is a pattern you inherited and not necessarily a reflection of reality.
That is not a small thing for someone who grew up the way I did. I am not looking for praise and I am not suggesting I am better than anyone. But I do give myself credit for the work it has taken to get here, because it has been real work. Ongoing work. The kind that does not end.
I did not grow up in an environment where any of this was questioned or examined. It was simply how things were. Some of us looked at what we were taught, recognized it for what it was, and made a decision to do better. That process is not always clean or linear and it is rarely finished. But the commitment to it matters.
These tendencies still live inside me. I suspect they always will. The difference is that they no longer drive. I do.
Leave a Reply