When you are a grumpy girlfriend, most of the time your main focus is to get away from pain. You want to stop being grumpy, stop being jealous, stop taking everything personally, stop overthinking… the list goes on. Very rarely do you spend an equal amount of time thinking about what you do want.

The “get away from pain” focus is totally understandable because when we are in pain, that’s the immediate threat to our survival. Potential future pleasure is not the highest priority. First, we need to survive. Later, we’ll have the luxury of thinking about pleasure.

That, however, doesn’t mean that future pleasure and benefits from changing aren’t important. So in this post, I want to give you a little peek into the life of an ex-grumpy girlfriend. What is it like on the other side? What’s better? What, if anything, is worse?

Let’s dive in.

Oh, and the ex-grumpy girlfriend is me. Hello! 👋🏻

I got my life back

This is definitely the most significant benefit of “coming out on the other side” of grumpiness and jealousy. I used to spend all my time worrying, feeling awful, and engaging in behaviors that were being fueled that my negative emotions. I wasn’t actually doing what I wanted to be doing… I was doing what I felt that I needed to do to be okay.

Here are some of the things I’ve started doing since becoming a happy, confident, relaxed girlfriend:

I go to bed when I want to instead of staying up until my gamer boyfriend feels like going to bed (at like 2 am). I used to lay awake for hours with intense anxiety, wanting to “keep track of what he was doing”. Today, we rarely go to sleep at the same time ever and I don’t make that a problem. He enjoys his evening/night alone time and I enjoy sleeping.

I can enjoy my alone time when he goes out with friends. I can even say no to going to parties that I don’t want to go to because I no longer feel the need to “keep track of him”.

Since I know myself, what I’m triggered by, and my programmed reactions, I’m now in control of how I show up in the relationship. After 3 or so years, I’ve learned to handle all the day-to-day triggers and can manage all my reactions.

I focus more on what I want and what I want to do, rather than focusing on what is fair, right, and equal… or what my partner “should” want. Today, I believe that neither of us has to do things we don’t want to do. So if I want something done I’ll do it myself or ask my partner for help. He is free to say yes or no. I’m free to do it or not. I prioritize happiness and free will over being right and everything being fair.

It’s safe to have a sense of humor again

I used to be a pretty funny person before I became a grumpy girlfriend. But somewhere along the way, my humor disappeared. Every single word my partner said was scrutinized and interpreted in the worst possible way. All that dark humor we used to share had now become evidence of my partner being a bad person… even though I knew, deep down, that he wasn’t.

Pretty early in the process of dumping the grump, I realized that I was getting offended by everything on other people’s behalf. I was the internet, personified in our relationship. And let’s be honest, nobody wants to be in a relationship with all the people on the internet haha.

I learned how to lighten up, take a joke, and most importantly, choose how to interpret my partner. I cannot emphasize enough the importance of choosing how to interpret your partner.

Anything they say can be interpreted in 1,000 ways, and none of them are necessarily right or wrong. I could never be sure what my partner was thinking and feeling back then and I can’t be sure what he’s thinking and feeling now. So my interpretations aren’t dependent on “reality”.

I can tell you this much: MY life is a whole lot better when I choose to interpret my partner kindly, and with a sense of humor. MY life is better when I don’t take everything so seriously. MY life is better when every single little thing doesn’t offend me.

I… like myself

Everyone told me to “work on my self-love” in order to overcome my jealousy and insecurities. But let’s be honest, that advice sucks. Because no one knows what that means… really. Just standing in the mirror saying “I love you, I’m amazing” is not going to change a thing.

Ironically enough, learning to like myself was actually a byproduct of all the work I did to overcome grumpiness, jealousy, and insecurity. It wasn’t the key to doing it.

When I learned to feel my feelings instead of reacting to them or taking them out on my partner, I was soooo impressed with myself.

When I was able to act normal instead of bitchy when my partner went out with friends, I blew my own mind.

When I stopped viewing other girls as threats to my safety, I could see that I’m pretty great too.

And when I made peace with all the worst-case scenarios by daring to feel any emotion without fear… oh man. I felt like a f***ing superhero.

The changes I made, made me like myself. I didn’t have to like myself in order to make the changes.

If you are a grumpy girlfriend, I want you to know that all of this is possible for you, too. I don’t think that we will ever be exactly like those girlfriends who are naturally non-grumpy and non-jealous. We are always going to have to think a little bit differently and process things in a certain way to get the same results.

But you know what? I think that’s pretty freaking badass.

Being a “naturally happy, confident, non-jealous girlfriend” is not superior to working your butt off to become one.

I am grateful for the challenges I have experienced and what I’ve gone through to come out on the other side. It gives me a very unique perspective on things, it has taught me invaluable tools that apply to all areas of my life, and it has allowed me to help others who are struggling with the same thing.

Ready to start your own ex-grumpy girlfriend journey? Let’s go. Read more about my program here.