Hi Matt,

You have demonstrated some amazing insight into your behaviour and made signficiant progress into your recovery. Instead of letting your need to control your behaviour (e.g. asking your wife to delete her Facebook account), you can recognise that a) it is not going to help and b) that it is likely to feed into your negative emotions. I agree with K Schmidt in that you should probably delete Facebook from your phone and computer (though your partner should keep hers) because it is a lot easier to relapse into that behaviour when the temptation is all around you. Like any addiction, the first few weeks will be tough but as you stop feeding the beast, it gets weaker and weaker by the day until it no longer hold sway on you.

It sounds like you still have emotions to process from your past relationship and unless it is acknowledged and given time to grief, it will sneak up on you on the worst possible moments. I remember once reading something that our mind is like a garden and if we are not vigilant in weeding out negative thoughts, they will eventually kill all the flowers. Try to start a day off with positive thoughts, such as the things that you feel greatful about in life as they have a way of shaping how we feel for the rest of the day. At the evening before you go to bed, think about the events of the day and how you feel about those things. At the end of the day, allocate a bit of time to go through the what happend that day and how you feel about certain events. For example, when you had dinner with your wife, you felt threatened by the other guests in the resturant. But instead of judging yourself thinking what a silly thought it is or what is wrong with you for feeling this way, sit with that feeling and tease out what instigated that emotion. Once you understand it, reframe it into a positive light. For example, you acknowledge that your wife is a beautiful woman and of all the people she could have been with, she choosed to share her heart and her life with you. Therefore, there must be something about you that she finds appealing. This probably includes some of the things that you consider as “flaws” because when someone is willing to show their vulnerability to another person, it demonstrates a lot of trust and courage.