With My Son, Is it Paranoia or Jealousy?

Reader’s Question

Hello. I am trying to figure out whether I am being paranoid or should I be worried. The mother of my son has a friend that I feel is trying to be too much of a parent to my four-year-old son. She recently tried to tell my how much my son loves her; when she realized how quiet I got she then said “oh but I’m sure he doesn’t love me as much as he loves you”. I get the feeling she is trying to compete with me over my own son. She always brings up an incident when we were all together watching a movie and my son chose to lay on the floor beside her rather than sit on the couch with me. As if she is trying to rub it in my face that he chose to be beside her over me. She tried to put my son’s love for people in order — telling me that my son loves his mom and I, then her. She has even tried to overrule my parenting with my son present. My son’s mother also has two other boys from a previous relationship, and her friend doesn’t show nearly as much attention to those boys as she does my son. I am no longer together with my child’s mother, and I have voiced my concerns to her about her friend. Am I being paranoid or is this cause for concern?

Our Clinical Psychologist’s Reply

You’re not imagining things, but I suspect the situation is more unusual than you think. This “friend” is being mean to you, trying to embarrass you, and trying to make you feel uncomfortable. Oddly, it has nothing to do with the four-year-old child. It has everything to do with You and the mother of your son. The “friend” of the child’s mother is threatened by you, perhaps fearing her friend will reconnect with you and leave her in the cold. For this reason, when everyone is together, she makes a strong attempt to not only make you feel uncomfortable, but show you as unloving and incompetent as a parent. She doesn’t need to do this with the other two boys as their father is not threatening her relationship with their mother in any manner. She may feel she is being protective of your son’s mother, trying to protect her from entering into a risky relationship. We may never know her true agenda but the purpose of her behavior is very clear. She may also feel you threaten the relationship SHE has established with the child. She may consider your son’s mother as her best friend, feeling you may somehow weaken their relationship. Jealousy in all these forms is pretty ugly. You weren’t being paranoid. She was being nasty and jealous.