Source: Photo by Gokil on Unsplash
If you have ever felt jealous, your partner may have said to you, “What’s wrong with you? You shouldn’t feel jealous. Get over it. You have nothing to feel jealous about.”
Or they may say to you, “I don’t understand you. You don’t make any sense.”
“Get over it.”
It’s as if you told them that you have a severe headache, and they said to you, “You shouldn’t have a headache. Get over it.”
But jealousy is not like a small bump in the road that you travel over and keep moving on from. In fact, the word “jealous” is derived from the Greek word for “zeal”—reflecting the passion, overwhelming intensity, and often destructiveness of the waves of feelings that consume you. To be jealous at times is to feel possessed, driven, sometimes as if you have lost all control.
What is going on in your mind when you feel jealous? It’s a kaleidoscope of intensity.
First, there is a wave of intense emotion—sometimes a combination of overpowering anxiety, anger, and confusion. The anxiety is focused on the fear of losing the affection and attention of someone you feel is essential to your happiness. You may think, “I can’t live without them,” as you fear that someone might take them away or that your partner will betray you.
As your fear rises, you see threats in the smallest gestures—your partner looks at someone with what seems a newfound desire. You begin doubting yourself, asking yourself if you have lost your allure as you dread that your conversations have left your partner bored and wanting more elsewhere. And as your fear creeps to imagining the end of your relationship, you begin to wonder how you could ever live without this person who has become your life, the center of your existence. In fact, everything seems at stake. And you feel powerless.
You may begin to read into each comment—each gesture—a hidden meaning. You believe that your partner is now attracted to someone else—and, if they do find anyone attractive, you conclude that you cannot be attractive to them anymore. One cancels out the other.
You feel anxious around the person you love, but then you feel even more anxious when they are not around you. What are they up to? Who are they with?
Your imagination takes over, and you think, “I can’t live with this uncertainty.” So, you question them, you look for clues, you may even follow them, check their messages, or ask your friends what they know. Maybe you are right in your suspicions, but even when your fears are not confirmed, you worry now about not knowing what you don’t know. “What if?” follows “What if?”
Second, there is the anticipation of humiliation—feeling that you will be cuckold, rejected, and exposed as the “loser” in a battle you never wanted. Your fear of betrayal and humiliation fuels your anger, makes you want to retaliate against the person you love—because you think that they will leave you or—even worse—treat you as second-best to their new love. You may accuse them, only to be rebuffed with hostile defensiveness—only to alienate the person you fear losing.
You may derogate the “competition,” without knowing if they really are competition. And this may backfire as your partner wonders why you are on the offensive. If they defend the innocence of another person, you then conclude that they are taking “their side” against “you,” which adds to your distrust.
Third, your jealousy leads to more confusion. How can you be so anxious about and angry toward the person you claim to love? How can love and hate live together? How can you rid yourself of these conflicting and over-powering feelings?
In fact, your confusion tells you that you cannot tolerate the ambivalence that intense love often brings. It’s as if you want clarity. Part of you wants to cling and gain reassurance. But another part of you wants to destroy the relationship so that you can at least have “clarity” and “closure.” And this closure might arrive when they finally do leave because they do not understand you. They do not understand the turmoil that comes with love—at times—the zeal, passion, and lost dreams that jealousy entails.
And you only hope for one simple gesture. That they tell you that they love you—even with your jealousy. They accept you—even with the turmoil. That they are here for you, even when you are angry. And that, with all your imperfections and their disappointments, you are in it together.
Source: Photo by Alvaro de la Rica on Unsplash
The Relationship Room
I like to think of this as The Relationship Room. Once you understand the difficulty of feeling jealous—the confusion, conflicts, and suffering that this brings—you may both realize that a loving relationship is like a large room filled with objects, memories, experiences, images, and conversations.
Your goal is not to get rid of the jealousy—it is to build a relationship large enough to contain it. Build a relationship that says, “I accept your jealousy and mine, but we are in this room together, and we can accept that tidal waves of emotions happen to both of us.”
“And, if we make room for these feelings and try to understand what it is like for both of us, we can put the jealousy into the larger context of a larger life. A life worth living together. Even when we both disappoint each other. An imperfect life that is our life.”
