Jealousy Junkies

In my next post, I'll be giving some practical advice about how to weather acute jealousy with your relationship intact. But before I do that, I want to talk about the phenomenon of a jealous identity.

People who identify as jealous types are attached to their experience of jealousy. Giving it up would mean losing something that feels essential to their personality.

If you are in a relationship with such a person, you must accept the fact that nothing you say or do, and nothing anyone else says or does, is going to make him or her drop the “jealous lover” role. Only a genuine change of heart – one motivated from within – will allow him or her to let go, to see that disengaging from jealousy in no way diminishes the Self.

Disengaging from jealousy does not mean that you will always be free from jealous reactions, or from experiencing the emotions of envy and fear, which are the principle components of jealousy. What it does mean is that you conceive of jealousy as something transitory, something that passes through you, not as part of yourself.

It also means that you stop thinking of jealousy as something that's being inflicted on you. It arises internally in response to external stimuli, but it isn't anyone's fault. It simply is, and then, as soon as you decide you're done with it, it's gone. Allow it to be, and then allow it not to be.

Yes, you'll feel it again. Yes, you'll get over it again.

However, there are those who will always be in thrall to jealousy, to one degree or another, because they choose to be. No matter how much pain their jealousy causes them, and no matter how much their suffering pains everyone else, they'll continue to cling to it.

Some potentially perma-jealous types include:

1. The Monogamous Martyr: has a poly mate, but self-identifies as monogamous. S/he seems to support the poly partner, but this is because s/he buys the “love means self-sacrifice” idea hook, line, and sinker. The unpleasantness of jealousy is a cross to bear, and the bigger the cross, the bigger the love.
2. The Perfect Lover: may pay lip-service to the idea that love is not a finite resource, but secretly believes that this is true only for “ordinary” loves, not for a “true” love. This person often idealizes a particular connection, staking everything on its being an exception to the rule. S/he deals almost exclusively in superlatives, and needs constant reassurance that the idealized object of affection recognizes the singular nature of the love they share.
3. The Tortured Artist: believes s/he needs negative emotions of all kinds, including jealousy, to be creative and vibrant. S/he cultivates situations in which pain can function as a proof of existence, and fears letting go of negative feelings because s/he equates peace with death.