Mama Java, help me.
I’ve identified as poly since I knew what the word meant. I used to have no concept of romantic jealousy and assumed, foolishly, that this made me an enlightened being. In reality it’s left me totally unprepared for jealousy when it does hit.
I have two partners. My partners each have their own partners. One does not make me jealous at all, but the other makes me so jealous I could scream. Whenever I see them kiss or flirt or touch each other, I feel frustrated, insecure, afraid, the whole gamut of jealousy.
I don’t know how to make it stop. I’ve spoken, at length, with my partner about what my jealousy could mean. We’ve addressed aspects that I’ve found helpful. We’ve defined what the relationship is, and part of what I find threatening about it. Envying their NRE, not wanting to be intimate with my partner’s partner, etc. She’s reassured me and made me feel loved.
But I still feel jealous. Whenever I see them kiss, in particular, the negative emotions come rushing in again.
Am I expecting it to be too easy? Do I need to communicate more, set better boundaries, or any of the other magic relationship words? Or can I just not be around my partner and her partner when they’re flirtacious?
Any advice would be most welcome. Thank you.
If it makes you feel any better at all, being blindsided by unexpected jealousy is a not to uncommon experience in polyamory. I’ve had it happen, and I’ve seen it reported from some remarkably sensible and together poly people, so I’m not sure that never feeling jealousy has a damned thing to do with being enlightened. In fact, it’s possible that until you’ve been tested, it’s impossible to call oneself enlightened – if one ever should.
I don’t know how to make it stop. I understand why you’d want to. It hurts. You say you’ve analyzed it a great deal, and it’s good that you’ve done some self-exploration. One thing I would like to point out (and I’m shamelessly stealing from Franklin Veaux’s “Jealousy Management for Love and Profit or, how to fix a broken refrigerator“) is that you say that your partner’s partner makes you feel jealous. Nope. Not quite. She’s a trigger to the cause of your jealousy. It’s a subtle difference, but one you might want to explore.
There is no magic cure, I am sorry to say. I’m even sorrier to see you talking about communication, boundaries, etc. as somehow magic fixes. They’re not. They’re tools, and tools that require consistent, moderate effort on a long-term basis. I think that’s a serious problem in our perceptions of mental issues. We’ve read too damned many stories about Freud or Jung where they claim that they’ve gotten to the root of a problem and just the right combination of words or ideas will mean the problem is all fixed. We’re looking for the epiphany, that sudden flash of light that will suddenly make everything all better. Mental issues don’t work that way, dammit.
What does work, and this works for a lot of uncomfortable emotions, including jealousy, is a combination of analysis and (occasionally tedious) daily practice. So, what can you practice?
Being in the moment
I’ve mentioned this in columns before, but I don’t expect people to have all eight years of this blog memorized. It bears repeating. I was once hospitalized for suicidal ideation. In common parlance, I went crazy. The tools I learned to keep from going crazy again have been incredibly beneficial when it comes to Life, Love, and Relationships. The biggest thing I learned was to be in the moment. As a simple example, let’s say that I’m driving to a meeting that scares the hell out of me. It could be a career make or break pitch, a foreclosure meeting at a bank – anything that’s really scary. So, I’m dwelling on it as I’m driving down the road, thinking about what I’m going to say or do. Now, in point of fact, I’m driving, not directly experiencing that meeting. Any experience of that the meeting is coming up is because I’m putting my mind on it. What if I put my whole mind on the act of driving? Driving doesn’t suck and isn’t frightening to me. It doesn’t make me upset or anxious. But it is what I am doing at that very second. Certainly paying close attention when one is driving is a responsible thing to do, yes? Focusing totally on that isn’t going to change the outcome of the meeting. But by damn, getting there not a bundle of nerves is going to help.
How does this apply to jealousy? IN THAT MOMENT, when you see your partners kiss, you feel a deep reaction. So, that individual moment sucks. Not trying to blow that off. But when you’ve excused yourself to go to the bathroom because you’ve had too much coffee, you’re not experiencing seeing your partner kiss someone. You’re peeing. Never whistle while you’re pissing. <EG> Bring your mind to what you’re actually doing in the moment. This helps remove the possibility of a snowball effect when you start thinking about situations you really aren’t in charge of.
Is this easy? Not really. It takes a lot of practice. I still find it an amazing tool to help me when I’m trying to be logical about anything going on in my life and keeping stress from getting to me.
Finding out the things that make you feel loved and asking for that
You mention that you’re getting verbal assurances you are loved. That’s cool. A lot of people find that they feel loved and cared for whent they get verbal assurances. Is that what really works best for you? Maybe you need something else and aren’t aware of it enough to articulate it. Find out.
Try a little exercise and spend about fifteen minutes completing this in as many ways as possible:
I feel most loved when________________.
One of the things you’ll find is a pattern. For me, it’s little acts of service. Bringing me a cup of coffee makes me feel all warm inside, easy and dumb as that is. We all have our quirks. Make sure you really know what yours are so you can ask for that thing.
Sometimes, you just don’t like how you feel
I’m the last person in the world to say that you should suck up an unhappy relationship. But sometimes you get feelings out of nowhere that don’t make sense to you. Being able to tolerate them is not a horrible thing. Again, not advocating any sort of Patient Griselda here. That’s nonsense. But sometimes we Just Don’t Make Sense. People sometimes don’t, dammit. Life would be a lot easier for me if we did!
However you slice it, jealousy sucks to experience and I hope that something here will work out to help you get more centered and deal.
Cheers,
Mama Java
Two comments come flying to the front of my brain:
1. To Ms Java: “[You say]…your partner’s partner makes you feel jealous. Nope. Not quite. She’s a trigger to the cause of your jealousy” This is a subtle difference? What exactly is this difference, for it is too subtle for my eyes. And supposing the difference is meaningful, so what? How does it change the way the writer ought to handle the situation?
and
2. To the writer: You’re obviously having a hell of a time dealing with some pretty new and pretty negative emotions. My reaction on reading the story is to ask why are you watching them make out in the first place?? Seriously, aint nothing wrong with just saying “Yo, this makes me uncomfortable and is actually asking me to be a part of some pretty intimate stuff that I’m not all together on board with. Can we agree not to do kissy face stuff when it’s the three of us? Thanks”
You know? As in, am I doing this to myself because for some reason I think that I’m supposed to? Like, maybe, that’s what a good little polyamorist would do?
Good advice as always ^___^
And jealousy can really take some serious unpacking — I’m almost never jealous unless I’m feeling some profound personal insecurity, whether it’s about the person I’m in a relationship with (“What is my standing with you? Do you love me? How do you define our relationship? Is this other person more important to you than I am, in a way that means I might be replaced?” — note that NONE OF THESE actually have much to do with my partner’s other partner at all!), or whether it’s about myself or my life.
I very recently experienced a terrible sense of jealousy and loss, because I moved to Texas to live near my boyfriend, and we specifically set things up so that we’d be neighbors, living just down the street from each other. Neither of us wants to cohabitate, but we we both really happy with being in walking distance of each other.
Now, a year later, due to a sketchy apartment-management company, I’m being forced to move out of my new home (as you know, but I’m sharing the anecdote here, so I figured I’d include the relevant info), and the whole process has been incredibly fraught with stress and uncertainty, for financial and practical reasons. And I am *very* upset that I’m going to lose my boyfriend as a neighbor, because he’s not in a position to move, and the place I’ve found is about 20 minutes away — not an immense distance, but a big deal when I’m disabled and don’t drive much. I worry that it will affect how often we see each other, and how much time we spend together.
So, when he mentioned that he was thinking about, should he get a job in Plano (the town I’m hopefully moving to if everything works out), moving into the same complex where his other girlfriend lives, I told him that the idea was making me feel really jealous and insecure. I’m already upset enough about losing him as my neighbor, and the idea of not only losing him as a neighbor, but having him become Pam’s neighbor INSTEAD, really upset me.
And I explained to him that it’s mostly because this whole forced-move thing has been making me feel unsafe/insecure/stressed/fearful/etc., and that I am mourning the loss of our wonderful arrangement here, and the loss of my home . . . so the idea of having something important to me (being neighbors) taken away and THEN GIVEN TO SOMEONE ELSE really upset me.
But, here’s the thing. First-off, I communicated my feelings, made it clear that they were MY feelings to own and deal with, and explained WHY I was having those feelings — it has a lot to do with being scared and stressed about this move (I have to be out of here by the end of next month, and I still don’t have a new place 100% sewn up), and being sad about the loss of our wonderful neighborly arrangement, which I’ve loved.
It has NOTHING to do with Pam “making” me jealous, or anything about their relationship — it’s that I’m scared and uncertain, and it felt like rubbing salt in the wound to have *Pam* now be the person who can walk to his house and have impromptu visits, when I’m losing that privilege by virtue of geography.
But, you know what? Because we know how to talk to each other about this stuff, he let me express my fears, he was comforting and awesome, he talked about how he wanted to live close to BOTH of us, and how he preferred to live in an apartment complex where he knew at least one person — so, while I still don’t like the idea, it’s not a problem in our relationship.
However, if I’d projected it as being jealousy about THEIR relationship, or seeing Pam as a threat, or making it about doubting his love for/commitment to me rather than recognizing that it’s a manifestation of my stress about the housing situation . . . that would have led to problems.
I’m not especially over being jealous at the idea of Pam getting to be his neighbor. But I’ve done the analysis and daily-practice thing, and I’m able to articulate the roots of my feelings, and while I’m not completely over them, it’s also not causing a problem in my relationship with Josh . . . which is the important part, in the end. I can have the jealous feelings, acknowledge them, and then go on with my life, rather than letting them rule me and control my behavior.
And, hopefully, once I’m settled into my new home (wherever that winds up being), and our relationship has stayed awesome, and I’m no longer anxious about potential homelessness, those feelings of jealousy will fade. But even if they don’t, they don’t get to control me and ruin my life and make me miserable.
Er, wow. Sorry about the novella! o__O
@Pinkie:
” This is a subtle difference? What exactly is this difference, for it is too subtle for my eyes. And supposing the difference is meaningful, so what? How does it change the way the writer ought to handle the situation?”
The partner’s partner in this scenario is not MAKING the writer feel anything or react in a certain way. The writer is HAVING FEELINGS when they watch their partner and their partner’s partner kiss.
Saying that someone is MAKING you feel or act a certain way implies that you have no agency, and that they are controlling you. Saying that you have feelings when you see certain behavior, but that you have the power to how you choose to react to those feelings, and what actions you choose to take, puts the power back in your own hands.
It doesn’t mean that you can stop yourself from having those feelings, necessarily (the mind is a wondrous and sometimes incredibly frustrating thing!), but it does mean that you don’t have to let the existence of those feelings control your life. You can acknowledge the feelings, try to figure out what’s really going on to cause them, and address the underlying insecurities/uncertainties/etc., but you can’t do that if you believe that someone else is in control of how you feel about things.
“2. To the writer: You’re obviously having a hell of a time dealing with some pretty new and pretty negative emotions. My reaction on reading the story is to ask why are you watching them make out in the first place?? Seriously, aint nothing wrong with just saying “Yo, this makes me uncomfortable and is actually asking me to be a part of some pretty intimate stuff that I’m not all together on board with. Can we agree not to do kissy face stuff when it’s the three of us? Thanks”
That is a VERY good point. While I don’t think it’s fair to ask a partner not to kiss their partner in front of you (as in, snuggling, kissing hello and goodbye, the occasional affectionate smooch), it IS fair to ask that makeout sessions be restricted to privacy — there’s no reason to force yourself to watch your partner being intimate and sexual with someone else, just to get your Brave Little Poly Toaster Merit Badge.
Even so, you still have the power not to watch — you can get up and leave, read a book, make plans with friends, etc. But it’s important to both set your own boundaries (“Hey, guys, get a room if you’re going to get that hot and heavy, okay?”) AND to check whether you’re trying to be controlling of your partner’s other relationship/s — are you asking something reasonable, or are you asking them to refrain from all affection in front of you?
Again, you’re the one who controls whether or not you’re present for these interactions, and you can decide how you choose to respond. Hopefully, the writer’s partner and their partner are willing to be respectful, compassionate, and communicative — but I ALSO hope the writer is willing to unpack their feelings of jealousy and to figure out whether it’s actually insecurity or fear of the other relationship. (Hell, it could even be squeamishness — I’m not terribly keen on watching my partners make out with/grope people I’m not in a relationship with, so we’ve all respectfully agreed to keep it PG-13 around each other for everyone’s comfort!)
Most of the time, I am so comfortable with Poly that I wonder how I somehow never thought to apply this to my life before I turned 42. I have always been out of step with the way our mainly monogamous society frames jealousy as a way to show you care.
This doesn’t mean that I don’t ever feel jealous. Mostly I fight with envy, when my partner is out with his wife at a restaurant that I like, or they are doing some project together. I want to be there too, but, this is THEIR date night, or their reconnect time. It tends to expose the uncertainty I feel with my metamour. It’s been a little more than a year, and I like her, but we don’t hang out together, she and I. So, because we see each other less, and talk to each other less there’s lots of room for my overactive imagination to fill in the gaps with questions of whether she is really ok with me or not.
Then I take a deep breath and remind myself that she’s a blunt and direct person and she would TELL me if I were causing trouble, and I go find something else to do to keep my mind busy.
I still get envious of the restaurants though. Ah well.
When everyone ilvonved is acting like a grownup, relationships can be pretty easy. Easy =/= fun all the time and by easy , I mean, doesn’t feel like trying to walk through sucking pool of mud and blackstrap molasses in a pair of rubber boots , I do not mean that it is totally effortless.That sensation of wading through molasses and mud? Pretty clear indicator that something is wrong. It is not a sign of a healthy relational situation. Also, it helps if people act like effing grownups and it helps if people can avoid getting caught up in the ideal of what they want as opposed to what is real.