I’ve been seeing more than the usual amount of discussion about jealousy on various poly boards lately, so I figure this might be a little topical to people. I have pulled out of the air the Definitive[1] Five-Point List of Ways to Fuck Up Handling Jealousy. I am sharing this because I am wise and all knowing about polyamory and I will deign to share my knowledge with you, puny mortal.[2]
1. Blame your partner
“Hey, I wouldn’t be feeling jealous if my partner were doing things right, right? If only she weren’t making me feel insecure, everything would be dandy!”
Making your partner responsible for your feelings is a sure way to mess up a relationship. There is a significant difference in, “I don’t like X behavior” and “You’re making me feel jealous.” If you don’t grok this difference down in your bones, learning about emotional boundaries is a really productive thing you can do for yourself and your relationships. It is not unusual for jealousy to be about personal insecurity.
As Franklin Veaux once commented, “Just because I feel bad doesn’t mean you did something wrong.” Don’t assume that your feelings prove anything but that you’re feeling something.
2. Blame the partner’s partner
“If only my partner’s partner would not make me feel insecure, I wouldn’t be so uncomfortable, right?” (See a pattern?)
Again, feeling bad on your part doesn’t necessarily mean malfeasance on the other person’s part. People aren’t saints, but assumptions don’t help.
3. Blame yourself
“If only I were more secure/better looking/better in bed/more evolved I wouldn’t feel so upset.”
Feelings might be uncomfortable sometimes, but they’re not necessarily because you did something bad, either. Jealousy isn’t always about personal insecurity. Sometimes there really is, no kidding, a problem among the partners.
I break with some of the more New Age polyamorous writers, in that I do not feel that jealousy is always some sort of weird emotional aberration of the spiritually unevolved. It can and often is a personal security issue, but sometimes partners do take us for granted, or are not giving us what we all agreed upon. It’s okay to talk about that.
4. Lie about it
“What’s the matter, honey?”
“Oh, nothing.”
Don’t do this. In a good relationship, it’s okay to say, “Actually, I’m feeling kinda jealous right now. I want to: examine this by myself and get back to you/talk with you about how I’m feeling/have a backrub so I can relax.”
Notice this isn’t making your partner responsible for how you feel. But it is communicating. I mean, you want an accurate picture of what your partner is thinking and feeling, right? What makes you think your partner is any different? When people love each other, they do care how the other feels even if it’s hardly healthy to take responsibility for it.
5. Ignore it
Like physical pain, emotional pain is a sign that something needs attention. There are dozens of reasons why you might be feeling jealous – some of them internal, some to do with externals. Unless and until you sit down and examine them with an open mind and without preconceptions, you can’t know. But if you don’t take a good look at what you’re feeling and why, it is going to fester and infect your relationships.
[1] Not really. It’s the number that came to me off the top of my head. I’m sure my Faithful Readers could come up with more.
[2] <grinning at one of my Guest Columnists> I should be ashamed of myself. But I’m not.
You consistently rock my socks, lady. This is great.
I also have a split with some poly authors on this one. I really think that feeling jealous is okay – even if it is stemming from a personal security issue. I mean, it’s how you feel. We are humans, with backstory and baggage, and we are bound to have issues. So handle the personal issue, deal with it and your partners appropriately, and don’t crap all over yourself for having personal issues about how secure you are. Because you can take a whole trip on the “I’m so unevolved” train which is totally unnecessary and obscures the real work of handling your shit.
One of the more liberating things I think I’ve come to own was the realization that sometimes I am just gonna be jealous and unhappy or feel like something is unfair, and that it’s okay to go there. I actually spend less time being jealous, because it’s a lot faster and easier to root out and get off it when I’m not fighting myself.
I have been dating a wonderful guy for about 7 months. I’ve heard nothing but great things about him from others and he has treated me like a queen since day one, always saying he can’t believe he got so lucky to find such an amazing woman. He hopes for a future with us, and he is very public about his affection (ie, his fb page has our together pic for the profile (mine too) and he includes me in statuses, his friends friended me, etc.
My issue is jealousy. He has lots of friends, female especially. He divorced a few years ago, very painful one, and met people afterwards who he said were lifesavers during that time. He said nothing sexual ever remotely happened nor did he want it to between the girls he calls friends. He said he made a pact with himself never to cheat on a woman, and he would never do it, so I didn’t need to worry about that. But he is on his blackberry all the time. I’m on mine alot, but i noticed yesterday he had 12 bbm chats going on. instead of doing the right thing and asking who all he was talking to, I thought that was me looking jealous, so instead I simply made a comment about how I need to get more bbm friends, to which he agreed! grrr. i felt stupid not saying anything. but i thought i’d just come away looking foolish. yet, here I am at 4:20 am obviously bothered. We’ve had issues with me jealous before. one girl he calls a good friend, but never reared her head until recently, started writing “hey honey! I love you! I miss you! xoxoxoxxo” on his page. I was pissed! He said that she writes on everyone’s wall like that, it was just her. But I didn’t see why anyone would write like that on someone’s wall, especially just a friend who obviously has a gf. sigh. i went off, and I think walls went up with us. once a foundation is cracked, its hard to fix it. so now i’m afraid saying anything about anything is going to make him think i’m a fruit and make him less apt to tell me anything at all.
I know I have jealously issues. I come from a bad marriage where my husband cheated lots. he was killed in an auto accident a couple years ago. i met a guy online (NOT a dating sight, it was a fluke by me looking on a travel sight and asking questions about something) and it was a VERY long distance thing. I would always get the feeling he was talking to others while we chatted (long pauses, etc) and I caught him in lies. I brought that baggage into this relationship, and we’ve both worked hard to not let our pasts affect US. but i feel like I’ll talk this out with him about those bbms, but I won’t ever trust him fully, no matter what he says, what he does, etc. He’s not a saint, I’ve caught him embellishing a story for some crazy reason, and he aplogized for it, but that really cracked that foundation of trust hard for me. I know this problem of jealousy is within me, and I can choose to talk things out and hope for the best, or I can keep it all inside,accepting that I’ll never fullly trust him and just try to concentrate on the good parts of the relationship and enjoy that without letting myself “go” to much. which sounds sad on paper.
thanks for letting me drone on. 🙂 I needed it.
Angie, I wanted to give this some thought before I responded to you.
I have a great solution to working with trust issues, but it takes a bit of courage, especially if you’re worried about looking foolish.
Believe your partner. More than BELIEVE your partner, ACT on what you are ACTUALLY TOLD. It is the swiftest cure to lying that I have ever seen because outside of clinical-level character disorders, people do not plan out lies enough to avoid shooting themselves in the foot if people take them seriously. (If your partner does have a serious psychological issue, you’ll have other clues). If they trust people to act on what they say, most people will tell the truth just for simplicity’s sake.
This article really hits home for me and I think its very good. Hard work, but worth it to grow as a person and build strong foundations with other people! Thank you!
Wow, Angie, I think you wrote about my exact situation. I feel for you. I am personally working hard at determining which are my issues and which are real flaws in the relationship. Lots of reading about co-dependence! It’s definitely not easy. 🙂
I really appreciate this post, it helped clarify what I should be looking at and what may be unproductive. I feel crazy though, trying to work through my feelings and own what I know I must.
I have a lover of the past 9 years and after a deeply intense, monogamous relationship when we met we have only had short interactions a few times. That was until a 7 months ago, when she came back into my life in a big way. She was the one who introduced me to polyamory but was new to it herself. I never tried this or thought about it before (I’m in my mid 20s) but I agree with it fundamentally.
She has had a few other lovers in this time and I have had none. I have spent whole nights without sleep (like tonight) and I feel really hurt and sometimes angry. I usually attribute this to my never confronting these emotions before, because she makes sure that I know she loves me all the time. We are more honest than anyone else in my life, and it looks like it’s all being done responsibly.
Am I crazy to have this bad of a reaction? Am I not cut out for polyamory? I’m afraid of doing something stupid out of spite.
Since I don’t know you personally, Mike, I’ve no real clue if you’re cut out for polyamory or not.
I’d say examining your hurt feelings would be productive. Why do you feel hurt? You feel what you feel, of course, but feelings aren’t facts, nor are they proof of anything but THAT you feel something. This means that it’d be a good idea to examine those feelings and prod at the roots behind them.
I’d say that even by monogamous standards, being upset that someone had lovers when you WEREN’T together is a pretty self-destructive case of jealousy, though, pardner.
I think I’m really used to the expectation that my partner should not be with others. I’ve never seen anything other than a monogamous and usually married relationship in my life until recently.
I only find pain when I really start to imagine her having sex with someone else, like if I know she is with them right this moment. A part of me hates the idea of that, but will replay my images over and over. At the same time my mind says that it’s ok because I trust that she’s safe and it is good for her to have fun and experience different people and things.
I feel like it is jealousy and comparing that fuels the painful moments, and it doesn’t happen often. But when it does, it is hard to deal with. I just want to know if it will get easier or if I’m going to go through this pain without really growing from it.
I want to clarify that she has had 3 lovers since we restarted this relationship 7 months ago but I have had none. My lack of other partners is not entirely my choice but a product of my immediate circumstances. We both have had many partners since we first dated and that gives me no trouble at all.