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Insights into the nature of jealousy and offers practical tools for identifying and addressing the root causes of jealousy and insecurity in relationships. Through exercises and self-assessment, readers can learn to challenge their assumptions, build self-confidence, and develop healthy communication skills.
Typology: Summaries
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Jealousy is an unusual emotion in that it is an emotion rooted in other emotions. Often, the root of jealousy lies in insecurity, the idea that your relationship with your partner is not stable; it can also be rooted in such things as fear of loss, fear of being replaced, and so on.
For that reason, effective resolution of jealousy relies on tracking down the root of the jealousy, and identifying the emotional responses the jealousy is rooted in. This is arguably the most important step to resolving issues of jealousy and insecurity, and is one of the most difficult, because it relies on an unflinching, completely honest self-assessment and a willingness to explore and understand unpleasant, uncomfortable emotions.
When you examine the things you think may happen if your partner does whatever triggers your jealousy, most often what you find is that the things you’re afraid of aren’t actually true. Knowing that intellectually does not make the feelings go away, but it does give you information about what the feelings are rooted in.
Now, not all jealousies are irrational, and not all jealousies are unfounded. If your partner has a his- tory of cheating on you or betraying your confidence, for example, then it is perfectly reasonable and appropriate to feel that your partner might not be honest with you, or might not do what he or she says. Useful jealousy—jealousy that is a valid warning sign of a problem in a relationship—is a very different animal from irrational jealousy.
It’s not always easy to tell them apart, though, because emotional responses seek to justify them- selves, and can influence the way you perceive the world. It’s possible to find evidence to support almost any feeling, if you look hard enough.
When you’ve looked at jealousy through a lens of critical evaluation, often you’ll find a great deal of insight into the things that underlie those feelings. Now it’s time to start working on the root of the problem.
One way to do this is to go back to the sentence, “I do not like my partner to do X because if my partner does X, then _______________.” Look at the way you fill in the blank. What does it reveal about your assumptions? Does it suggest anything about the way you see your relationship with your partner. The things that it reveals about your assumptions and your ideas about your relation- ship—especially the tacit, unspoken ideas that you may not consciously be aware of—will speak volumes about how to go about solving the issues at the root of jealousy.
Let’s say, for example, that you realize “I do not like when my partner kisses someone else in front of me, because if my partner kisses someone else, that person might kiss better than I do. If that person kisses better than I do, maybe that person is better in bed too. If that person is better in bed than I am, maybe my partner will prefer that per- son to me. If my partner prefers that person to me, maybe my partner will leave me.”
This example shows a number of assumptions, some of which are buried very deeply, about the nature of this hypothetical person’s beliefs about relationships. Are these as- sumptions true? What are they? In this case, a list of hidden assumptions might be:
The way you do this is to find counters to the things underlying the jealousies. These are things which you can use to tell your fears, “No, the things I am afraid of are not true, and here’s why.” They are concrete, grounded ideas you can reach for whenever the jealousies or insecurities arise.
In the example talked about earlier, it might look something like this:
And so on. If necessary, sit down with your partner and go through your list of fears and assumptions with him or her. As goofy as it might seem, you may even find it’s helpful to write down all these things that challenge and reject your fears and in a way you can keep with you in your pocket.
Building a list of things which challenge your fears and your assumptions is a powerful tool because your jealousies are not going to disappear overnight; like living animals, they will seek to protect themselves. When you are feeling an emotional response that you don’t like and don’t want, it is helpful some- times to be able to point to a concrete list of reasons why that response is unwarranted.
One easy trap you may fall into if you are examining your emotions and constructing replacements for your fears and insecurities is in be- lieving that your partner values and loves you for what you do, not for who you are. The danger in making this assumption is that it can lead to the thought that if someone else does the things you do better than you do them, your partner can re- place you with that person.
In truth, people are not inter- changeable. Even if someone else shares all your interests, does all the things you do, and behaves the same way you do in your re- lationship, you still stand alone. The things that give you value are unique to you; the same experi- ence with two different people has two different and unique flavors. You can not be replaced, not even by someone who does all the same things you do—because it is who you are as a person that makes you special.
Don’t look to things outside your- self for specialness; don’t assume “I am special because I am the only one that my partner does thus-and-such with” or “I am spe- cial because I am the only person who knows thus-and-such about my partner.” An idea of special- ness that depends on things out- side yourself can easily lead to in- security, because if someone else does those things, then you won’t feel special any more. On the other hand, an idea of specialness that comes from within can never be taken away.
Sidebar: Personal value
By and large, emotional responses are learned things; and like all learned things, we become good at them through practice. Jealousy and insecurity are no different. In a very real way, a person becomes good at being jealous or insecure by practicing being jealous or insecure, and becomes good at being confident and self-assured by practicing being confident and self-assured.
The last step to building a more secure and less jealous approach to relationships is to practice being secure. The more you behave like a person who is secure and self-confident, the more you become a person who is secure and self-confident. It almost sounds too easy, but it is an extremely powerful technique. Mental attitudes are learned just as a skill like playing the piano is learned.
All new skills feel awkward, uncomfortable, and unnatural at first. It makes little difference what kind of skill we’re talking about; the first time you try to ride a bicycle or play a piano, it feels ex- tremely uncomfortable.
The same is true for learning new mental and emotional attitudes. If you are accustomed to think- ing of yourself as a jealous person, if you describe yourself as being a jealous person, then you are practicing being jealous; it feels natural and right because you’ve practiced it to the point where it’s become natural. Similarly, each time you welcome thoughts or feelings that say you aren’t good enough, or that your partner doesn’t really want to be with you, you’re practicing that insecurity.
Practicing security and self-confidence leads to being secure and self-confident.
This requires a lot of courage. It requires deliberately exposing yourself to the very thing that makes you feel jealous; and when you’re up to your ass in alligators, as the saying goes, it can be mighty difficult to remember that your objective was to drain the swamp! Jealousy feels awful, and it makes you want to do anything you can to make the feeling stop, right now. Getting through it once and for all means challenging it, and that means not taking the easy way out.
Another common way that people try to resolve jealousy is the “structural remedy”— controlling jealousy by controlling the form of the relationship, in hopes that if the relationship has the right shape, the jealousy will simply never arise.
Your jealousies and insecurities are things you can understand; and more importantly, you can choose how you behave, no matter what you feel. You are responsible for your own actions and for the consequences of those actions; no matter how strongly you may feel threatened or insecure, you still have a choice. Choices which give in to the insecurities strengthen them; choices that take a stand against your insecurities weaken them.
I am a firm believer in the power of affirmative choice. Choosing to behave in the ways that a secure and self-confident person behaves takes you closer to being secure and self-confident. There are many tools that can help make those choices, but in the end those tools can’t do the work for you; at some point, it becomes necessary to make those choices and stand by them.
Choosing to behave as if you are secure and self-confident in the face of jealousy is difficult and un- comfortable. It’s a choice that’s worth it, however.