Deconstructing jealousy

Silly :) I want to put up with you for a very long time

Only one sentence to slaughter that dragon, jealousy… at least for now. A dragon I did not know leeched inside of me, and one I am not proud of owning. Let’s have a look at how I had unknowingly nursed it for years.

I live in an open relationship already of many years. I met my current girlfriend last year and we hit it off. Seriously hit it off. Among other things, there is the age difference and the challenges of dating long distance…

The more we kept seeing each other, the more I began to realise that this was not an ordinary relationship. This was one of those that bring profound change. She is still finding her path. I was set in my ways. And as it usually happens, change catches you unprepared.

Jealousy and open relationships don’t mix well. I hadn’t really experienced jealousy in my recent relationships. And by now, I considerd myself having ‘outgrown’ it. After all, I am not an insecure teenager anymore.

A big mistake.

The dragon attacks when you least expect it. One night after she had gone out with a friend I felt it wake up inside me. The pang on your stomach. The nervousness all over you. I had been experiencing symptoms in the few weeks prior, and was now convinced of the intruder.

Jealousy is an irrational fear.

I am an engineer and thus I navigate my world dissecting situations into smaller pieces, trying to find a way to comprehend. At this time of an utmost need, I found an article that helped me put things into perspective. I formulated two conclusions:

• The reason of my jealousy was the fear of loosing her.
• There is a reason for this fear to exist.

The author of the article summarizes the self perpetuation of fear well:

“If my partner does these things with someone of the same sex as me, then I might lose my partner, because someone else might give her the same things I give her. If I lose my fear of losing my partner, I will no longer have a reason to ask my partner not to do these things. If I don’t have a reason to ask my partner not to do these things, then my partner will do them, because I know she wants to do them. If my partner does these things, I will lose my partner, because then someone else will give her the same things I give her. So I better not get over my fear, because if I get over my fear, then I won’t have a reason to ask her not to do these things, and that means she’ll do these things, and that means…I’ll lose her!”

But don’t worry! It was easy in the end. Jealousy is just an irrational emotion, stemming from the brain’s attempt to prevent losing something precious.

Why me? Why now?

The part of the problem which remained unresolved, and which confused me the most, was the fact that I have never experienced jealousy with my last few partners. I thought about this and realised that:

I have always found a flaw in my previous partners.

For example, one was a smoker. While I cared about her and we had a nice relationship, my feelings never evolved past a given limit. I did not have a fear of loosing them because in my mind they were “already gone”. Because of the way my current girlfriend and I connect, I simply cannot find a flaw in her. She became so important to me that the fear of losing her exists within my primal brain.

Simply, I just really love her and I the destructive feelings of jealousy are an unwanted side effect.

I have suffered badly in the past.

Let me tell you a secret. I’ve only fell deeply in love 3 times in my life. My first serious girlfriend of 5 years was an American girl. We were too young, and after a failed attempt to build a life together she left me and shattered my heart into pieces. While in retrospective a good thing, it took me about a year to recover. The second one was my French girlfriend, a psychologist good at playing games. Despite being polyamorous in the beginning, we went our separate ways after her boyfriend asked for exclusivity. Again, it took me a few months to recover. The third one was now.

She came into my life and with her care and affection, slowly built herself a path into my heart. My guard was down, I opened myself completely, naked and vulnerable.

Once you let someone that close, fear of rejection and loss is natural. It is almost a ‘confirmation’ that you truly care.

Girlfriend’s input: Yes, there is a saying in certain cultures implying that unless your partner experiences jealousy over you, he does not truly love you (going as far as: Ain’t true love without a bruise or two… yes, that is an actual saying in my home country.) However, it is safe to say that giving way to one’s jealous tendencies, or ‘unleashing the dragon’ if you may, is sooner or later going to end that relationship, in most cases. The golden rule: Rationalise, rationalise, rationalise! Don’t let your insecurity lead to exactly what you fear. I have to admit however, a playful administration in small doses can be very hot (key word – playful).

How do I kill the dragon?

I simply remind myself:

• I will not allow my jealousy to harm my relationship.
• I know I cannot be replaced that easily. I know what I’m worth.
• I know how strong the relationship is. I know how much effort it has taken to build it.
• I might need my partner’s help with conquering he dragon, and that is okay.

Can my partner help with my feelings of jealousy?

For me, simply communicating my girlfriend’s intentions more clearly helped put me at ease. The guy in the article puts it nicely:

“In my case, R and I had never really discussed her relationship with T; nor had we talked about, in any capacity at all, what her intentions with T were or what effect, if any, that would have on her intentions with and her relationship with me. Put most simply, I saw her and T together, I had no idea what that meant for her and me, so I became afraid of being replaced. The fear of being replaced, in turn, led to the jealousy.”

Our brain is constantly making sense of the world, from the signals and it’s surroundings. A brain left in the dark makes it likely to build highly inaccurate conclusions.

Imagine sending someone a warm text message about the details of your first date.

And all you get back is: Ok.

Suddenly, those three symbols encompass much more meaning than if the answer was longer (and more… proper). You’d probably assume that person isn’t all that excited after all, while in fact, they’ve agreed and might just detest texting or were busy.

Anyone living in the age of instant messaging knows the incredible importance of the smallest details, such as the “last online at…” of Whatsapp (that everyone is disabling).

But… my partner has so many people around him/her!

She calls everyone ‘a friend’. And sometimes she adds “when I say friends, I really mean just friends”. Most friendships are just that, friendships. There is a lot that has to go right for a relationship to evolve into something special, so you can see how silly is it to see them as threats.

I do not need to know about every guy she exchanges with. What I need, is not to be left guessing based on the bits of information that my intuition puts together (often incorrectly).

We already had gone over a similar incident as we were on holidays. Before I arrived, she had been seeing a married couple, hanging out with them at the beach, and going out at night. She wasn’t giving me details, apart from clearly being drunk each night. I wasn’t feeling great until she asked if it would be okay to experiment and have a threesome with them. My immediate reaction was of joy, for all the trust she was putting in me. Having the experience myself, I told her that I would love for her to do so and the fear went away. Because she told me, I understood what the relationship was about, that it was something she was experimenting with, and that it was not a threat to what we have built together.

I understand her need, and more importantly, her right to experiment, and to meet other people. I actually want her to, I want her to grow. To be with people. With a guy with a six pack. With a girl. With a super smart guy that will broaden her horizons. With a married couple. It is my intention to give her the freedom to do all she desires.

How do I talk about it? And do I?

I put most of these thoughts into an email and sent it to her. We had a beautiful exchange afterwards. My feelings surprised her. I guess same as they surprised me. If hadn’t trusted her enough to confess, I would probably have tried to deal with the problem on my own, which would most likely have resulted in my insecurity striking back with vengeance in a future interaction.

She was very supportive and understanding. Which of course made me feel even closer to her and even more thankful.

We were able to clarify and establish our expectations about the general direction of or relationship. Removing the last of the unspoken doubts – the power of communication (!), can do nothing but help a relationship.

I had a bad dream recently. About being an intruder. In case it is not yet clear, my boyfriend and I are in an open relationship, in which I am the third person. He has a family (fully consenting), with which he spends majority of his time. I am the extra person. I have never told him and I have perhaps never even admitted to myself, but I do feel the bite of jealousy too. When he tells me how he’s making crepes for breakfast each Sunday morning. How he walks to the farmer’s market. How he has friends over. I envy the family life, because it’s regularity and ordinaries is so vastly different from my life of constant uncertainty and change. But I know now that it’s just a longing for something I am not even ready for yet.

It was her suggestion that we write a piece together about jealousy. Here is our exchange:

Her: I added an idea for an article about jealousy too.

Me: Based on my rant from yesterday and that link I sent you?

Her: Maybe…

Me: I’m glad i can talk with you about this so openly. I don’t want to feel jealous. I guess deep down we all have lizard brains playing tricks on us.

Her: We do, and that article explained it really well.

Me: I want to be like the guy in the movie “A beautiful mind”, who cures himself from schizophrenia by analyzing the situation.

Her: I should watch that film. Rationalizing is a skill. That’s why I no longer enjoy horror games. Anyway… it really means a lot that you tell me these things.

Me: I thought it was more of a burden.

Her: It would be if you had just said you were jealous and I should stop seeing my friends.

Me: Unfortunately that’s the reaction of most people. And I don’t want to be like that.

Her: You know I’d tell you if I was seeing anyone else or had slept with anyone, right?

Me: Yes I know, which makes things easier. I don’t need to know about all your friends, I am not a control freak. So from now on, I will assume that if you don’t mention the fact, it means they are just interesting friendships.

And then the exchange took a beautiful turn:

Me: And the other thing I wanted you to know, is that I am in this with you for the long turn. As long as you put up with me.

Her: Silly :) I want to put up with you for a very long time

And that is the most beautiful vow for a relationship in the 21st century.