Men and Jealousy : A Dangerous and Potentially Self Destructive Force!

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Eager to clarify some information I was given; I contacted an acquaintance (let’s call him John) with whom I had not spoken in quite a while. I was hoping he could answer a question for me that related to the death of a person we both casually knew. While the conversation was fairly brief, John dropped a mild bombshell (is that an oxymoron?) on me. Not long into the conversation, he revealed that he resented the fact that I achieved my goal of becoming a college professor while he did not. In fact, he went even further and declared that he had developed a strong dislike toward me for several years and that it took him a long time to come to grips with his feelings. Eventually, he succeeded and moved on within the last year. John is now the headmaster at a preparatory school in the Midwest.

I told John his comments surprised me, but I still appreciated that he displayed blunt candor instead of keeping his feelings to himself and reveling in a perverse form of disingenuous hypocrisy. We both were very candid, yet professional, in how we responded to one another. He even conceded that the conversation was somewhat healthy for him. I replied that it was a cathartic exchange for me as well. We wished each other well before parting ways.