Is Jealous Love In Your Relationship ?

If malice or envy were tangible and had a shape, it would be the shape of a boomerang. ~Charley Reese

He that is not jealous is not in love. ~St. Augustine

The jealous are troublesome to others, but a torment to themselves. ~William Penn, Some Fruits of Solitude, 1693

What is jealousy? Is it the tie that binds or the wedge that drives us apart? What purpose does it serve in our lives and relationships? What drives us to become jealous? Is jealousy envy?

Jealousy is a reactive state that conveys the negative internal chatter and emotions of insecurity, fear, and anxiety over an anticipated loss of something that the person values, such as a relationship, friendship, or love. Jealousy often consists of a combination of fear-based emotions such as anger, resentment, abandonment, rejection, grief, and disgust… just to name a few. Envy, on the other hand, is a reactive state of discontent and resentment fueled by and linked with a desire for obtaining the possessions or qualities of another… sort of like an attempted energetic larceny. Larceny is defined in the dictionary as illegal taking and carrying away of personal property belonging to another with the purpose of depriving the owner of its possession. Does this sound familiar? Ever feel this way before? Truly, who has not… on the playground, at the high school dance, in family and social relationships, in friendships, on the sports team, or at your place of employment.

The roots of jealousy run deep in our evolutionary history, serving as a potential deterrent to infidelity. Jealousy rears its ugly green-eyed head when a perceived threat is lurking in the perimeter of an intimate relationship. A significant other talks to another person at a party and smiles… a rival is born. A spouse goes on business trip with a co-worker or boss of the opposite sex. We view the rival of our desired person’s attentions as if they ooze an aura of special attributes or qualities that we think we could never have or perhaps that we have yet to develop. Jealousy can be our intuition telling us to go within to realize something deeper about our own self or telling us to establish a deeper level of communication with our friend, partner, spouse or colleague… or it can lead us deeper into our shadows.

The shadow aspect of jealousy is that it can be so self-destructive or self-sabotaging when it creates behaviors that can drive away the relationship or object we most desire. When we dance in the emotions of anger, resentment, or rage over a perceived real or imagined abandonment, we can unwittingly push the person away or, by our accusations of possible infidelity, cause the person to contemplate: “Why not go ahead and commit the crime for which I am accused, tried and jailed already”.

When we are preoccupied with how unfaithful others are to us, we become distracted from our own emotional pain. The “gift” of jealousy is that it is almost always a signal to Look Within to listen to the Inner Still Small Voice. Only through contemplation can we gain clarity about the situation at hand and our true intentions fueling our reactive emotional state.

Are you feeling jealous? Red flags signaling jealousy include feeling out of control in a relationship, fear of losing your friend or lover, lack of trust, anger at real or imagined attention that another person is giving to something other than you (humans, animals, jobs, sports or hobbies).

What leads to jealousy? Jealousy is typically a sign of an insecure person and/or someone in an insecure relationship. Jealously often stems from a sense of inadequacy or powerlessness, fear of the unknown, or anxiety about being unlovable. People often convert fear to anger, which they regulate by trying to control a partner, friend, co-worker or child by violating their trust and rummaging through their personal belongings, phone, computer, Facebook/Twitter account, while perhaps making accusations and using other tactics that unwittingly may drive them away emotionally and/or physically; thus creating a self-fulfilling prophecy that reflects their own worst fears.

All human emotions exist to help us explore who and where we really are in the world of our own creation through the mirror of our own perceptions. Jealousy is a way to distract our self from our own negative thoughts or emotions (fear, guilt, shame, anger, resentment, feelings of abandonment) about our life. Jealousy doesn’t necessarily have to do with love. You don’t have to like someone to feel jealous. It also comes from selfishness. Jealousy can be used as a mask in that some people who have been unfaithful them self will suspect or accuse others of doing what they have done. People can use jealousy to control a partner, controlling who they talk to, where and when they go, access to finances, etc. In short, jealousy can be used to make people feel more powerful when they have low self-esteem and a sense of their own inadequacy or powerlessness. However, the real bite is that the more they try to soothe their emotions by being controlling, the more powerless they feel, because then they create a dependency on their partner’s response to feel good… a vicious circle.

At its worst, pathological jealousy can lead to obsessive and delusional thinking. Essentially, the more you incessantly chew on the same endless mind-chatter over and over, the less reality testing you are able to do. How could this not lead to huge errors in judgment, inferences and suspicions?

On the flip side, we often use jealousy as a test… starting with our earliest peer relationships. What is sibling rivalry about anyway? We often provoke it in our family or our partner to test the strength of our bond. Jealousy appears to measure our level of caring in a relationship.

For instance, if you have been out on a few dates with a new love interest, a small dose of testing for jealousy can be a means of measuring the strength of interest by the other person. This might be done by stating that you can’t go out on Saturday night because you have a previous engagement or another date. If the other person responds in a mildly jealous manner, you may perceive this as an expression of caring or a measure of commitment. This could be used as a test as to whether it’s worthwhile and safe to invest more time and emotion in this relationship. For some, the threat of losing an object of affection is a test of how much you desire it.

Tips to Combat Jealousy:

-Allow yourself to feel your underlying fear/anger that is causing the reactive jealousy. Understand the feeling you are having. Sense where you feel it in your body. Is it in your stomach, chest, shoulders, throat? Once you have put a ‘face’ on the underpinnings of your jealousy and understood where it affects you in your body, it is time to begin to transform the fear, anger or other emotions behind the situation. We have a variety of guided and mindfulness meditations as well as EFT (Emotional Freedom Technique) tapping protocols for transforming the beliefs and emotions that keep us stuck in unhealthy patterns such as intense jealousy.

-After you have understood your emotion and where it is coming from, you may or may not wish to discuss your feelings with your partner, before you let your assumptions go too far. If you opt to discuss the issue with your loved one, be sure that you are expressing from your heart. Get into your heart first (check out our Loving Benefactor meditation at digstation.com or in our books) and set your goals for a constructive conversation. Don’t participate in the ‘blame game’ by saying “You do/did this or that”; instead, take responsibility for your emotions by saying “I feel this way when I think this”. Recall that we are not a victim of any one or any thing except for our self; no one makes us jealous, we choose to be jealous.

- What are you learning about yourself from your jealousy? Consider that we are reflections mirroring the world we create; and others will reflect back to us our own thoughts or beliefs in our relationships. Ask your self: “What is going on internally and why am I attracting this situation to me?” You may also ask: “What is the gift for me in this situation?” We have a wonderful guided meditation to assist with connecting to Universal Wisdom to answer such questions and to see the clarity of any situation.

-Reconnect with your True Essence to feel your value, inner strengths and abilities. Download our True Essence guided meditation from the link on our website to digstation.com. (We also have a “Who Am I?” meditation that you can do with your partner in our books.) Once you have glimpsed your True Essence, you will find that you have no reason to ever be jealous of anyone else. You are incredibly skilled, beautiful and talented just as you are. Besides, no one’s attentions can truly be ‘lured away’ by another person unless the person has a desire to go to begin with.

-Decide to have a nurturing relationship with yourself. The Obstacle of Lack of Self-Love can be an impediment in any relationship as you can only love someone else as much as you love your self. We address this fully in our books and seminars and give easy to use exercises, tools and techniques for removing this roadblock. If we do not love, respect or have compassion for our own self, why would anyone else have compassion for us either as we are showing by our own actions that we are unworthy of respect or compassion…. something to think about.

Mild jealousy can reestablish the base of our commitment in relationships. Intense or pathological jealousy in a relationship can be a sign that it is time to do some very serious introspection to create a more healthy relationship that is filled with less drama and more joy and inner peace.

Marion Ross PhD. & Tracy Latz M.D. M.S.
http://www.12keystoshift.com
http://shiftforwomen.wordpress.com
http://shiftyourlife.com