#12: What do I do with my jealousy

Ya of course I feel jealous!!

Jealousy crept into my life at an early age, this insatiable, starving green eyed monster my young self couldn’t make sense of. In my first relationship as a teenager, I let jealousy consume me in an endless mind game. I constantly thought about the girls my boyfriend might be crushing on, picturing scenarios where I got replaced. I was experiencing so many of these feelings for the first time, and the overwhelming, torturous waves of jealousy made me want to shove those feelings away to a distant place. I tried so hard to will myself into being the sort of laid-back dream girl he’d feel lucky to be with.

Attack that green eyed-monster with emotional self-regulation and care from your partners

The more I hated jealousy’s stranglehold on me, the more I wanted to figure out where it came from and why it had such a powerful grip. It didn’t feel right to police his thoughts or who he could hang out with—In fact I had my own crushes and did not want anyone telling me who I could fantasize about, who I could message on AIM, or how I spent my time. I had very strict parents growing up, and resisted any kind of control anyone else could have over me. I also realized that just like how I could be really into my boyfriend while still catching feelings for others here and there, the same was probably true for him too. I didn’t know what polyamory was or have the words for consensual non-monogamy back then, but I had this sense that love does not get diminished when you have feelings for multiple people.

I learned that what I was really craving from the relationship were a number of tangible things— quality time and words of affirmation. I wanted to spend weekends roaming the city together and wanted him to check in on me when I was pulling an all nighter to finish an essay for class. These simple intimacies would’ve helped me feel more solid and secure in our bond. It revealed to me that the feelings of jealousy weren’t about a fear of him being attracted to other people. They were a signal that I wanted something else in the relationship, in this case it was reminders of his care for me.

Many relationships and many years of maturation later, feelings of jealousy still regularly creep back into my life. But now I try to let the feeling drift through an open, unobstructed space in my mind and my heart until it loses steam. I’ve learned that jealousy isn’t quieted by controlling your partner— it thrives off of anxious, insecure feelings and the illusion of being in control. I suspect that controlling my partner would not lead to less jealousy, but would breed resentment and give him reasons to be less honest with me.

In every relationship, I’ve recognized how crucial it is to create a framework of speaking very openly and honestly about all my emotions and vulnerabilities. By naming these insecurities, it’s like the other person now has a blueprint for how to make me feel loved and supported in ways I crave most. Being this vulnerable has brought my partners and I closer, because we’ve been able to navigate needs and feelings that might otherwise go unaddressed. Also by divesting myself of trying to possess or control my partners, I’ve found freedom in allowing the relationships to grow and change in their own unpredictable ways that have brought us much closer.

I felt some of the sharp pangs of jealousy flaring up recently when my partner started getting really close and intimate with a new woman in his life. It wasn’t about the physical stuff between them— it was that they spent hours on the phone in the middle of the workday developing an emotional bond that had me spiraling. While unpacking all those feelings with my partner, I initially blamed it on how this woman, who I also knew, was coldly blowing me off by ignoring my texts. But I realized at the heart of it was that I felt starved for that same curiosity and energized attunement my partner had for her—and sometimes I wanted that attention in the middle of the workday! Once I voiced that, my partner made more of an effort to take the genuine enthusiasm he had for me and express it more ravenously and explicitly which created the reassurance and closeness I longed for. I think people in monogamous relationships would benefit from these same vulnerable, and explicit conversations around unmet desires but in polyamory it seems there’s more of a permission structure for these discussions.

A lot of the stories we’re told around romantic relationships follow this tired arc— the beginning of a relationship starts with the whirlwind intoxication of falling in love, followed by the inevitable period of monotonous dissatisfaction and dwindling passion. I refuse to accept this as an inevitable trajectory. While it’s true that many relationships fall into modes of repetition over time, having an openness at the center of the relationship (even if it’s not literally opening up your relationship) can create all these opportunities for novelty that allow you to keep growing and expanding together.

A lot of polyam folks see jealousy not as some toxic force to be purged, but as a natural side effect of being radically honest about desires and attractions outside the relationship. They see these feelings as something that will naturally arise when you introduce multiple partners into your dynamic. Jealousy seems to be framed as only a negative emotion but we’ve been able to understand other emotions like anger with more nuance. Anger can be constructive when it pushes for positive change, and similarly jealousy doesn’t have to be purely destructive and corrosive either. Jealousy has certainly driven people to commit horrible acts of violence and self harm, but there are ways to take away the green eyed monster’s power and use it to your advantage. Jealousy has been one of my greatest teachers.

Instead of giving in to possessive impulses like telling my partner to stop spending so much time on the phone with this woman, I ask myself: Is their connection actually impacting our relationship in a tangible way? Or is this jealousy a signal that I’m craving something more from our dynamic? Jealousy has helped me get clear on my own unmet needs and insecurities that might otherwise stay buried.

How I feel rising above feelings of jealousy and possessiveness…..jk I am a normal person with the full range of human emotion that includes blind rage and jealousy!!

There is this concept in polyamory called compersion—used to describe the sympathetic joy you can feel for another person that does not involve or benefit you directly. It’s the opposite of jealousy, where instead of feeling possessiveness or envy toward another person, you experience joy and celebrate their positive experiences alongside them. Polyamorists had to coin this new word because the English language didn’t have one for that experience of supportive, unpossessive love. We’re often taught that love is associated with possessiveness, and this doesn’t necessarily have to be the case. Compersion requires empathy to genuinely celebrate your partner’s happiness, balanced with self-awareness around what you do and don’t want for yourself.

With some work, I’ve been able to feel compersion pretty often in my relationships. It’s a radical mindset shift, but one that’s liberated me (mostly) from feelings of scarcity and possessiveness. Compersion has allowed me to hold the complexity of feeling insecure about my relationship in one moment and genuinely joyful for my partner’s other bonds the next. I feel compersion when my partner is excited to go on a date, or when he finds a partner to do activities I’m not into, like when he went skydiving with a partner. Zero jealousy and zero fomo— I was just happy they were able to have that experience together.

One question I hear a lot is whether I would “leave” my partner if I met someone who I liked even more, and I think that could require a whole other post, because it’s loaded with a lot of monogamous framing that I need to unpack to answer it. But the reality is that someone could always “leave” you in any type of relationship, monogamous, polyamorous, or otherwise. More often when we’re drawn to others, it’s not because our partner(s) are lacking. It’s just natural to have persistent desires and attractions outside your existing relationships. Non-monogamy allows you to actually explore and process those feelings instead of repressing them. I also try to make room for all sorts of positive relationships and don’t feel the need to slot people in and out of positions in some invisible hierarchy.

Insecurity is inherent to any relationship structure. Polyamory just allows it to be brought to the surface so you can actually address it. I get why polyamory seems threatening from our current cultural mainstream point of view that treats anything beyond monogamous, two person coupledom as unnatural or degenerate. I know there is a sensitivity and trauma many have experienced around infidelity. Love is also so bound up with scarcity and possessiveness that many have argued is just a fact of nature. But all polyamory does is acknowledge the reality that it's natural to feel attraction beyond your partner sometimes. It lets you engage with that in an honest, ethical way instead of expecting someone to repress those feelings.

Monogamous or not, pretty much everyone experiences jealousy at some point. As one of my monogamous friends put it: “I get jealous in my relationship all the time. It seems nice that in non-monogamy I’d be able to name exactly why I’m feeling it. Because with monogamy, so much of the time you just get told ‘you shouldn’t feel jealous, because I’m devoted to you.” Non-monogamy creates more space to actually unpack those feelings without shaming them.

Some questions to ponder or answer in the comments:

Do you see jealousy as a sign of love, a personal failing, or a natural human emotion?

In your relationships, do you feel comfortable discussing feelings of jealousy with your partner(s)?

How do you balance your own needs and boundaries with your partner’s autonomy and freedom in a relationship?

In what ways do you think societal narratives and relationship norms influence your personal beliefs and experiences with jealousy?

Whew….what a difficult and daunting post to write! I can and will say so much more on the topic of jealousy but I feel good starting here. Coming up, a post about how I meet other partners.