This post is also available in: Español (Spanish)
I was talking to my friends a few days ago, and in the middle of the conversation they asked me if I’m a jealous person, in the context of romantic relationships. My immediate answer was, “I’m not now, but I used to be a little.” My answer generated another question, and that question inspired me to write about this common feeling.
Before I tell you about the second question, let me give you a little perspective on my jealousy level when I was married. When we got married, I knew perfectly well who my husband was — he was far from being a saint, if you know what I mean. But I decided I wanted to enjoy my marriage, so I left the past behind and started the new chapter as a married couple with no intention to judge him for his past. If I saw a good-looking woman, I would tell him to take a look. I was that type of wife.
I knew he was a social butterfly, but he did his best to show me he was totally committed to the marriage. During our first years of marriage, I didn’t experience a crazy number of situations that made me jealous. Overall, my level of jealousy was low, but it was still present. On a few occasions, I confronted my husband because of the way he talked to certain women. I used to tell him I trusted him, but I didn’t trust them. My discomfort in those instances was of course because I wanted his attention to be only on me.
The most extreme thing I did out of jealousy was to accept his invitation to share his phone location with me, 24/7. I didn’t ask for that; it was his idea after I found out he was cheating on me the first time. I want you to understand that this was the most extreme thing I did out of jealousy, so you can determine what my jealousy level was at the time.
Now the question that brought us here was, “What made you drop the jealousy and stop it completely?” I answered simply, “I came to understand that I don’t have control over other people’s actions, no matter what I do.”
I know this answer sounds super easy, and I also know it’s not. But I have a quick way to show you that it doesn’t matter what you do or what you say — when someone has an inclination to cheat, they’ll do it. I found out about a second infidelity directly from my ex-husband’s 24/7 location sharing. See? It doesn’t matter what you do. We don’t have control over anyone.
The moment I confronted him about the second infidelity and he admitted it, a light turned on in my soul. Of course I was really hurt, but I finally understood how much energy I was wasting on being jealous. I decided to analyze my behavior around jealousy. Even though I had heard a million times that jealousy is nothing more than insecurities, I didn’t really see that it was true until I started to pay attention to my own behavior.
I have explained before that I feel certain emotions internally, but I explain them with a physical sensation. Like, gratitude feels like a warm hug. Remember that? Well, jealousy feels like a very annoying itch.
I did such a deep internal study about my own jealousy behaviors that I developed two theories about it. If I see jealousy from a compassionate point of view, I firmly believe our minds use it as a way to protect us. In fact, all negative feelings are mind mechanisms designed to protect us. I know this concept isn’t easy to understand, but think about it for a moment. When you feel jealous, your mind is fighting really hard to get your security level back to normal. Your mind wants you to feel secure, so it uses the jealousy tool to get your attention so you’ll do something about it.
If I see jealousy from a more technical perspective, I recognize it comes from ego. Your ego wants control, and it does whatever it takes to keep that feeling of power up and running. The ego needs constant external validation, so insecurities will always be part of the game whenever we leave the ego in charge.
The more you stop the ego from controlling our lives, the less jealousy you’ll feel. I don’t say this because I read it somewhere; I assert it with total confidence because I did this experiment myself. Please be clear that you can absolutely see jealousy from the compassionate point of view and should never beat yourself up when you’re in the middle of a jealousy attack, but it’s imperative that as soon as you become aware of what’s going on, you focus your attention and drop the ego to keep it from being in charge.
The truth is that it doesn’t matter what you do, you won’t ever have control over other people’s actions, my friends. So, I invite you to check your level of jealousy and pay attention to how much energy you use to feed it. Can you imagine how many beautiful feelings you can invest your energy in if you remove annoying, itchy jealousy from your life?
Love,
Irene
