(no subject)

[novapsyche]

How do you feel about jealousy?

Comments

[kali-ma.livejournal.com]

That's a bit open ended, so I hope you don't mind if I take several approaches...

On my own jealousy - I usually feel a bit guilty, I feel it is a failure on my part to be suficiently loving of my others. Unless it is something that arises more from an injustice, such as, I am jealous if I frequently spend the weekend doing all the housework while other people go out and have dates. (This is something which used to happen more but I whined about it enough and it is getting fixed)
Other people: It is more circumstantial. Overall I think jealousy is a natural result of fear of rejection or fear that one isn't getting their share or what they feel entitled to get. If someone really isn't getting their fair share I think jealousy is understandable - but when jealousy is more of a fear that someone is slipping out from under one's control or otherwise unreasonable and arising from a false sense of entitlement, then I tend to disapprove.
I do tend to judge other people diffrently from myself, I tend to be more harsh on myself. So I try to understand it in others but try not to allow myself to give in to it. But I think jealousy reveals a weakness either way, a sense of dissatisfaction, whether or not the lack one feels is present in reality or not. I can't control other people's feelings. But when I sense it in myself I try to see what is relly bothering me. Like - am I really unhappy that someone else is having a good time, or am I more feeling like I don't get out enough?

[sarahmichigan.livejournal.com]

What I "feel" and what I "think" about jealousy aren't exactly identical, but let me give it a go.

I rarely feel jealous, and I tend not to feel jealous of the things I'm "supposed" to feel jealous about. I do feel twinges of jealousy on occasion, but they're often about the oddest thing. For instance, I don't feel jealous when I see or overhear my husband having sex with someone else. But I've had unexpected twinges of jealousy when he did something fun with one of his partners that he didn't do with me, used a pet name I thought was reserved for me, etc. I think in those cases, it's about wanting to be "special" to my partner.

I tend to have the most jealousy problems when I'm dating a monogamous person, I think because of the threat of loss. With a poly partner, there's no guarantee that they won't leave me, but there's sort of any understanding that they will not necessarily be interested in leaving me just because they have started to date someone new. With a mono-minded person, there is a great chance, maybe even a certainty, that I will lose that person when they start to date someone new.

When others feel jealous of me, I'm not very understanding, frankly. Often, I just can't understand what s/he is getting worked up about. I tend to want to run away from someone I perceive as being needy or insecure. I'm not proud of this, and it's something I need to work on.

[xterminal.livejournal.com]

Green with envy.

[helenangel.livejournal.com]

Necessary evil. I hate being jealous but I can't seem to help myself.

[sophiaserpentia.livejournal.com]

Jealousy happens.

It's always worth paying attention to, IMHO. It can indicate that you are in an unfair position... or, alternately, it can indicate that you perceive unfairness which is rooted in unrealistic expectations. Either way, it's an important indicator of your state of mind.

I like a lot of what lady_babalon wrote.

[pachamama.livejournal.com]

Here's one of the most useful things I ever read about sexual jealousy: by Kathy Labriola, a counsellor who works with poly folk a lot.

[sarahmichigan.livejournal.com]

What a great link. Thanks!

[blackwinterbyrd.livejournal.com]

Jealousy is not a sin.
It is not a failing or something I need to hide from firends and lovers or fix privately.
I read all this stuff about poly and I struggle with the boundaries and nature of my relationships, and I have come to the conclusion that jealousy is uncomfortable to experience, even more so when it is looked down upon. It is not something i need to eradicate so everybody can have a good time. It is not something I need to eradicate so that I can have a good time either. I can have a great time doing things that do not make me uncomfortable.
I am feeling jealous today.
:(

[sarahmichigan.livejournal.com]

Having people ridicule you or "should" on you or treat you like you're less evolved because you experience jealousy really sucks, and does nothing to alleviate the jealousy. I'm sorry you're feeling jealous and uncomfortable.

[netmouse.livejournal.com]

My first reaction is that I feel that jealousy is unfair.

I come to this reaction from the context that a lot of people have been jealous of *me* throughout my life, or competitive with me in other ways that I didn't seek out and that I found interfered with my ability to be friends with them or get close to them. At one point at Grinnell a bunch of people even decided that I thought a lot of myself and that I thought I was too good to hang out with them or something, which as far as my own self-examination would say, was never true.

It's especially frustrating when people are jealous of my popularity or attractiveness, when despite apparant popularity I have trouble making close or supportive friendships and the attractiveness means I sometimes end up having to negotiate my way out of uncomfortable situations with people I would like to spend time with if only their attraction to me didn't make me or them uncomfortable.

I have a friend who would be so happy to find out about a case in which I was having trouble or she had excelled beyond me in something that it really weirded me out - it felt like she was rejoicing in my problems. In a way, she was, because they were making me seem more human to her and giving us a way to connect. But it was still weird. One of the first things she said when she met Bill was "So what's wrong with you?" (yes, she said it to his face).

I have definitely been really lucky in life. I understand that. And I'm smart and learn fast and can do a lot of things, and that's one way that I'm lucky... But it's sometimes hard to really enjoy some of those things in the face of jealousy - take dance... Bill disapproves a little bit of my interest in dance because he thinks it's a type of performance and my main interest in it is to be admired. Well, I do enjoy trying out different things and seeing what I can do, and, sure, I enjoy it when someone enjoys watching me. But I particularly enjoy dancing when I'm with someone -like Rennie, for instance - who can match me move for move and sometimes do things I can't - because I know Rennie won't be jealous of me. I can be myself on the dance floor around her and we're just riffing off each other and enjoying what each other both do. And the rest of my family is the same way. But for the most part, Bill doesn't watch me dance because he's not comfortable with the performance aspect of it. That may not be all, I don't know. I think some of that concern is about conscious, not necessarily sincere, manipulation of someone's emotional reaction. I have to be careful on a public dance floor about that, to figure out the ballance between having fun dancing sexily and accidentally leading on the other people out there. And when I was in high school I remember I didn't really feel comfortable dancing around anyone except my family, partly because some people would make a big deal out of how well I could dance, and I could tell they were jealous or that other people were feeling bad in comparison. There are certainly many types of dance I've not mastered - I have been jealous of people who know those things, on occassion, but I know that with effort and time I could learn them, so I guess they don't make me feel insecure.

I think in general it's better to try not to compare yourself to others, other than to try to identify people you want to emulate and people you want to avoid imitating. Are you okay if you have 1.5 children and a two-car garage? That's irrelevant. There isn't an external standard of okay that will make you happy. You need to be happy inside according to your own standards. And it can be hard to do that if you're stuck on societal standards or comparing yourself to your neighbors or friends or lovers.

first reaction, part 2

[netmouse.livejournal.com]

It definitely helps to have people you love give you external validation and support. And the times I have felt really jealous I can recognize as stemming from times when I have felt I lacked that validation, and saw a person I was hoping to get it from giving the kind of validation *I* wanted to someone else. So I guess one way I could react to people's being jealous of me is to try and give them more validation on their own grounds. 'Cause for the most part I can't give them everything I have. Just not possible. ;) And in most cases something like that wouldn't help anyway... people need to make their own way and feel they have their own space.

Fundamentally someone elses' being good at something (say Art) doesn't invalidate your own space in it, any more than someone's being loved by a person who loves you invalidates that person's love for you. My parents tried to keep my sister and I from competing in Art by making me avoid taking art classes with her in high school - and years later Sarah was still insecure when I did some art and she didn't on our road trip when that was the thing *she* was supposed to be good at. And on our road trip we finally faced that insecurity and discussed how it made *me* feel, when my doing something because I liked to do it made *her* feel bad. There's nothing rational in her insecurity - Sarah can paint in oils, which I, just for the record, can't do, and she's awesome in 3D work, which I've never particularly mastered. Sure, I can draw something that's in front of me and dabble a bit in watercolor and chinese caligraphy. I can also do engineering drawings and drafting. But that doesn't affect whether or not she's also good at what she does, which she is. And it's not like there's a limited amount of art appreciation in the world.

Any more than there's a limited ammount of love.

it's hard to deal with

[bloodlikerain.livejournal.com]

at least for me

[rikhei.livejournal.com]

I generally agree with what others have said. I think jealousy rarely really involves the person who is being envied. It seems like it's more often an issue of the jealous person feeling insecure about themselves, or an issue of a third person (or people) not giving the jealous person validation s/he wants or needs. To that end, I agree with Anne that jealousy is often unfair to the person who is being envied.

But jealousy sucks for the jealous party, either. I don't know of anyone who enjoys feeling threatened or underappreciated, and maybe guilty, if they know intellectually that the person they envy does not deserve their harsh feelings. Moreover, I think jealousy is often hard to work through because it's an amalgam of other emotions. Insecurity, fear, and anger are often hard enough to work through on their own.

Things that have worked well for me, so far, I think? Well, I've actually very recently been envious of Anne because of her interest in bellydance (and her skill in dance). I told her. I do feel guilty at being jealous of her, and I hope I didn't unduly stress her by telling her. I felt it would unduly stress her by me being snippy and pissy without her knowing why. (And moreover, by writing her, I felt I took ownership of the problem and dealing with it. Though I wish I'd written less of why she was perfect, when it's really just her dance skills that are making me feel threatened.)

Also? My age works for me as an anti-jealousy measure. That's kind of weird, I know. But you have to consider that the majority of people of both my personal and professional acquaintance are at least 5 years older than me (they tend to be more in the professional sphere - more like 10 years). I frequently forget this, though. Eventually I remember that I am 25, and this is why I do not have a second master's degree, tenure, a bigger salary, and so on. It helps.

I think there are two main things that can be done about jealousy, in a more general sense:
* To avoid becoming jealous yourself, try to avoid uncomfortable situations. As blackwinterbyrd said, jealousy is not something s/he needs to eradicate to have a good time: s/he can have a good time doing things that do not make him/her uncomfortable. (This is the number one reason I am not poly. I would be jealous, but I can avoid being jealous by not being poly. Yay.)
* If you are the envied party, and feel comfortable doing so, try to provide the validation the person needs yourself. Anne kind of touched on this. At the heart of jealousy is the idea that someone has something another person wants. That something is often a quality or qualities; the jealous wants to be admired, good, and they see that as being similar to the envied. The envied individual can show the person that they are similar by pointing out that the person has good points of his/her own, or by pointing out his/her own bad points. (Anne's friend perhaps takes it too far, to the point of perhaps not providing sympathy when Anne could use it, but the idea of "making [one] seem more human" is a sound one, I think.)

Still, I think jealousy is oftimes natural. There is no limit on appreciation or love, but there is a limit on attention. There are more good books in the world than I will ever have time to read and appreciate; there are probably more men in the world than I (even with my strictly picky nature) will ever have time to love and appreciate. Are those men (and authors) justified in feeling jealous because I can't appreciate them? I think so. But there's really nothing that can be done about it, and that can be hard to cope with. At least when there are human emotions involved: I can't do anything about the fact that all those other people have won the lottery, but somehow I have managed to get over it. ;)

[netmouse.livejournal.com]

The other reason that Jealousy feels unfair is that a lot of the time I don't feel effective or attractive or whatever it is someone is jealous of me for. external messages about that don't make me feel like I am those things, either, though they don't hurt, at least most of the time.