Navigating Jealousy
You and your partner are not broken for feeling jealousy.
Jealousy is a key pathway to self-love and healthy relationships. Neither you, nor your partner, are broken for dealing with jealousy. This post demystifies jealousy by breaking it down into its parts so you can make peace with jealousy and peace with your partner(s).
I was compelled to write this post because I witnessed jealousy take hold of half-a-dozen clients this past week. A client frowned, angry at herself for feeling jealous, their eyes looking at me - communicating “am I broken?”. Another client clenched their fists, angry at their partner for being jealous - “they are just too insecure.” Fingers were being pointed either outward or inward.
In either case, jealousy had a meaning to the client: someone was broken. This is likely because western culture demonizes jealousy. However, jealousy, like any other emotion, is a normal response - and can be healthy if we remove any shame that accompanies it. I’ll do this in 8 parts.
8. Jealousy is Normal and Makes Sense
Jealousy is first reported in babies as early as 18 months old, with some other scientists entertaining the idea that a nascent form of jealousy even appears as early as 10 months old. Jealousy is a normal emotional response to something important - just like sadness, joy and anger. Sadness isn’t shameful, it’s a normal reaction to losing something we care about, so why is jealousy shameful when it’s a normal reaction to feeling worried about losing someone important.
I believe that jealousy, like sadness and joy, communicates something important, if you listen to it instead of running away from it with the shame that western society puts on the feeling.
When I learned to (imperfectly) turn towards jealousy instead of running away from the emotion and pointing fingers at my partner or myself, I found deeper peace than I had ever felt before.
7. What is Jealousy?
Jealousy is the feeling that someone important might abandon you.
You may feel scared (“I could lose them!”) or angry (“I’m important! This is pissing me off”) or sad (“I don’t feel special”). Sometimes we feel multiple of these feelings at once, which can feel confusing and erratic. No wonder jealousy is called the green eyed monster - imagine feeling angry one moment, then heart-broken, then scared and, then all the sudden angry again. It can feel like whiplash.
Sometimes clients come to me thinking they are feeling jealousy when they are actually feeling envy. Jealousy means you are worried about losing someone important. Whereas envy means you want something that someone else has. Envy is useful because it is a compass that points you to what you want in your own life.
Jealousy points you towards how you can build more security and certainty in your relationship with yourself and your partnership. Let’s break jealousy down into its ingredients in a math equation.
6. Jealousy is a math equation
Jealousy = uncertainty x Investment.
At the very beginning of a relationship you’re likely to feel little to no jealousy. On one-hand, you feel ~100% uncertain about this person, there’s no security yet and you hardly know the person. But, since you haven't embedded your life or dreams or friends with this person, you feel very little investment. So you feel roughly, let's say, ~5% investment (if that). Thus, you’ll feel an easily manageable amount of jealousy.
100% uncertainty X 5% investment = 5% Jealous.
Little to no jealousy
When you’ve built a secure long term relationship, you’re likely to feel little to no jealousy. You feel very little uncertainty, you’ve gone through the ups and downs and you return towards each other each time. Your uncertainty is say, 5% (if that). At the same time, you are 100% invested, your lives are interwoven. You share friends, rituals, lives. You rely on each other through hard times, perhaps you live with each other or share a family. Thus, you’ll feel an easily manageable amount of jealousy.
5% uncertainty X 100% investment = 5% Jealous.
Little to no jealousy
When you’re first starting to feel invested in a relationship, you’re likely to feel a lot of jealousy. You’re starting to feel invested in this person. Perhaps they start to represent a dream for the future - perhaps you start to interweave your lives a little more. Perhaps you’re starting to get accustomed to their texts and body. Let’s say you’re at 50% investment. However, you still hardly know this person so there’s tremendous uncertainty, say 80%. Sure, you’re having a great time, but maybe you’re wondering whether or not they will stay with you if they meet someone really sexy or awesome, or if they see your insecure parts, or if you fight about something? Thus, you’ll feel a more scary amount of jealousy.
80% uncertainty X 50% investment = 40% Jealous.
This might be scary!
Let’s say you feel like you’re in a secure long-term relationship, but all the sudden something in your life changes: one of you loses a job, or you’re considering opening up your relationship, or one of you gets a job in another part of the world, or you just had a huge fight. Perhaps you’ve had a child and now a lot of your attention isn’t going to each other, but rather the child. In any of these cases, you’re now in a situation you may never have been in, and you don’t know what’s going to happen in the future - in life, not just in the relationship. You might see that the equation changes. You’re 100% invested, but all the sudden uncertainty jumps to 50% (or even higher!). Thus, you’ll be more likely to feel a lot of jealousy even if nothing has changed in the relationship.
50% uncertainty X 100% investment = 50% Jealous.
This might be scary!
5. Dealing with Jealousy Together
The antidote in all these math equations is to recognize that once you build or rebuild security (and remove uncertainty) with each other and yourself, the jealousy will go away. Building security is a collaboration. Do you turn towards each other after a fight? Do you still profess your love after a partner shows a vulnerable or insecure part? Do you affirm your partner after you flirt with someone else?
The key is to rebuild security and turn towards each other. If you’re opening your relationship and starting to date someone else, continue to affirm and return to your partner and with time it won’t feel as uncertain and the jealousy will have been temporary. If you had a big fight but then reconnect and repair (and have done that repeatedly) you’ll remove uncertainty, build security, and overtime your relationship will be even more secure that jealousy will be less likely. It’s not the absence of ruptures in a relationship that creates security, but the presence of ruptures and repairs that creates a real foundation of security, because you start to feel secure even in the insecure.
Jealousy is a collaboration. Building security is a collaboration. Part of handling jealousy is building a healthier relationship to your own jealousy, and the other part is building security in the relationship. Both remove uncertainty and create security.
If you often find yourself reaching out to your partner to handle jealousy, this may push them away from showing love to you as they may feel guilt - consider learning how to turn towards yourself to deal with jealousy.
If you (like me) often try to become self-reliant when you feel jealousy and don’t step into vulnerability and ask for reassurance - consider that asking for reassurance might be a quicker way to rebuild security, despite being very vulnerable if you came from a family that is shamed asking for needs or praised strength.
If you often turn away from your partner who is experiencing jealousy because it feels uncomfortable, consider setting boundaries or working on the parts of you that don’t love yourself when someone you love is hurting and assume their pain means something about your character. This will allow you to show up for your partner more.
If you’re often trying to solve jealousy, try not to make your internal or external conversation about solving the jealousy, but rather, feeling understood and important.
4. How to Handle Your Own Jealousy
Jealousy is a painful emotion, but our reaction to jealousy determines our level of suffering.
Pain ≠ Suffering.
If you can stay with the emotion of jealousy it will pass, but if the jealousy is so triggering that it is outside your zone of tolerance, you may begin to suffer. When humans are triggered outside of their zone of tolerance, the primal brain takes over and causes us to suffer. There are many models that discuss this. One is the model of fight, flight, freeze, and fawn, another is the buddhist concept of the second-arrow, another is Terry Real’s model of one-up or one-down.
In this post, I’ll use the concept of One-up and One-Down: two reactions to difficult emotions like jealousy that allow us to feel back in control of life by assigning blame.
One-up means pointing a scolding finger at the other - we regain a feeling of control (when the moment feels out of control) by placing the blame on the other, putting ourselves above the other person. We feel that we are better than the other person and they are below us or bad - we look at them with anger. If you’ve ever met someone who, when they feel shame, gets angry and mean, their default is one-up. If you can’t stop thinking about how bad the other person is, you are in one-up and you are triggered.
One-down means pointing a scolding finger at ourselves - we regain a feeling of control (when the moment feels out of control) by placing the blame on ourselves - this is happening because we are awful. They are fine, but we are awful. While a terrible feeling, at least we know the reason why… This gives us a temporary sense of peace that at least we have a model towards why this is all happening. If you’ve ever met someone who, when they feel shame or are given feedback, they start to get defeated and deflated and really mean to themselves, their default is one-down. If you can’t stop thinking about how bad you are, you are in one-down and you are triggered.
When you are feeling the 4 C’s, competition, comparison, contempt, or control, you are in one-up or one-down. You have left yourself into the finger pointing game to regain control instead of feeling your feels. Until you return to compassion and stop finger pointing, you will suffer.
The problem with one-up or one-down, or any form of blame or control, is that we have left the difficult emotion and the manager in us is saying “do anything but feel this feeling, this is too painful!!” and - so we don’t complete the emotion. Emily Nagoski writes in Come as You Are: The Surprising New Science that Will Transform Your Sex Life that “Emotions are tunnels. You have to go all the way through the darkness to get to the light at the end.” If we fully feel them, most emotions go away within 60 seconds. But if we leave the emotions into blame, comparison, control, or competition, we get stuck in the darkness of the tunnel and it could take us hours, days, or weeks to get into the light of the other side.
If you abandon yourself during an emotion (e.g. study your reaction to when you fail at something), you might project that your partner will abandon you - even though that's your own internal reaction. By learning to not abandon yourself, you will develop deep security and remove uncertainty in more life circumstances. We will discuss a practice of handling the emotion at the end of this article.
3. How to Ask for Reassurance
If you come from a family or culture where asking for needs is shamed, and you learned to put other folks needs ahead of your own, you may struggle with anxiety or depression because a real need of yours is being de-pressed (pressed down) and you may put a lot of pressure on yourself to not be feel how you actually feel. The problem with this is that you do feel this way.
The healing begins when you paradoxically just simply stop trying to have your hands on the control panel, let go, and allow yourself to feel how you actually feel.
“If a sensation in the body is appearing right now it means who you really are has said yes to it.”
- Jeff Foster in Deepest Acceptance
You feel vulnerable because you’re worried you may lose someone, and at the same time you feel like you’ll lose them even more if you ask for reassurance. You feel, internally, in a bind. But - this is also the growth edge. If you let go and ask for reassurance, you can rewire the neurons in you that feel unlovable for asking for your needs.
Simply state what you feel: “I feel worried I’ll lose you, can you reassure me what you find special about me / why this relationship matters to you / why I matter to you?”
Think about who you’ve become closest with in life: do they show the parts of them that are more human?
2. How to Handle Your Partner’s Jealousy
It can be uncomfortable to be with a partner who is experiencing jealousy. Loving someone and ourselves requires practice because you may feel shame or badness for “contributing” to their jealousy. Sometimes I can feel unlovable if I do something that hurts someone, even if what I did was valid and just. I am practicing loving myself even if my needs are different than someone else’s and I let them down.
If you emotionally pull away from a partner experiencing jealousy, this creates insecurity as the jealous partner now feels abandoned in their vulnerable state. Remember that security is co-created and earned in a relationship. If your partner learns that they can be in a vulnerable emotional state with you, and you still love them, they will feel more secure, and jealousy will go away because uncertainty / insecurity will go down. But if you get frustrated with your partner, you are co-creating an insecure relationship and jealousy will go up. You may feel like they are “insecure” but you contributed to the insecurity in the relationship. At the same time, their jealous feelings are not your responsibility, but they are something you can collaborate on.
When your partner is jealous. Here’s what you can do:
Regulate yourself first. If you feel guilt or shame or triggered, return to your own body and loving presence to yourself. Only when you can love yourself can you show up with love for another, and this is hard if your behaviors trigger their discomfort. I’ve had to learn how to let other people down and still love myself in my life - and it’s really rewarding.
Turn towards your partner and reflect back what you feel that they are feeling while affirming them. If they are feeling really uncomfortable - you can reflect back, “I see how angry and scared you are, and I still love you.” Or, “I see that you’re sad and feeling not special, and I’m still with you and want you even when you’re scared.” You can simply hold your partner and stay with them, without saying anything.
Resist solving the problem. There’s a phrase in the relationship therapy profession, “Have a problem, don’t solve it.” What people want is to be seen and understood, not problem solving. We learn in western society to fix someone’s emotions instead of being with them with loving presence - which doesn’t feel like love to the nervous system. In fact, if you recall as a child if your parents ever tried to fix you, that felt less like love and more like shame. Just hold your partner in their difficult emotions. Don’t abandon them emotionally by trying to fix their problem. Just see them..
Often when we try to fix the other person’s feeling it’s worth asking “who’s it for?” - are we trying to make them feel less uncomfortable because it’ll make them more comfortable, or is it really so we can feel more comfortable. People who have porous boundaries often feel sad when others are sad, because they learned as a child to regulate their parents emotions so that they could be seen. Watchout about regulating another's emotions to regulate your own, instead, hold yourself and your difficult emotions: see yourself and your inner child. I’ll discuss how to create proper boundaries in a future post.
It’s uncomfortable to feel jealousy and it’s uncomfortable to witness jealousy. If both partners collaborate - it makes it easier on the other. If the person feeling jealous can turn towards themselves a little more for comfort instead of their partner, it’ll allow their partner to feel prioritized and important. If the person feeling uncomfortable because their partner is jealous can show up for their partner a little more, it’ll make their partner more secure. Together, you can collaborate. Relationship security takes two people dealing with their own difficult emotions so they can show up more with love.
1. The Practice of Coping with Difficult Emotions
Allow the difficult feeling: The opposite of leaving yourself in an emotion is seeing yourself. So when you’re feeling jealous, smile towards the emotion and imagine inviting the jealousy in for tea. Open the door for it. If it’s the feeling of guilt towards your partner feeling jealous, open the door to the part of you that feels unlovable for another person feeling difficult things.
Invite the feeling to take more space: Feel the sensations in your body. Do you feel it in your chest? In your shoulders? In your sternum or your stomach or your pelvic floor? Feel those sensations and wherever you feel it most, ask it to take even more space. Allow the uncomfortable emotion to expand with each breath.
Turn towards the longing: Ask this part of you that has now gotten bigger to tell you what it’s longing for. Is it longing to feel safe? To feel lovable? To feel important? Whatever you are trying to get from another, see if you can turn towards that part of you in your body, and thank it for its longing. Don’t solve it’s longing.
Allow yourself to feel the self love in the longing. Explore that (often) the painful longing is actually a form of self love. What a beautiful thing that you have a part of you fighting for you to feel lovable, safe, seen, or important. This is an important longing, not something to be pushed away. This is self love. This is your body saying, my needs are important! Breathe into it and with each exhale allow yourself to let the light or warmth of self love hidden within the longing. Can you feel the hidden self love in the longing? Allow the warmth to expand with each breath and spend a few minutes here until you are held by yourself.
Neurons that fire together wire together. If you are now meeting difficult emotions without the automatic abandoning of yourself, but rather with self love, you will start to find peace even with jealousy. You will begin to love yourself more. Jealousy teaches us where we don’t love ourselves and is one of the most beautiful areas to become more in love with yourself.