Jealousy in Relationships
Jealousy is like a parasite…
Jealousy is like a parasite: it feeds on us from the inside. Yet we often experience jealousy as something that comes at us from the outside, a strange intruder over whom we have no control and who instead controls us. Some will try in vain to get rid of this feeling, to throw it out and move on. Others will try to rationalize and justify it. There are those who will pretend that they are not jealous at all, while there still others who will have no idea how jealous they truly are. But all of these so-called solutions are ultimately to no avail…
ANXIETY FOR SURVIVAL AND ATTACHMENT
Jealousy is inseparable from “attachment.” Attachment is a fundamental function of our mental and emotional life. Not only is it normal to crave attachment, it is essential as well, because attachment helps us survive as a species. During our infant years, we attach ourselves to our parents and caregivers both physically and mentally, since doing so is crucial to our survival; as infants and children, we feel that we cannot survive if we do not have another person to take care of us. It is from this need and anxiety that our unconscious desire for ownership, for possession of the other, for wanting to be that other’s sole and exclusive interest begins to grow.
If our family environment is supportive as we grow up, we will eventually realize that we are capable of standing on our own two feet and of forming healthy, fulfilling relationships with people outside of our family. However, there could be times when our family enviroment or circumstances has not helped us become independent. As a result, we will grow up certain that: 1. we can survive only if we have someone to depend upon, 2. we are not worthy unless there is someone who will love us unconditionally and who will not be able to live without us! Those childish certainties and childish demands permeate our adult self.
This constitutes the most fertile ground for jealousy: the virulent need for unconditional attachment, a need that will poison our lives as well as the lives of those we love.
AN ANTI-TRAUMATIC TACTIC
Jealousy is a response of the psyche, a kind of mental reflex, to what we believe is the imminent loss of the other—a loss that can be either real or imagined. In the throes of our fear, we assume that the person we are attached to is happy around other people and not us; that 1) they are abandoning us and that nobody is going to be there for us. Οr, 2) they are abandoning us and so we have no worth what so ever.
We behave as if the thing we are afraid of has already happened, even though it has not!
We preemptively feel the panic and the anger that follow abandonment or humiliation. We feel certain that if we do not have the Other, we will have nothing. Absolutely nothing.
This loss is the first threat that overwhelms us: the threat of having nothing because we have lost the other, and, consequently, the certainty that we will never feel joy again. This covert depressive certainty arises from the fact that the other whom we love—be it our parent, partner, child, or friend—is the locus and subconscious symbol of all our desire, a desire that gives life to our very existence. Such desire goes beyond the longing for a particular person to encompass our desperation to fill our own psychological voids, heal our pain, and resolve our repressed traumas. If we perceive, then, that the other whom we desire enjoys being around other people more than they enjoy being with us, we experience the subconscious terror of preemptive abandonment: the fear that we will be deprived not only of the joy of love, but also of our very ability to desire. In other words, we feel that we are being deprived of our chance to feel alive—for to feel desire is to feel that we are truly living.
Viewed from this perspective, jealousy is essentially an anti-traumatic tactic employed by the psyche, especially when we begin to perceive the other’s desire as fickle or unstable. The more we become aware of the instability of that desire, the more we ask to be its exclusive object. We believe that if we are the sole object of the other’s desire, we will not feel lacking, mediocre, or unworthy; we will not feel deprived of the pleasure that life has to offer. Or, we will not feel fear. These feelings, and the fear they engender, persecute our souls. Αnd we grieve an abandonment that, sometimes, has not yet taken place! Why?
There are two reasons for this. The first is that we may have experienced the feelings that accompany abandonment during our childhood years and therefore already know how much they hurt. Second, as children we may never learned how to detach from our loved ones. Parents who cannot or will not separate from their child due to their own personal needs, fears, and traumas hold their children captive to their love. As a result, when these children grow up, they look for someone with whom to recreate this symbiotic relationship that they experienced with their guardians. It does not even cross their mind that the person that they choose could live freely without them. Thus, it is impossible for them to accept.
Therefore, when our beloved shows signs of infidelity, we psychologically prepare ourselves to relive the trauma of loss. While this allows us to brace ourselves for the pain we know is to come, it may also lead us to assume that our partner no longer desires us when, in fact, they still do. Caught up in our paranoia, we go looking for signs of our partner’s infidelity, even if they have never given us a true reason to doubt their commitment.
THE WAY OUT
If you are feeling jealous, attend to yourself. Dive deep into your own thoughts and emotions. If you feel comfortable doing so, you can always reach out to an expert for help.
Do not isolate yourself, and do not confine your search for emotional fulfillment to a single relationship. If you expect all your life’s joy to spring solely from one source, you will ultimately feel disappointed, betrayed, and miserable; you will imprison yourself in that feeling and trap others there with you. Find other sources of joy in life, develop other relationships. Meet new people and get to know them without making unrealistic demands of those relationships. Simply socialize with them, spend meaningful time with them. Exchange. Bond.
The art of living means that you can get satisfaction by moving between love, commitment and mental autonomy.