In this article I will unveil my personal journey through jealousy – what has happened to me, how did it affect me, and how it changed my attitude and personal beliefs. I will outline what became easier with time and experience, and in contrast, in what I did not undergo any development. What led me in a good direction to control my jealousy in an adequate way, and where I still fail.
I started with a good base…or at least that’s what I thought back then. Even before my polyamorous period I was never the jealous by default type – the type of people who always believe that their partner is cheating and want to “catch” them even before the actual cheating has happened. Even back then I accepted that I do not control the actions of my partners in that aspect and if they want to, they can connect with somebody else, despite of what I do or don’t do. I always hoped that my partners are humane enough to shed some light on what is going on in their lives.
When we opened our relationship, I thought that I am in a good position, I had read a lot of materials on the topic – mainly blogs, interviews and here and there a book or two. I thought this would help my natural non-jealousy. In theory I was informed quite well on most of the problems that I might expect. I also thought that I’m quite well-read, wise and emotionally intelligent so that I wouldn’t fall into most of the clichéd situations, described in the same books, articles, blogs and podcasts. I reckoned that the constant work on oneself – with and without external help – will give me a bit of a “lead” if a situation in which I would feel jealous arises. I really hoped that with this “lead” and with a bit of additional intensive work from my side, I will overcome difficulties quickly and efficiently.
This is when the situation and the jealousy really hit me hard, devastating all of my existing imagination and expectations. Everything I had ever read on the matter, suddenly rang out in my mind like a poorly known language. Like something I can’t make sense of.
At first, I didn’t even know what was wrong with me. I was feeling disgusting…my soul was crying. My mind could not allow, that the reason for all that was jealousy, probably because of an initial acute denial phase. During the first three days my state cleared up and I managed to understand what has happened. It took me more than a month to identify the trigger that unleashed my terror with such fury. It took me more months to explain the trigger to my partner in an easy-to-understand way. To commence my healing process, I must first feel properly understood.
Just as some kind of teen or a total ignoramus I made a fair share of common mistakes. Mistakes that are easily found in articles, books, and materials on the topic.
The triggers for me were the following overlays:
- My partner managed to connect to somebody extremely fast. Knowing him and his attitude towards life, I would never expect that he may need just a couple of hours to engage intimately with a total stranger. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t believe that it is something bad to quickly get into intimate relations with a stranger, I just assert, that it was totally unexpected for me. This, unfortunately, did not mitigate the situation.
My partner connected to a person, with whom they have a lot in common, but one who lives far away and would leave at the next day. It seems this was a “now or never” situation, something that I understood right away. - Both of us were quite inexperienced at the time, so the way how my partner shared about what happened was a classic case of oversharing. I received everything in a fast and spontaneous manner, with no filter at all. Some personal boundaries were violated – boundaries that I didn’t even know I had. It took me quite a while to understand what exactly my problem was.
I reckon that at that point I was going to be jealous even if everything between my partner and his new partner happened is a slower and less surprising fashion. I think I’d be jealous even if the whole story was told to me in a more delicate way afterwards. It’s just that the two beforementioned circumstances made the whole situation not only burdensome for me, but straight up traumatic.
Primarily I did not understand what is happening to me. This was so new to me, that I didn’t understand why I have these strong and contradictory, and mostly negative, feelings. I couldn’t understand why I didn’t have any appetite, why I couldn’t sleep and why I was feeling ashamed. Yes, the first thing we all read in the books and materials related to jealousy in ENM is that you must accept your feelings of jealousy and should not be ashamed of them. То not allow ourselves to feel bad, just because we feel bad. The books continue with some advice to communicate our feelings and needs with our partner in a constructive way. Oh, how did I fail in some of these steps! Everything that I had read were just empty words that did not mean anything and was not reaching me in any way…
I fought with this for many months, an abnormal amount of time I was in a terrible state of mind, despite my attempts to grab my hair and pull myself out of the eternal quicksand of self-pity. But instead, I was just kicking and digging myself, sinking deeper and deeper.
Still, here’s what went well in terms of communication with my partner even at that downhill stage.
- I never allowed myself to have a change of heart and blame him for having this experience. I never twisted reality that much.
- I communicated with him as promptly as I could. When I realised what was not ok for me, I took the initiative to discuss it with him. Probably, I did not handle this communication very well because our discussions didn’t always feel productive.
When I understood that the trigger was actually the quantity and the nature of the details that he presented me, I told him. Maybe the way I did it was not understandable enough because it took quite a while, until I feel that I’ve been indeed understood. At the end I was though – and it “only” took me several months and to repeat to him word by word everything he has shared with me. - I never stopped believing that we could make things right and that I have the capacity to change my attitude and reaction. I just needed to continue to work and not quit. Nothing ever could force me to quit.
- I was aware all along that none of the reasons why I felt in this incompatible with life way, was in my partner, or his new partner, but in me alone – in my inner insecurity, my lack of confidence in my own worth, my inferiority complexes, the fear that I am not good enough or the fear that my partner will leave me.
And every time when we discussed the topic, I kept saying to him – “You haven’t done any harm to me! All this is provoked by this event, but the real reasons are within me, they have been there since before I knew you and I am well aware of that.” - Not all feelings were negative! I will never forget what I felt when my partner was telling me about the time he was walking home after his date back then. “Driving home I was feeling strangely calm and peaceful, it was a powerful sense of rightness and power. I though how excited and energized I was at that moment, and at the same time calm, without any fear of harming or disappointing you. All of this was possible because you made it possible.” I heard this only once, but I will never forget it, it meant so much to me.
What didn’t go so well:
- I felt ashamed and confused about my feelings of jealousy. Тo feel bad because I feel bad certainly did not help me and only drained my vital energy.
- I was, unnecessarily tiptoeing around my partner. At that time, I didn’t have that much practice in openness, I wasn’t so used to it. I needed to discuss the topic, but I was worried – what if he doesn’t want to? What if I bring up the topic too often and he feels bad, like I’m blaming him? I don’t want anything specific from him at the moment, except to talk a bit, but I don’t know how to raise the topic. What if I bother him? What if he feels pressured and powerless? What if at the end I push him away by bringing up the subject again and again?
- As much as I tried to be considerate with my partner, there was one problem. For some reason, he just didn’t understand me. Even now I am not sure if he did get me righ. All I know if that eventually I understood myself and this was life changing.
- I allowed my negative feelings to go too far. There was a moment when I reached a state of depression. I was in therapy the whole time, which really helped me to identify the depression and therefore to get over it very quickly.
It never happened to me before and I hope in never happens again. Depression is a bitch, which wants to kill me and I never want to ever talk to her again.
What followed is more unpleasantness related to undersharing, which I won’t go into now, but if this leitmotif is intriguing you, keep an eye for future articles on oversharing and undersharing. Now I prefer to focus on what turned the situation in a positive direction.
As I mentioned already, I was in therapy throughout the events that unfolded so far. I reckon this helped me in the periods when I felt the worst. The goal of my therapy was to overcome severe social anxiety rooted in my belief that I am not good enough (generally, in anything). But instead on focusing on my original goal, I had to work a lot on that jealousy situation once it occurred.
My therapy was cognitive behavioral. I truly believe in it for many reasons and also because I have seen good results from it in the past. I also worked with alternative methods and in the end, thanks to all my combined efforts I made a huge breakthrough which tipped the scales in a positive direction.
The main change is that now I love myself and thus I perceive myself in a completely different way. I strongly believe in my own worth, which has nothing to do with the fact how others perceive me. This was a completely unexpected but very favorable turnaround. Mainly this turnaround influenced the changes in the way how I perceive situations, where my partners start relationships with other people.
Where I am now?
Did I stop feeling jealousy completely? Well, not really. My “emotional body” still reacts turbulently when I hear “Hey, I got in touch with a girl with whom there is a serious potential for us to match”. What was the positive change then, you might say?
Actually, I now have the capacity to manage the external manifestation of my emotions in such occasions. I was always good at that, but now I can do it with ease. The result is that, instead of having tendencies to withdraw into myself “until it passes”, I prefer to share how I feel and what do I need at the moment. Guess what that leads to? Yes, diffusing the tension and replacing it with more pleasant feelings such as “I am understood”, “I am seen”, “I communicated my feelings” and “my needs were understood and met”.
The bad feeling of feeling bad is now gone i.e., the jealousy shame is now gone and the path to digging into this destructive spiral is cut off. This by itself halves the negative emotional load from the situations which provoke jealousy in me.
I have the willingness and confidence to talk to my partners about the jealousy I feel.
Most of the times the spirit of the conversation is playful and even hilarious – I have the resource to be self-ironic. This helps both to cope with my feelings, and the communication itself. Communication is just easier, more normalized, less dramatic, and burdensome. It is not an event, but part of everyday life.
Yes, the jealousy is there but it is substantially easier to handle. The feelings themselves are lighter and easier to overcome. They are there, but are not obsessing me totally. They don’t feel all-consuming and uncontrollable, like before.
I now have the resource to think straight (most of the time). I am learning to distinguish my fears and imagination from the objective observations of reality i.e., I rationalize. Rationalization is mentioned as a coping tip for such situations in any material created on the topic. I’ve also received this advice from friends that managed to overcome situations like mine. But the truth is that to be able to rationalize, you need to have free resource and I did not have it, not until I started to love myself. Before that, my attempts for rationalization rang false in my head and frankly felt like an experiment in self-delusion and hiding my head in the sand.
I got used to self-observation. Here are the new things I found out about myself in the process of self-observation:
- I want to be included in situations when my partner introduces a new partner. I like to feel informed, observing and even participating, in a way. I don’t like when the relationship between my partner and another person develops without my knowledge. This is an observation rather than a rule, and of course it depends strictly on the context. I am able to communicate all of this in a calm way and say, “I expect this and that from you…and please, don’t share details from your sex life, unless I ask”.
- The more I know about the partner of my partner, the better I feel. I am talking about information at a purely human level – who are they, what do they do, what are they most excited about, what do they like, what thy can’t stand? The more I know about their life story, the more I see them as a real person, a person from blood and flesh, a person like me. A person who wants to love my partner, and not somebody who threatens me by any means.
- Something more, I feel better when I know my partner’s partners in person. My partners are awesome people and they connect with other great people respectively. When I know them in person, I gain three main things:
- I can clearly see the human in them and that makes me feel closer to them. How can I not feel them close when we love the same person and when these are qualitative and interesting people whom I respect?
- I lose the unrealistic superhuman image of them, which I tend to build in my overactive consciousness before I meet them.
- Sometimes I gain a good acquaintance and good company.
All this directly counteracts my negative jealous feelings and literally dissolves them.
I also realize that I have relaxed a bit in terms of control. Once that I now love myself, some things have changed. First, my social anxiety has melted, I often receive sudden good ideas, I have a desire for creativity. My controlling function also receded a bit. The control part reflected in many aspects of my life, in addition to how I perceive the partners of my partners, and all the accompanying situations. It’s like I have accepted that it’s unnecessary to invest so much energy into feeling afraid that I will be replaced by the new partner. How can I be replaced by somebody else? This is impossible because…. only I am myself, nobody else is me, to replace me. The only possibility is that my partner decides that they don’t want me anymore, but… But, but, but…first, this scenario usually seems too unlikely for me to bother worrying for. Second, doesn’t my partner have the full right to decide whether he wants to be with somebody or not? In general, I don’t think I can have a say on this matter.
I can’t wait to look back at this article one day and realize how far I’ve come since writing it. Because this road has no finish line.
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