Embracing Jealousy
One of the things I’ve realized recently is just how jealous I can get when it comes to relationships; it doesn’t matter if I’m dating the person, lusting after them, or something in between.
I get the impression that the guys I’ve seen in the recent past are the opposite. They want to know everything, and seem to find it titillating to know what I’ve done when I’m not with them. I had dinner with an ex, then went to a sex toy store, checking in on Facebook. He immediately texted me and asked who I was fucking (answer: nobody, I was getting a vibrator). I’ve had several other guys be far from horrified about my outside hookups; they wanted explicit details, whereas I recoil at just hearing the name of another girl, sure that she is prettier/smarter/hotter/better than me. When jealousy rears its ugly head, I’m not quite sure what to do, hence my break. Social media and access to so much information about our current and former (and future) lovers can help fuel jealousy, as a recent Facebook study of 308 college students, confirms. But even setting aside the Internet, unless you live in a hut with someone in the woods, they are bound to interact with other people on some level, and that can set off jealousy triggers in the more sensitive among us.
Writer Tracy Quan has been on both sides of the jealousy divide, and says, “When I feel it, I enjoy it. That's the only way to live with jealousy. You don't want to end up like Othello or, for that matter, Desdemona. Stay away from guys who take their jealousy too seriously. Feel your jealousy and then move on.”
Quan, a former escort, wrote about Tiger Woods’ alleged jealousy over his porn star mistress, Veronica Siwik-Daniels (aka Joslyn James) for The Daily Beast, stating “When a jealous, demanding lover resents your clients or your work, the tension can be thrilling and irritating in equal measures, and the deliciously toxic dynamic oh so hard to resist. If we fall for a man’s jealousy, we are falling not just for the man himself, but for our own hyped-up image of ourselves as sex stars.”
I’m not a sex worker myself, but I can see that someone might feel that same way coming into my world from outside the “sex world,” as it were; I have written about many relationships and hook-ups in easily-accessible forms, posed for nude photos, and have had plenty of strangers say inappropriate things?see my first SexIs column, “Are Your Breasts Real? and Other Questions Not to Ask a Sex Writer”.
There’s this idea floating around that anyone sexually “open,” who writes or freely shares details about their sex life or isn’t all about monogamy, forgoes their right to be jealous, and that’s ridiculous. Even Catherine Millet, who detailed a very busy erotic life in her first memoir, The Sexual Life of Catherine M., called her second, Jealousy: The Other Life of Catherine M.
Even fictional characters aren’t off the hook. Regarding her novels Diary of a Manhattan Call Girl, Diary of a Married Call Girl, and Diary of a Jetsetting Call Girl, Quan says, “People ask: how can the female protagonist, Nancy Chan, be jealous or possessive of her husband when she's a cheating call girl? What right does she have?”
“But jealousy isn't just or sane or part of a contract. It's a feeling. Besides, it is a huge compliment to the man. There are worse things to have on your resume than ‘a call girl thinks I'm shagworthy and she's jealous!’” says Quan.
Learning to Deal
For Jon Pressick, Managing Editor of Sexlife Canada, jealousy crops up early on. “When I am getting to know someone and starting to have feelings, I always find myself getting jealous of their past relationships. It has to be at the point where we’ve done more than just chat or even fuck a few times. When I think this is going to go somewhere, I hear stories of the past and I get panicked and nervous, nauseated and fearful. Thoughts run through my head like ‘how could you have done that?’ when I hear of past lovers,” he explains.
In my last relationship, I was often jealous because my boyfriend had a seemingly endless stream of female friends. I was sure that at least some of them were after him, and only after meeting them in person and seeing how they interacted with him did I understand that theirs were, in most cases, totally platonic relationships. There are gray areas though, where someone wouldn’t necessarily cheat or hook up, but where a friendship has flirting overtones. I have a few of those myself, and I can see that even a flirty comment can be misinterpreted.
Emotions aren’t rational, of course, and perhaps jealousy is one of the most irrational of all. For me that’s especially true because if I were in a relationship, I think I’d be okay with the person having a limited amount of sexual contact with someone else, as long as I was aware and involved (if I wanted to be). Ultimately, though, I can only be me, and there are going to be plenty of other people out there who are, well, them. It’s hard to break my go-to way of thinking, which tells me that even someone who’s totally into me today is going to want them over me tomorrow.
On the blog Misadventures in Atlanta, a lot of commenters attribute jealousy to the jealous person’s insecurities, and in my case, I’d say that’s true. It’s why I’m removing myself from situations in which I could be jealous so I can bolster the areas of my life I feel make me lacking in the future-good-girlfriend area. Still, I could weigh 120 pounds, have a spotless home, be multiply-orgasmic, get completely out of debt and learn how to cook gourmet meals, and still feel inadequate. It’s not just a matter of facing my insecurities and flaws, but a persistent sense that I am not worthy enough of having someone devote themselves to me and me alone. I don’t think I’ll ever be the type who’s not jealous at all, and that’s not necessarily a bad thing.
Jealousy can be a double-edged sword. It can be flattering, or it can be smothering. I don’t want to be so possessive that I drive any future mate away, but I can’t help it that jealousy is a fundamental part of who I am. The only times I’m not jealous at all are when I’m not that into the person. When I fall hard, I want them all for myself; I don’t mean being together 24/7 or not having outside lives, but being the primary person in their life, having someone to share the big things and the daily minutiae. I’m taking this time for myself to work on myself so my jealousy is more of a calm, quiet pet, perhaps with the occasional bark, than the proverbial green-eyed monster waiting to attack.