Say Thank You to Your Jealousy
Libby shares one way she likes to handle jealousy - say thank you to it?
Transcript
Ah, jealousy, jealousy, jealousy, that very primal ancient emotion that every human feels, even the people who say they don't feel it. That's what we're gonna talk about today on making polyamory work jealousy. This is gonna be a pretty brief episode because I really only have one tip to offer you around jealousy. If you're interested in a deeper dive on jealousy, I'm gonna link some books that I think are really great. If you wanna go super deep into jealousy. But I, I think that this tip is something that's often overlooked when it comes to jealousy, because contrary to what a lot of people think, I think jealousy is something everybody feels, and I think jealousy can actually be your friend if you want it to be. So when our friends come along to try to help us out, what do we do? We say, thank you. And so today I'm gonna talk about how you can say thank you to your jealousy.
So one of the big questions that comes up when people are new to the concept of polyamory, non-monogamy the question inevitably comes up pretty early on. What about jealousy? How do you handle jealousy? And you know, that, that question can make a lot of sense, because I think inherent in that question is the understanding that you will get jealous. That jealousy is a thing that's gonna happen. And, you know, what's funny is that we have this idea that monogamy is somehow gonna protect you from jealousy, because if you take a look around it really doesn't, you know, one of my favorite movies actually, where jealousy coexist quite wonderfully with monogamy is this movie called bridesmaids. And if you've seen it, you know what I'm talking about? So the two main characters in the movie are Maya Rudolph, who is engaged in getting married and Kristen wig, her supposed best friend.
And, you know, Maya Rudolph makes another friend with this woman named Helen. Who's played by rose burn. And there's this major competition between Annie Kristen Wiggs, character and Helen for Maya Rudolph's best friend bridesmaid made of honor status. And it's hilarious. And one of the things I really love about the movie is it really shows how jealousy shows up in all different kinds of contexts. And that rivalries are something that really, they go way back to childhood, right? You know, maybe you don't know this, if you don't have kids or you don't remember what it was like when you were a kid or you didn't grow up with siblings, but you know, there's this thing called sibling rivalry. Maybe you've heard of it. So when my kids were little when I was actually pregnant with my second kid and I was thinking about, oh, how do I get ready to have a second kid?
How do I talk to my first kid about that? Because he's, so it just being him and I was reading about, you know, what the recommendations are and what was said a lot is that actually introducing a second kid is really a trauma for the first child, for the first child who up until that point has been an only child, because then all of a sudden they have to share their parents love and attention. And there is there's jealousy, there's huge jealousy. And they've been able to track this jealousy behavior in babies. You know, even just a baby who doesn't have a sibling, but who is if they notice that their caregiver in these scientific studies that they've done with babies, they've, they've said the baby, when the baby notices their, their caregiver is paying attention to another baby, the baby will engage in all these different strategies to try to get their caregiver's attention.
And they can be things like cooing and looking super adorable or crying and making a fuss or acting withdrawn. And, you know, hoping that the caregiver will notice that they're not okay. And we do this as adults. We do this as children. So I say all of this, because I think that there's this idea that somehow monogamy and knowing where you and somehow protects you from jealousy or that jealousy and feeling jealous is somehow some sign of weakness or frailty or lack of, you know, confidence, security, what have you. And that, if you just feel secure enough and good enough in yourself that you won't feel jealous and you know, that's a myth. I think that some polyamorous people have, you know, when, when monogamous people say, what about jealousy? How are you gonna handle that? And the polyamorous person goes, well, I don't get jealous.
And I always laugh. Whenever anybody tells me they don't get jealous it's they may not get sexual jealousy. Sure. That may be a thing. But I guarantee you, everybody gets jealous. Jealousy is one of the most core emotions that humans feel. And if you believe that you don't get jealous, maybe get, like I said, you don't get sexually jealous or romantically jealous, or maybe it's because you do really feel like your position with the person that you are entangled with is very secure, or you don't define your value and worth by the position you have with your romantic partners. And you get your value and worth from some other place. But if that place gets threatened, I promise you, you will get jealous because that's what jealousy is. And I think if you take nothing away from my podcast today, I want you to know that jealousy is not a bad emotion. You know, I don't actually think there are bad emotions. You know, I think that there are unhelpful emotions in certain circumstances, for sure, but I don't think there are bad negative emotions. And I certainly don't think jealousy is a bad emotion. I think jealousy is an emotion that exists to protect you. Let me say that again. Jealousy is here to protect you.
And I think that's something I really want everyone to understand about jealousy, because think about it. If you are actually under some kind of threat of losing so that you need, because somebody is trying to take it away from you or somebody is crowding out your access to resources and you start to feel jealous, and then you start to feel motivated to connect to the people who are the source of your resource. Like if you're a small child, that's not a bad thing. What you do with jealousy could be a bad thing. You know, if you scream and cry and throw things in response to jealousy, that might not be useful, but jealousy is a really potentially useful alarm bell to you that you feel uncomfortable about access to the things that you need. So for things that are trying to protect us, what should we do?
Well, that's why I titled this episode say thank you to your jealousy, because that's what I want you to do. When you start to notice, you are feeling jealous, I would encourage you to, instead of going into a shame spiral about it or denying it or acting out from it, say, oh, thank you, jealousy for letting me know something's up. That's it just say, thank you first. You can do all that processing of jealousy later, but I want you to say thank you to it first. And then what I'd encourage you to do is to listen to it. See jealousy is like your risk management officer in your body. It's like that extra cautious employee that you hired because they're very exacting of pay, close attention to things. And they're always scanning for threats and looking for potentially risky situations. And when they notice that that something might not be okay, they come to you theoretically, the CEO of the company, and they say, Hey, we see some threats.
We're worried, that's their job. So you want to listen to that part of you when that part of you is saying, Hey, we feel like we're under threat right now. We don't feel okay. We're feeling jealous. We're worried about that person over there. We're worried what they might do and what might happen to the people that we need in our lives. If they continue to gain more power and influence over our partner or our friend or whomever. Yikes. The key thing is that, okay, once your jealousy is saying, Hey, here's, what's going on. You have to listen to it and see if your jealousy has got it right. Because you know the thing about someone who is designed to constantly be assessing for risks and be evaluating your access to resources or connections to other people, is that it may not always be correctly calibrated.
And there are some reasons why your jealousy might be off the mark. You know, some things that I can think of are monogamy programming. You know, just the, the feeling of under threat might be, oh, actually I'm just outside my comfort zone. Cuz what I'm used to is being the only person in my partner's life. The same way. Again, a firstborn child might say I'm under threat because I am not used to sharing mom and dad. You're not actually under threat, right? Kids can have siblings and survive just fine. That way. As long as their parents do a good job of loving both kids which, you know, doesn't always happen for what it's worth. But you know, so you're you, if you have an expectation that you're gonna be the only person, even if you you know, have maybe intellectually unpacked that if you have that programming in you, your jealousy might be incorrectly calibrated and you might have to have a conversation with it and say, Hey, actually I know this is uncomfortable for you, but actually we're fine.
You might also some other things that can incorrectly calibrate your jealousy are your own anxiety. Like if your anxiety is turned up a little higher than the average person, then your jealousy might be a little extra sensitive. If you have feelings of low self worth and you are very extrinsically basing your self-esteem your sense of self-esteem and self-worth. So if you don't have a core understanding of what you bring to the table and who you are, and you're always constantly looking for other people to tell you that then your jealousy might be extra sensitive. If you have past trauma around being left or being abandoned, you were a child for someone else, which again, that happens, right? So, you know, if you have that, your jealousy might be extra sensitive and extra looking for threats. If you've had a past hurt from another partner where you've really felt like they really did kind of leave you behind or ignore you for a, a little while because of someone else or you know, even a pastor from a current partner, because sometimes those things happen.
Even with people we love. And even with people we repair with sometimes, sometimes they forget about us because they fuck up cuz they're human. So there's all kinds of reasons why you're jealousy might be hyper hypervigilant for threat and maybe setting off alarm bells all over the place when you're not actually unsafe. But sometimes jealousy is telling you, Hey, you are under threat. You better watch out. You better look around, you better have conversations with people. Sometimes jealousy can kick up because you've actually been the one that's been checked out in your relationship. And someone else comes along and starts feeding your partner. Things that you have been hearing from them that they want and that you haven't been able to give to them. And then they see you see them getting that from someone else and your jealousy goes, whoop, whoop, whoop alert, alert.
We are under threat and, and it's possible. You are right. Make be not maybe it's okay. Don't know, but I can see why that would go off for you. And so again, if you can just treat jealousy like this part of you and not let it run the show of how you handle the next actions you're going to take you know, it can be very informative and it can be very valuable and it can tell you some really useful things about yourself, about your relationship, about other people. And so, you know, you, it helps to say thank you for bringing this information to my attention. And then like a CEO you take in that information with other information that you have, that your jealousy might not have and you process it, you have a dialogue with that jealousy and some things that you might ask jealousy to find out why it is going, you know, bazongas right now is you might ask, you know, okay, what do you think brought you here to me?
What is the, a thing that happened that is making you perk up? Did you bring any other feelings with you? Do you have any other things going on besides just jealousy is fear along for the ride, anger sadness, anything, any of you else, any of you, other guys coming along for the ride useful to understand what else might be under there? Because jealousy is often riding with fear. What you might wanna examine, what your fears are that are, that are coming along with jealousy. What, what are you afraid might happen? What is jealousy trying to protect you from happening? And then maybe think about, oh, is this like something that has happened to me before? Or is this like something that I've seen happen to someone else and that's what's going on and then ask jealousy, like you would a friend who's like really freaked out about something that maybe is a big deal.
Maybe not a big deal. Ask them, what do you, what do you need right now? What would help? Maybe it's in more information. Maybe that's what you need. Maybe you just need to give jealousy a hug and say, yeah, I hear where you're coming from, but we're fine. Or you might need to say, ah, thank you for bringing this to my attention. Let's look more deeply into this. Maybe I have some questions to ask myself or my people, but I'm gonna come back around to this before you start processing your jealousy, inquiring and having a dialogue with your jealousy. I am serious pause and say, thank you. A lot of people forget this step. And again, it's because I get it. They see jealousy as this weakness or something that's just irrational or an annoyance that just needs to be fixed. Or they treat it as some kind of absolute signal that something is wrong and they let see become the CEO and start running things. And neither of those things are great. Both are saying to jealousy that if I don't get rid of you, then I'll never be okay.
And the thing is that gives jealousy way too much power over you, whether it is needing to dismiss it and ignore it, or whether it's, you know, letting it fix everything so that it calms down. The truth is you can hold jealousy and be with it and also be okay. Jealousy is there to protect you. You can learn things from jealousy. You can work with jealousy, you can feel it. And also at the same time, tell it that it is not in charge right now. And it does not get to call the shots of how you're gonna handle what it is telling you. Jealousy might be all fired up, but you can call on a deeper inner knowing to lead the way, like I said, like that com CEO, who is telling its extremely valuable, important risk analysis. Officer, I hear your concerns. I'm gonna look into this. I'm not ignoring you. I appreciate you. That's why I hired you. You're doing your job And now I'm gonna figure out what to do next. So remember, say thank you to your jealousy. It's doing its job. It's trying to keep you safe. And the more that you thank it first, the better you will be able to work with whatever it has to tell you and figure out what to do next.
