The Jealousy Workbook

the fear of being left out

Something I love about being able to write this newsletter in a different language than my mother tongues–Galician and Spanish–is that I feel somehow freer. In English I am able to speak and put into words topics and thoughts that I wouldn't do otherwise. Yet I make so many mistakes–from which I apologize now–,these seem a prize I am happy to pay. 

I never considered myself a jealous person. But, in a society as fluid as what we know as the Western, what does jealousy even mean?

I have spoken to you before about Kathy Labriola. I first learnt about her book by following an instagrammer. She was a proclaimed polygamous, but she was going through a phase of low-self esteem (is that even a phase?), so she started to do Labriola's tasks. Let's delve a little more into the book. The piece is called The Jealousy Workbook, and it comes with exercises for you to reconcile with the jealousy you are feeling. This book is mainly for non-conventional relationships; meaning open relationship, polygamous and so on. She will present you exercises for you to complete and practice the popular-now, unknown-then term compersion. For those who don't know it, here:

Yes, she gives you strategies for being able to be happy when your partner is having another relation (sexual or emotional) with another person/people. Yet you can buy or not this system of values, of way of loving, Labriola was a very helpful tool for me back in the days. 

Growing up, I used to only have open relationships. What is being seen in Spain as something normal or, at least, not unusual, was seen back then outrageous. I had a 4 year long relationship, and was constantly questioned about its kind–by friends, acquaintances or strangers. Are you really a couple? Oh, but you have sex with other people. Oh, but you go out with other people. I had to cope with comments and felt so embarrassed and self conscious of myself. It was a great relationship which transformed into a friendship that lasts until today. During that time, I read a lot. I was completely against the institution of marriage, and I thought I wouldn't want to ever sign a paper which legitimized my love in front of a state. In Spain we say nunca digas de este agua no beberé porque el camino es largo y te puede dar sed (don't ever say I would ever drink from this water since the path is long and you can get thirsty.) Sayings outlast for a reason. Coming back to my point, as a teenager I was very grounded in my believings, I took the time to read and reassure my back-then morals. 

One day, I discovered a collection of short books which contained a few essays from different authors. Published under Continta Me Tienes, the series (h)amor captivated from its first volume. They explore love in many ways. The one regarding today's essay is called (h)amor, celos y culpas (love, jealousy and guilty). You might be wondering; guilty for having relationships with other people? No, dear reader, guilty for feeling jealous of other people. Guilty for not feeling that comersion I just spoke to you about. A few years ago I stepped out of a terrible relationship. As almost any, it started good in the beginning, but after a few months it became pretty tortuous. We were following this model of free love, which ended up being a kind of emotional slavery, competition and pain. Instead of feeling compersion, I felt anger, sadness and despair. This guy I dated made me feel that I was despicable for not being able to be happy when he was having relationships with other people, a.k.a consuming other bodies.

In my early days discovering feminism, I decided to get vinculated with an feminist organization in my college. There, a group of women would gather and discuss thoughts and action, fears and aspirations. It is incredible when you can create a safe space where every person belongs. In the organization, just like me, other comrades were having open relationships, bad and good experiences. We ultimately discussed how patriarchy had appropriated the idea of free love and parasitized it. How men were consuming bodies, replicating capitalistic procedures without having any sort of emotional responsibility. How women's bodies just became disposable objects for some people, and we condemned it. Like many theories, when it comes to practice free love can be a tool for liberation or incarceration. Even though the tone of this essay might dismiss the good things about open relationships and free love, I truly believe it can be a completely effective way of relationship. Ultimately, I don't believe the health of the relationship would depend on whether it is open or conventional (close) but rather the inner dynamics it has.

Jealousy is something you can experience not only with emotional partners, but family members, friends or even pets. I remember when I was in college, I would feel jealous of my best friend having other best friends. Don't get me wrong, I wasn't having a jealousy attack, but I was sort of having a gut feeling, a lack of belonging, a fear of being left out. What I nowadays would call anxiety. I wanted to feel the chosen one, to be the one and only for her. Being an only child growing up doesn't really help with a healthy sense of jealousy, especially if you are spoiled many times. But what I didn't understand back then, was that she wasn't leaving me out by having other friends, and that we will all have more fun. My friendship with her was not determined by her friendship with others. I eventually made friends with her friends. In terms of supportive girlfriends; the more, the better.

Lastly, jealousy has a high correlation to low self-esteem. If you google “jealousy and self-esteem” (scholar mode), you will find tents, hundreds of articles which explore this relationship. The fear of being abandoned, threatened by somebody else, a bad self perception. We feel that we are not worthy enough therefore we fear that other people would occupy our place in the world. In order to build a decent/good self esteem, we need to have honest and healthy relationships with our friends, our family members, our partners but first and foremost, ourselves. Establishing the limits in a relationship should be something not only wished but expected.

I don't have an open relationship anymore, which does not mean that I am not jealous anymore, but I no longer feel threatened or in danger. Rather, I feel loved, I feel respected, seen and understood. I am very happy with the model my partner and I have agreed to establish, but I also feel good about the fact that I experienced what I did in the past. I love loving and I love to be loved.

Yours,

S.