Jealousy

Posted on 10/24/2009

Jealousy is the belief that you are not unique and that the feelings someone has for you can be easily bestowed upon someone else. Jealousy is always a reflection of low self esteem. People who value themselves don't waste time worrying about being replaced, but when you need another person to feel good about yourself, you continually fear losing other person.

This borrowed self worth is fleeting, the stuff of infatuation. It is fragile the first casualty of doubt. The desperate possessiveness of jealous lovers always has more to do with the fear of losing self worth than it does with losing a partner.

Jealous partner see their partners as necessary proofs of their worth, as adornments to their personality, not as individuals. Jealous partner seek to posses their partners and display them ownership. They are not saying "Look what i have, how wonderful my partner is," but rather "See, i must be wonderful to have a partner like this." Their partners resent them for this lack of acknowledgement and for using them. Not surprisingly, a jealous person is easily embarrassed when his or her partner looks bad.

Being with a jealous partner almost always feels bad. When jealous partners feel insecure, they imagine you are rejecting them. And should you need their support, you are likely to frighten them or be rejected as an embarrassment. For life to flow smoothly with jealous lovers, everything must be perfect, for they misinterpret everything. Their insecurity prompts them not only to exaggerate their partner's faults, but to take offense at the slightest negative nuance.

Jealous rage is like a child's panic in which the child feels abandoned, out of control, and unable to fend for him. Partners, blind with jealousy, imagine abandonment and see it as proof of an unworthiness they only reluctantly admit. Jealous lovers often act out their insecure feelings by quickly taking the first replacement lover they can find. On the surface they may claim they are doing this to get even, but they are really trying to placate their self doubts reassure themselves that they are still attractive. They dread abandonment.

Jealous people continually demand to be reassured that they are lovable but seem most unlovable when they are insecure and needy. Their demands are likely to be answered sarcastically, for their partners, long since exasperated by such request, no longer take them seriously. The jealous partner reads further betrayal into this lip service and finds in it additional reason to doubt.

Understandably, the partners of jealous lovers continually consider leaving. They are weary of having their love tested. They resent every issue being reduced to whether they love their partner or not. The jealous person usually has no idea of how his insecurity monopolizes discussions and imprisons his partner. While the jealous person may be aware that his partner feels like leaving, he never sees that it is jealousy that is pushing his partner away.

Having a jealous partner make you feel as if you are being abused. You are always reduced in importance to their suspiciousness. Your feelings, your needs, and your desires are always secondary to your partner's insecurity. Their fears rule. In a word, the jealous partner's feelings are always more important than yours. Whatever the underlying dynamics of the situation, it does not feel like love. Any objection you make to being treated this way are greeted with such overreacting and panic that it hardly seems worth the attempt to make things better.

Everyone dislikes being mistrusted, but the partners of jealous persons eventually get to the point where they see their partners anxiety and pain as punishment that fits the crime of their false accusations. Eventually, out of frustration, they become tempted to withhold reassurance, to create additional doubt, and permit their jealous partners to stuff a little bit more just to get even. If their stay together, both partners are imprisoned in the relationship. Of course, when the jealous partner also controls the purse strings, the imprisonment becomes unbearable.

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