I’ve been asked more than once how a poly relationship works; how do the people in the poly relationship not get jealous? The answer is easy – we do get jealous.
Jealousy is a set of emotions that are based in our insecurities. Our insecurities play a part in how jealousy manifests itself. For example, we may see our partner talking and laughing with a member of the opposite sex and immediately feel anger. Anger at our partner for engaging in the behavior or anger at the other person for crossing an imaginary line with someone obviously in a relationship. We might think, what is my partner doing flirting so openly with that person? Or we may think of the other person, Have they no shame then to come on to a taken person?
Or maybe we feel fear creeping up on us as we watch our partner continue to talk with the other person and we might think, why does my partner need to talk to that person? What am I not doing/providing that my partner needs to seek it out in another person? Fear may continue to taunts us with thoughts like, Are they going to leave me for this other person?
Sometimes jealousy can manifest in the form of envy – why does my partner feel free to speak to others when I never behave like that?
But what we don’t know is that jealousy usually isn’t about our partners but rather about our own deep-seated insecurities developed over the course of our lives. We aren’t taught how to deal with jealousy but rather how taught to avoid it. Some people simply refuse to acknowledge jealousy. Others choose the blame game path “my partner makes me jealous.” But dealing with it directly is not generally an option.
Dealing directly with jealousy requires one to confront their own demons. Jealousy is generally not the real problem, but rather a symptom of the problem. Most of the time the problem is internal. Most of the time jealousy is allowed to manifest and grow because we are in denial. Internally we are refusing to acknowledge a hurt or fear that is exacerbated by our partner’s actions. Actions which we choose to interpret in a negative light even when we don’t have the full story.
In the example above I stated we saw our partner talking to someone of the opposite sex. A simple conversation of which we are not in close enough range to hear what is being said. And yet, at times our minds may take a leap to thinking our partner is crossing that boundary, or the unknown person is crossing that boundary, when really we haven’t seen anything that would prove or disprove that thought. It’s our own internal insecurities showing us proof of what we fear about ourselves.
I can’t tell you exactly what that fear is because it’s different for everybody and is generally tied into an old hurt from our past – our childhood, our teen years, our twenties… from any time in the past. But it’s there, waiting to remind you exactly why its true. Even if we know intellectually we are not what our fears say, even if we know we deserve all that life has to offer, sometimes our insecurities feed that little doubt we all have inside.
When it comes to loving relationships, society (and our parents, and our friends, etc) teaches us that we must protect what we have to avoid jealousy. We must find our perfect mate, forsake all others, and til death do us part never let someone else have what we have found. Society teaches us that jealousy is the problem, and to stop the problem, we must never put ourselves in the way of the problem.
We are taught to avoid jealousy instead of looking at jealousy as a tool. Because most of the time, jealousy isn’t the problem but actually a symptom of the problem. But we’ve crafted the ability to avoid addressing the symptom and therefore rarely see the problem until its too late.
Sometimes jealousy is showing you that there is a problem in your relationship. If your partner isn’t being honest with you or is deliberately misleading you, then jealousy is founded. It’s your internal warning system telling you something isn’t right and your head and heart aren’t listening to the warning signals.
Sometimes jealousy is showing you that you aren’t addressing an internal hurt. If your partner isn’t doing anything wrong and yet you can’t shake unreasonable jealousy about actions you perceive as threatening, then you aren’t looking inside yourself – you aren’t being honest with yourself. And this can be damaging to your partner and to your relationship with them.
Polyamorous people mostly believe that jealousy in and of itself isn’t harmful. It is our own reactions to that jealousy that prove dangerous and hurtful. Poly people strive to acknowledge the jealousy, identify it’s trigger(s), and communicate with their partner(s) in order to work past and through it. Jealousy isn’t considered the enemy but is used to better understand oneself and one’s relationships.
Most poly people don’t ignore the clammer of jealousy when it comes calling but they do heed the credo “own your own junk.” Owing your own junk means acknowledging that the only person responsible for making you feel jealous, or mad, or left out, or angry, or resentful or any other emotion you might feel is you. When you own your own junk, you look internally first to determine the validity of jealousy and then examine the external factors involved.
Owning your own junk means learning a way to communicate the findings so that you can work with your partner to fix the problem. When the source is external, you can then face the issue and determine best what needs to be addressed with your partner(s). If the source is internal, then you can face whatever emotion is causing the jealousy. Either way, owning your junk means you understand yourself better and also creates better communication in your relationships.
Franklin D. Roosevelt once said, “There is nothing to fear but fear itself.” Wise words. Owning your own junks means you don’t have to fear the unknown since you’ve faced it head on. The rewards from bravely facing those fears are felt in all aspects of life.
