Jealousy

One of the most destructive emotions is jealousy. It can ruin our relationships and our lives.

The root of jealousy is fear – fear of loss, of being alone, of losing a person’s love and attention. It causes all sorts of very irrational, despicable and destructive behaviour – lying, spying, cheating, hiding, withholding, emotional and physical violence even to the point of murder! “Crimes of passion”, which we societally feel some sympathy for, are crimes committed when someone was in a jealous rage.

Interestingly, “jealous” and “zealous” come from the same word root – “zelos” which means “eagerness and ardent interest in pursuing something”. Over time, jealous has become the negative, fear-based expression of zeal.

Many people think it is normal to be jealous. In fact, many people believe that if you are NOT jealous, then you do not love the person! So, jealousy is accepted as a normal feature of a relationship and is expected and welcomed. There are many people who actually like when their partners are jealous for they feel that this is a show of love.

How can something so destructive and negative possibly be interpreted as love? For surely true love can only express in a positive way.

If we believe that we are incomplete without that special someone, then we are setting ourselves up for jealousy. For if we “lose” that someone to someone else, we will be incomplete. And no one likes to feel incomplete. Also, if we believe that we live in a win-lose world, where people are our rivals for someone else’s attention, then we will be jealous of anyone who seems to pose a threat to us.

Jealousy is also associated with envy. Envy is when we covet what others have, usually their possessions. It too is destructive.

With so much societal support for jealousy, it is difficult, and even inconceivable for some, to NOT be jealous, to not be envious. The danger with jealousy and envy is that it begets only more jealousy and envy and all sorts of other negative emotions. Jealousy drives us further from the type of relationships we say we want. Envy drives us further from manifesting the things we want in our lives. For what we focus on is what we get more of. So, jealousy will only beget more jealousy, and envy will only beget more envy. It is a downward spiral of energy – dragging us further and deeper into the dismal hole of incompleteness, unhappiness and depression. No one really likes to feel this way.

The solution is to recognize that we are already whole and complete by ourselves. Does this mean that we do not need relationships? Of course not! But consider a relationship of two whole people rather than two incomplete people! Which do we prefer? Truth is, if we make ourselves whole and complete, then what will we attract? A whole and complete person! So, we must understand that if we are attracting an incomplete, jealous person to us, then it is pointing to our own incompleteness. And that further means that we are not ready for that whole, complete relationship which we say we seek.