About jealousy

    Listen to Labyrinth-Jealous

The feeling of jealousy, protecting one's partner, has probably been ingrained in us ever since we lived in caves. Any cavewoman would have wanted her partner to use his time and skills to provide for her and her offspring, while him, although tempted probably to have offspring with another woman would probably like to insure his already existing offsprings survival and not et the woman become attached with another man. That being said, it's probably a lot more complicated today.

My current relationship of 16 years hasn't given me any reason to be jealous about. No ex-partners that I know of, no discussions or behaviours to make me raise an eyebrow even, so I guess I'm lucky in that respect. My previous relationship left me gasping though when, just before a 2-week trip to another country without me,  she serenely announced to me that she is very needing of affection and that if she needed a hug she'd get it from whoever is around and be available for it. Strange thing to be jealous of an unnamed stranger in an unspecified time in the future. The fact that she had a male friend who slept with her in her bed  (no sex or touching, I may be dumb, but I do believe her in that) also made me edgy, but I accepted that for whatever reason without anguish. Skip forward a few years, and I saw that you could be jealous of the past. The same girl was now about to get married ( and so was I) and had got religious and said she would no longer have sex outside of wedlock. Her fiancé called me from her phone to ask if what she had told him about her past (sex) life was true. I was flabbergasted, my fiancée was beside me a bit amused herself but we both told the man to trust his future's word and that he'll be pleasantly surprised on his wedding night (they have 3 kids now so I guess he was). Weirder still is that he is not at all jealous of the guy who was with her after me (he spent 18 months with her compared to my 5, but she never had sex with him though). Skip forward some more to present times and I found out they both claim that a fully grown adult in a relationship shouldn't maintain too close of a relationship with the opposite sex because, and I quote " should their relationship wobble at some time, that  close relationship with a coworker even will unwillingly push it over the edge and turn into the next relationship even without their will". I find that  to be a terrible lack of confidence in the person next to him, especially knowing very well how open and determined a person she is. I find it concerning that a man who will fantasise, creating scenarios in his head about how someone could steer his wife away from him and then take preventive measures to impede these scenarios (stuff like "Meet the Fockers" : I'm watching you, don't think about it! to a guy who wasn't even thinking about it). If your spouse is with you because she doesn't have any better alternative, that's not an ideal relationship now, is it? The whole thing reminds me very painfully of an uncle and aunt of mine with kind of similar relationship, they grew old totally dependent of each other but with no one next to them other than some family (even their son was estranged for a while because of the father's controlling and manipulative behaviour). His passing away led to a massive loss of purpose in her life with huge moral and physical health implications, much more so than the effect my father's passing had on my mother's life that had maintained a network of friends around and a somewhat closer and bigger family connections.  

I am fully aware of the many forms of jealousy and their beneficial or disastrous effects on people's lives, however  there's no universally accepted level of communication between adults that can be considered as "safe". Adulting is hard, family (spouse, children, parents, in-laws) will always take centre place as a support and interest in one's life but there will always be a need for diversity, knowledge, empathy of a friend or two, be they of the same or opposite sex (doesn't do much good asking your mates to understand what the she is thinking, now does it? . Drawing a line between a meaningful and fruitful friendship and upsetting your partner's sensibilities may sometimes be a difficult task, but love should not leave a place for paranoia. Reducing possible risk should never cause more certain damage to a relationship than a possible risk would do. 

May you be loved !