314 - Deconstructing Jealousy

Full transcript available

Defining jealousy

Typically envy and jealousy are used interchangeably, even though envy is characterized by wanting something someone else has, and jealousy is more focused on a fear of losing something or being left out. For this episode, we’re strictly talking about jealousy, because it’s often the thing that people have more of a hard time getting past.

One way of describing jealousy that often comes up in scientific papers is “an agitated and angry form of worry.”

Curvilineal model

The curvilineal model of jealousy looks at it as being most common in situations where there is a higher investment in conjunction with a higher uncertainty:

• At the beginning of a relationship, usually there is more uncertainty, but there is also less commitment, so jealousy likelihood is lower.

• In a long-term relationship where all parties are committed, the investment is much higher, but there is less uncertainty, so the likelihood of jealousy is lower as well.

• As investment is starting to ramp up a little while into a relationship, the uncertainty is there as well, and in turn jealousy is much more likely.

If we apply this model to opening a relationship, the investment is already there but all of a sudden a lot more is uncertain, which promotes the likelihood of jealousy. However, over time, more trust may develop and you may gain more certainty.

Emotion is separate from action

Jealousy is simply a universal human emotion, and de-pathologizing it is important. Several of the most touted ways to deal with jealousy are actually much more likely to increase suffering, leading to deeper and deeper problems.

Pillars of jealousy:

1. Beliefs: Harmful beliefs about oneself or others, or too much belief in feelings being facts.

2. Hypervigilance: Similar to jealousy, there’s a belief that letting one’s guard down will make it worse.

3. Fear of uncertainty: The belief that one must “take action” or “find out what’s really going on” can result in degrading competitors, attacking one’s partner, surveillance, threats, or having one’s own infidelity.

Jealousy’s manifestation

Comparison

Unhealthy manifestation:

• Veto power in a relationship.

• Putting down the other person.

Healthier manifestation:

• Communicate what reassurance you need.

• Meet your metamour.

Competition

Unhealthy manifestation:

• Booking more time or taking it away from others.

• Making rules to enforce a hierarchy.

Healthier manifestation:

• Planning actual quality time.

• Remembering that you might feel more competitive about something you don’t even want and giving yourself the opportunity to enjoy the fact you aren’t doing it.

• Check in about what it’s really about. Maybe you need more relaxation in your own life, not to take it from someone else.

Fear

Unhealthy manifestation:

• Demanding promises of always being number one.

• Forcing your partner to close the relationship.

• Wanting a partner to quit their job or stop seeing a friend.

Healthier manifestation:

• Acknowledging fear instead of denying it.

• Willingness to admit fears to your partner.

• Using your fear to cure yourself.

• Realizing which of these come from baggage in past relationships.

• Compassion and empathy for metamours.

Loss of control

Unhealthy manifestation:

• Implementing rules to limit your partner.

• Limiting information or keeping secrets from your partner.

Healthier manifestation:

• Going out of your way to give good things and comfort to someone else.

• Tapping into your other resources.

• Getting comfortable and saying what the fear is out loud repeatedly to allow its hold on you to dissipate.

Feeling jealous doesn’t mean you’re failing. It’s normal to feel, and it gives you a chance to figure out what you need in your life.

Transcript

This document may contain small transcription errors. If you find one please let us know at info@multiamory.com and we will fix it ASAP.

Jase: On this episode of the Multiamory Podcast, we're dissecting the green-eyed monster. That's right, we're deconstructing jealousy. Again, this is a topic that we covered about four years ago, which is wild, and it's very overdue for an update. This has been one of our essential episodes that we recommend to people for a long time, but boy, the audio quality is not great. I don't think we had nearly as much experience, hadn't gotten as much feedback from our audience and things. I'm really excited for us to tackle this topic again with our new selves.

Dedeker: Our brand new selves. I think, in short, four years in podcasting years is like 50 years.

Jase: Yes, seriously.

Emily: I feel we're just older and wiser, at least older, and that maybe counts for something, I don't know. At least, we've got a lot of these under our belt, there's over 300 down. That's good.

Jase: Yes.

Dedeker: Yes, but there's this Buddhist saying that today's wisdom is tomorrow's stupidity.

Emily: That may be true.

Dedeker: I just think of that constantly, it's such a curse.

Jase: A quick terminology note for this episode, people will sometimes talk about jealousy versus envy or talk about those words as if they're interchangeable, and in practical usage they are. I'm someone who's more like, "Let's talk about words the way people use them," and not just going, "Well, a dictionary says it's this one way and not this other," but something we did want to clarify that, for this episode, I do think we're going to be focusing more on the jealousy side of things than the envy side of things.

What I mean by that is that the difference is generally that jealousy is more about a fear of losing something or maybe a fear of being left out rather than envy, which is more of, "I want something that someone else has," either because I want to take it from him or I just want to have it for myself. That's a little bit different, and envy while it can suck to experience, doesn't tend to be as insidious, difficult to deal with, or as potentially dangerous as jealousy is. The more of that fear of losing something or that fear of being left out.

Dedeker: How to define jealousy other than that very succinct definition of-

Emily: It's like how to describe love, it's challenging.

Dedeker: My experience, at this point, I've done so many interviews with normies, where-

Emily: What?

Dedeker: Where people ask the million-dollar question about non-monogamy of, "How do you handle jealousy? What do you do about jealousy?" These days, I end up spinning off into this deep, philosophical, monologue about, "Really, if we look at jealousy, there's all these different composite parts of it. These days my struggle is more about dealing with sadness, anger, or trauma." I just go off this big old monologue, and usually, the person is like, "I don't know, I just wanted to hear that you were an enlightened being who didn't feel jealousy."

"I didn't really come here for the philosophical monologue," but I really like this, that it seems like, Jase, you came across in certain scientific papers looking at jealousy, that it's sometimes defined as an agitated and angry form of worry.

Jase: Yes. I thought that was interesting because it makes sense that there's a lot of similarity between worry and jealousy because it's about a fear of losing something or a fear of being left out, but jealousy tends to have this more agitated quality to it. I don't even think it necessarily has to be angry all the time because for some people it's more jealousy leads to just crying all the time, but I think agitated that very heightened is a good descriptor of it.

Emily: Like anxiety-inducing maybe?

Dedeker: Possibly, I guess it makes sense.

Emily: It's kind of anxiety or anxiousness, yes.

Dedeker: I can think about certain forms of FOMO that feel more like, "That's a bummer. That's sad," rather than this agitated, unsettled feeling, but that could be the product of some social conditioning as well.

Emily: There's a couple of different ways to think about jealousy and look at it like, where does it occur within a relationship? One model is the curvilinear model of jealousy? It looks at jealousy as being most common in situations where there's a higher investment, but also higher uncertainty. There are certain relationships that embody that sentence.

Jase: Yes. Let's try to clarify through some examples.

Emily: Yes, exactly. At the beginning of a relationship, there is generally more uncertainty, but there's also less commitments. You just are getting to know this person, maybe you haven't gotten really invested yet, so the likelihood of jealousy might be lower. Maybe the two of you are seeing multiple people, maybe polyamory is what you're doing already. You don't potentially have that intrinsic jealousy occurring at that particular moment at the beginning of a relationship.

On the other spectrum, in a really long-term relationship, I'm looking at you two, seven-plus years, the investment is very high, but the uncertainty has gone away, it's generally much lower. There's also a much lower likelihood of jealousy in a situation like that.

Dedeker: Yes. Definitely not impossible, but again, we're talking in likelihoods here. When we look at the middle of this curve, a little while into a relationship, your investment is starting to ramp up, especially if you're escalating the relationship or if it's escalating rapidly, which sometimes happens, that the investment is high, but the uncertainty is also high because maybe it's still less than six months that I've known this person, and I still don't know, are they going to be there for me? What kind of person they are? It could be even higher if there hasn't been enough time to develop really solid communication and trust.

That's the point that they find where jealousy is much more likely, which makes a lot of sense. I think both thinking about my personal experience and the experience of people around me that the story that I often hear from people, people who are more in the traditional dating scenes, maybe not necessarily the non-monogamous dating scene. People will be like, "Yes. I'm totally fine to tell the person that I'm on a date with we're seeing other people, we both know that we're both seeing other people and that's fine, that's super cool," but generally you find that as you start to connect more with this person, and time goes on that, that phenomenon of, "We're seeing other people and it's super cool and cash," becomes less cool and cash for people, I think, because of that dichotomy of both, the uncertainty being there and the investment rising.

This makes sense also when you think about opening up a relationship that has been monogamous, where even if you've been together for a really long time, and you're at a point in your relationship where investment is high, but uncertainty is low, opening up the relationship can suddenly inject a bunch of uncertainty where there wasn't there before, and it could be likely to feel jealousy. This is something that I've seen currently with people dealing with the coronavirus pandemic, where couples who were successfully non-monogamous, and actually flourishing quite a lot in polyamory, suddenly when the whole world has all this uncertainty going on, that emotions get really thrown out of whack, jealousy and insecurity come up out of nowhere in really unexpected ways.

Emily: That's a really interesting point.

Dedeker: Yes. I like this model, I know it's like a lot of models not perfect and not air-tight, but I think that makes a lot of sense for a lot of people's situations.

Jase: The reason why I wanted us to cover this in this episode is because I think it gives us some hope, and it helps give us a little perspective. If you're finding that you're really struggling with jealousy, take a look at this and think, "Am I starting to invest a lot more in this relationship? Am I pretty invested in this? Okay, yes, I am, but there's also a lot of uncertainty right now," and realizing maybe that's just cause it's new or maybe that's because we've just opened up and that's new.

In both cases, it's new and we haven't built up just enough experiences to know what to expect from ourselves, what to expect from our partners, what's normal in the world of non-monogamy or something like that or just in this particular relationship if you're not non-monogamous, and so I think it's just hopeful to remember that you have to build up experience to decrease that uncertainty while also just becoming a little more comfortable with uncertainty, which we'll talk about more later. I guess just that, that there's hope.

Emily: I think this also is a good explanation for the really common phenomenon that we see of, let's say, we have two people who are non-monogamous and one person starts dating someone new and that new person is totally cool with their other partner that maybe they're living with or whatever, but then if they date someone else new in addition, that then suddenly things get really thrown out of whack. I think it is that same thing of just the uncertain element of this new person versus this partner that you've been dating for 10 years that I'm super familiar with or whatever, that I think that explains that whole phenomenon as well.

Jase: Yes, that makes sense.

Dedeker: Let's talk about jealousy as an emotion. Emotional jealousy is separate from any actions that may occur because of being jealous. This is a really universal human emotion. It's something that is truly important to deep pathologies because I think a lot of people, especially in non-monogamous communities are like, "I need to learn how to not become jealous." That's the ultimate goal, but it is the thing that even really seasoned people in the community are going to feel from time to time. Absolutely, so a lot of the problems of jealousy really stem from those actions that we take, like the ways in which we choose to deal with it, because sometimes they're not very healthy.

A lot of the common ways to deal with jealousy are actually more likely to increase the suffering of the person doing them and that leads to deeper and deeper problems, so we need to learn like how we learn to do things at work or like figure out our jealousy in social situations, things like that. We need to learn how to deal with our jealousy in more productive and healthy ways. So let's talk about that.

Jase: Yes, let's get into it. We're going to start this episode talking about the pillars that jealousy is built on or maybe the roots of jealousy. I've put this together from various different studies and ways that people have looked at the causes of jealousy, and I've broken this into three categories here that we'll talk about. Then in the second half, we're going to look at four categories of ways that jealousy shows up. We're going to first talk about the roots of it, and then some ways it shows up, as well as some unhealthy and healthier ways of dealing with it.

The first of the pillars that jealousy is built upon are our beliefs, and there's two parts to this. One is harmful beliefs about yourself or about others, and that something like believing I'm not lovable or everyone leaves me or I'm flawed or I'm doomed or things like that. It could be beliefs we have about other people such as, well, you can't trust anyone, other people are just going to abandon you or everyone's manipulative or they're inferior to me or something like that. These intrinsic beliefs we have about ourself or others can really do a lot to fuel jealousy.

Then the second part of our beliefs is believing that our feelings are facts, and this is one of Dedeker's things she likes to say now and again, but let me give you an example of what this is. Say you're going to a therapist for the first time and you feel really nervous going into that meeting, the incorrect belief would be I'm feeling nervous and uncomfortable, therefore therapy is a bad thing as opposed to--

Dedeker: A logical fallacy.

Jase: Right. It's a logical fallacy, exactly. As opposed to, "Oh, I'm going to therapy and I'm nervous because I must be thinking or experiencing some things that make me nervous about that situation." There's a subtle difference there, but it's actually a very large difference. If you think about this with jealousy, it's like, "Oh, well, if I feel jealous, it must be because there's a reason to be jealous." That same thing can lead to that cycle, or I feel uncomfortable and that's intolerable. If something were good, I would never, ever feel uncomfortable or I would never, ever feel scared.

Emily: The other pillar that jealousy is built on is hyper-vigilance, I think initially, Jase, you also wanted to call this defensive worrying, which I liked. I think that really hits the nail on the head, and I really resonate with this one. It's this idea of if I'm hyper-vigilant, it's going to help me catch the painful thing before it hurts me or it's going to help me prepare for the worst. It's this idea of if I can obsessively think about or worry about every single possible situation or every single possible way that I could get screwed over here, that's going to protect me and this belief that if I let my guard down, then it's just going to be worse. If I let my guard down, I'm definitely going to get hurt.

Dedeker: Finally, we have fear of uncertainty which I think resonates with a lot of people, especially when they're starting out in a non-monogamous situation and they don't quite know what's going on, they may do some things like not knowing what their partner's real interests are, so they're going to try to seek out clues or reassurance or do things to test their partner, maybe try to hack into a phone and check a text message, something along those lines, or even just say things like, "Hey, you can never go over to a person's house and spend the night, for example, or you always have to be home with me in the evening and that will make me feel better about this situation."

It's this belief that you have to take action or find out what's really going on with your partner, and it really can result in a lot of shitty behavior like degrading your competitors. We say competitors like that's

Jase: In quotes.

Dedeker: Yes, in quotes. It's just that idea of seeing any other person that might be vying for your partner's attention as a competitor doing things like surveillance on your partner. I've had that happen to me. Threats to leave or having infidelity or even if you're in a non-monogamous situation, you may find some form of infidelity just to try to feel better, and it can be a result of that jealousy.

Jase: Yes. It's like this self-defensive infidelity that came up in some of these studies, which is basically this idea that, "Well, I need to protect myself from how hurt I might be if my partner were to cheat on me, so I'm going to hedge my bets here and I'm going to cheat on them first, or I'm going to keep something going over here just so that I'm not as vulnerable to them." I guess, is the thinking.

Emily: With these three pillars, I just want to make a note here. Again, in the interest of, like we said, deep pathologizing jealousy, first of all, I don't want anyone to internalize this idea of like, "Oh, you have these bad beliefs." "Oh, you're just too hypervigilant." "Oh, you have this fear of uncertainty. You need to get over all these things, and then you won't be jealous." First of all, I just want to put out there that having some harmful beliefs about yourself worrying and being afraid of uncertainty is super duper normal. Everybody goes through those things, and these are all three things that can be intensified if you have any particular trauma or pain points or relationship baggage around these things.

Again, really want to undo this narrative of like, "Oh, you're a jealous person. You need to get over it, or you need to just deal with your insecurities or whatever." It's like these things, the beliefs, the hypervigilance, and the fear of uncertainty, all sups normal.

Jase: Yes, sups normal. It's a good way to put it. The other thing, too, that came up in a lot of the research that gets reiterated over and over again is this idea that we evolved to experience jealousy because sometimes, in some situations it is helpful to us, and I think that is an important thing also with deep pathologizing it is that jealousy in itself isn't bad and the feelings aren't necessarily wrong and jealousy itself isn't even necessarily harmful. It's when it gets out of hand and when we take actions that actually make it worse or harm ourselves or others, that's where it becomes a real problem.

As I think Emily and Dedeker have both said earlier, the point is not to eliminate jealousy that you'll never, ever feel it, but just to find a better understanding of yourself through it and healthier ways of handling it when it does come up so that it's not negatively affecting your life.

Now we're going to get into four major categories for ways that jealousy shows up in your life and talk a little bit more about some unhealthy and some healthier ways of dealing with each of those. Before we do that, we're going to take a quick break to talk about how you can support this show and help keep this information coming to all y'all out there for free.

Dedeker: We've broken down into roughly four categories of the ways that jealousy can manifest as far as influencing your behavior, your actions, your thoughts, things like that. The first thing that we're going to talk about is comparison. This involves something that we all do, which is comparing the best parts of others to the worst parts of ourselves, or what we perceive to be their best parts. Comparing the experience of others as we imagine them, versus our own real-life experience.

As we talked about, on the show many times before, social media specifically is a big influence on our ability to do this. Our brains are already wired to want to do that and then social media makes it even worse by the fact that people are encouraged to really specifically tailor and curate showing the best parts of themselves or the best parts of their experiences. It can really take that whole dynamic and just dial it up to 11.

Jase: Specifically with social media, there's often just enough lack of information that your mind gets to fill in all the rest of it.

Dedeker: That's an interesting point.

Jase: Yes. Just this idea that you're getting what seems a lot of information about other people's lives but you're missing all of the real details, all of the actual stuff that you might get, even if they told you the same thing in person, that you'd be able to pick up on from their body language, or their tone of voice or asking questions that all that's missing and so our imaginations just get to go hog-wild.

Dedeker: The unhealthy ways that we can manifest comparison in our lives essentially are things like, first of all, there's just that of just having that really unhelpful thought space of really, really playing up your own terrible qualities in comparison to somebody else's fantastic qualities. We can go the opposite way like we can compare ourselves to someone else in a way that we're really trying to build ourselves up, and put the other person down.

Sometimes the way that I've seen this show up is by talking to your partner about how crappy their other partner is, or how there's nothing of value in the relationship that they have with that person. That's another way that comparison can show up in a bad way. We can also enact crappy things like vetoes, or rules or means of trying to get control over someone that you compare yourself to in order to make sure that that comparison, I guess, stays in check, and you can still feel relatively safe.

Emily: Those are some unhealthy ways. Let's talk about some healthy ways that we can deal with this comparison pillar that we're talking about here. Communicate, just communicate that you need reassurance, if that's something that you need to communicate, that you need more time with your partner, or I want our time, when we're at home together and I see you going out on dates, maybe I would love a date night myself once or twice a week because I feel we just get together and sit on the couch and that's not very special so let's have a special night out a couple of times a week.

Jase: I think also asking your partner for reassurance about your insecurities, too, and not to say, unhealthy version would be telling me why I'm better than this other person or maybe there's a trait you know that they're very better than you. They're a lot better than you. Whatever that is for you, whether that's that they have more money, or they could do more pull-ups at the gym, or whatever it is. It's not to say, "Hey, partner, tell me how I'm actually better than them in this area." Instead, to say, "Can you tell me what it is about me that's special? What are the things about me that you care about?" Is a more positive way of focusing on your own unique traits rather than making it about a comparison in specific ways to someone else.

Emily: These are kind of non-monogamous centric. I think we can also have moments like this in monogamous relationships where it, "Hey, I feel my partner is really focused on work right now, hasn't been focusing on the relationship as much. Maybe I need reassurance, maybe we need to adjust expectations in terms of time and the quality of that time that we're spending together." If you are in more of a non-monogamous, polyamorous situation, a great thing to do is to meet your metamours. That's sometimes easier said than done. Sometimes a metamour doesn't want to reach out or to meet up face to face with you, but tried to reach out because really getting to see another human being for what they are and what they stand for and understanding perhaps why your partner is enamored with them that can take some of the sting out of that jealousy pillar.

Jase: The next category we have for how jealousy can show up is competition. Comparison and competition are a little bit similar to each other, and that they present themselves as this, me versus another person way of thinking. The difference here, though, is that comparison's more just about looking at my own traits and thinking, "Oh, I'm not as good as this other person in some ways." Competition can tend to focus more on this zero-sum thinking like there's a limited number of resources, and I need to have the most of them.

Competition can even show up in areas where you already feel pretty good about yourself normally but you can get obsessed with this idea of I need to completely dominate or I need to put the other person down lower so that I know that I'm the winner in this category. It can get into some really negative stuff in the ways that we treat and talk about other people. It's definitely a big one to look at. It can show up in fairly commonplace ways, like how much time we spend together.

This is something that, and Emily was talking about in comparison, asking for what you need, whether that's more quality time together or something, that can be really good. The dark side of that, though, is when it becomes part of this competition jealousy of, "I need to have more time than someone else, and then I'll feel good." It's like this idea of if I just win somehow in this area that then I'll feel good. It doesn't actually lead you to feeling better.

Emily: That's an example of an unhealthy way of dealing with this competition section. Maybe you're just booking more time with your partner, you're saying, "I need to see you at least four times a week because I'm top of the food chain here and so I'm the one who gets the most time with you and I need to take it away in some way from the other people in your life," or maybe you're making rules to enforce a hierarchy. "I'm your primary partner, that means you don't get to do X, Y, and Z with your other partners, and I get veto power over everything because I'm your primary," something along those lines.

Jase: I think it's worth pointing out that all of these actions come from a desire to deal with the jealousy but these unhealthy ones actually will make it worse. Like with the hierarchy thing, it's if at the root of jealousy, if we think back to our roots, it's either my beliefs about myself or other people, or it's this hypervigilance self-defensive worry, or it's this fear of uncertainty. None of those things are going to change based on how much time of your partners you get, or getting more time than someone else, or having rules that impact how other people can interact with your partner. That's not going to change those core pieces.

It will actually often make it worse because then you're causing a more restrictive situation for your partner, which isn't going to feel as good. Also for you, it's then well if I'm still feeling jealousy, even though I have that thing I thought I needed to be winning at, there must be something else wrong there, there must be a deeper problem. It can lead itself into this cycle of just getting worse and worse by taking those sorts of ways to try and fix it.

Dedeker: It's interesting that you talked about people landing on that because that's not necessarily wrong. My whole thing is jealousy acts as almost like an X-ray or like a signpost that can guide you to the fact that like, "Oh, there's something underneath. Actually, there's something deeper that either is wrong or something that I'm longing for, or something that I need to deal with." I guess what you're referring to, Jase, is more of thinking like, "Oh, I need to find more and more ways of controlling or grasping for what I need." Is that what you're talking about?

Jase: Yes. I think that like we talked about before that jealousy itself isn't bad. If it's like, "Well, I am getting these things but I'm still not feeling good. Maybe there's some things there to look at, but if you're finding that jealousy is consistently causing you to have a miserable time and to be more likely to make your partner have a miserable time, that's when you can look at these things and think, "Well, maybe I'm trying to solve the wrong thing. I'm putting my energy into fixing one thing when actually there might be something deeper or in a slightly different area for myself that's going on."

Dedeker: I think along those lines, some healthier ways of managing feelings of competition that come up is again, I want to remind people that often there's longing underneath these things. Sometimes we can realize like, "Oh, I didn't realize that after being with my partner for 10 years, I've missed going out on a fancy date with them and I didn't even realize that I missed that until they started doing that with somebody else." I think that is legitimate that you can realize, Oh, I actually had this longing for actual quality time with my partner or actual quality time where we're not talking about adulting stuff or parenting stuff where it is just about the two of us.

That's very much something that can happen and that's something that could be good to identify and then find healthier ways of expressing those needs. Also on the flip side, you can sometimes feel competitive about something that you don't actually even want. You can feel competitive around, a certain amount of time when actually you would really benefit from having less time filled up and having more time to yourself or stuff like that. Sometimes it can be a good reality check to check in with yourself and give yourself the opportunity to maybe enjoy the fact that you aren't doing something with your partner.

Maybe it's an activity that your partner really enjoys and you've never really enjoyed, but they get to do that with somebody else who does enjoy it as well, stuff like that. Again, as always taking cues from these things to just check in and see what's really underneath it. It might be that you need some more self-time or relaxation or a particular quality of time in your own life instead of taking it from somebody else.

Emily: Let's talk about fear because there's a lot of ways that fear can manifest itself in the context of jealousy. There's things like fear of rejection, that's a big one. Fear of being alone absolutely, fear of being left out, just FOMO, being unloved, being less than, or being perceived as less than. A lot of these things can be really at the center of where jealousy is coming from. These are super deep insecurities, these thoughts of being unloved out, there being left alone, ultimately in our lives and it can lead to more of the really intense knee jerk reactions, the like quick, "Okay I'm vetoing this, or I'm making a rule right now."

That means we can't do whatever, or you can't do whatever with your partners and as with other issues involving fear, there's that belief of I'm afraid that means this thing is dangerous. That means this thing is bad and so we have to put an end to it, and that is a particularly troublesome idea to have just immediately about jealousy, like my feelings are facts and that's it.

Jase: Yes, and it is worth thinking again, as Dedeker was saying last time, that there could be something there? There could be a real reason why you're feeling this insecurity because maybe your partner is actually being shady or maybe you have reason not to trust them. Yes, that's possible and again with all of this, it's you really have to check-in and try to figure out is this something coming from me and my insecurities? Or is this actually something that maybe this is a relationship I needed to leave.

I think, especially if you notice the same patterns in yourself with many different partners, that's a good clue of-- This might be a pattern in my thinking actually a not just signs I'm seeing in this other person. Some examples of unhealthy ways of trying to deal with this would be something like asking your partner to promise you that you will always be number one compared to anyone else and or this promise me you'll never leave me type of a thing, which nobody can give that promise. That's not really a promise that someone can make and, we're scared of that uncertainty and we want them to just tell us that, but you're really not addressing the actual issues underneath it.

Those beliefs maybe you have about yourself or about other people or demanding that you close your relationship. This is something that partners may decide to do, but deciding to do it as this or I'm afraid that you're going to leave me, therefore we're going to close it. You might be looking to solve a problem but that actually won't solve, same thing even in monogamous relationships where it's-- You need to stop going to these work events because I'm afraid of you liking this coworker of yours, or I need you to stop hanging out with this friend of yours because I'm uncomfortable and I'm afraid of you leaving me for them or something like that. That those can be these ways of restricting that aren't actually going to solve the problem for yourself and are going to make things shittier for your partner.

Dedeker: There's a lot of ways that we can talk about as far as, healthier responses to our fear, and one of those is to just acknowledge the fear rather than try to not deny it and I'm going to share with you just one sentence, that's always stuck with me from a book by Pema Chödrön that I read recently. She talks about asking the Zen master specifically Kobun Chino Roshi, if you were curious about which Zen master, it was about how he related with fear and all he said was, "I agree. I agree." That always really stuck with me.

It sounded really fricking scary first of all, but this idea of being able to agree with your own fears of like, "Yes, that is scary, and yes that is a risk, and yes you can't get hurt." Even that in itself of being able to sit with that a little bit, and I want to clarify that it's like sitting with your fears a little bit different from asking somebody to sit through a panic attack or sit with an anxiety attack. That's not exactly the same thing, but being willing to acknowledge them to yourself and also sometimes acknowledging them to a partner, a partner may not be able to solve all your fears right away, but sometimes bringing them out into the light can be really, really helpful.

This isn't easy for a lot of people. I found some people are super fine, just being very vulnerable, just like, "Yes, I'm afraid of you leaving me. I'm afraid of you liking this other person better. I'm afraid of you, becoming really disappointed with me or I'm afraid of myself failing your stuff like that." Other people, it's really, really hard to even say that and there's a lot of reasons for that. I think, our culture and maybe sometimes stuff like toxic masculinity lead people to feel maybe they can't admit to their fears.

Sometimes even being able to just come to a place of just being like, I have an apprehension about this, or I have a concern about this, can sometimes be an easier feeling way of being able to express that to your partner. With a lot of these, it's also important to remember, often our fears are ancient. They go back really, really far. They go back to a past relationship or a past relationship, or even back before we were even having romantic or sexual relationships, they can go really far and I think it's okay to acknowledge that and honor that as well and generate some compassion for yourself, for your partners, for your metamours to the best of your ability.

Jase: Something to throw in there about admitting your fears to your partner. I think this comes up with the people who have a really easy time going there that sometimes that in itself can be a tool for manipulating and also making the problem worse. If you're sharing your fears with the expectation of, I need my partner to solve it for me and I think that's a key difference. It's, one thing to admit your fears and just say, "Hey, this is going on and I'm working on it versus this is going on. I need you to scramble and try to fix it." I want you to try to employ all the rules and things that I want to put on you, but you're going to do it for yourself because I'm using this as a manipulation." That is one little caveat to that, that I think is worth mentioning just based on things that we've seen.

Emily: The last way that jealousy manifests itself, not the absolute last way, but the last one that we're going to talk about is loss of control. This is this inability to accept that your partner is an independent person and that they can make choices that are independent of you and what maybe you want for them, or what you think is best for them or best for your relationship that doesn't always go together, those things don't and that's okay.

It may include a fear that your partner won't care for you if they're free and uncontrolled, or it grows out of this idea that nobody is going to love you and stay with you if they had another choice and again, I think a lot of people who are starting out in non-monogamous relationships, or even who are in monogamous relationships. They have this idea that like, "Hey, I have this fear that my partner is going to leave me, or I have this fear that my partner is going to meet someone else that's better than me and decided, you know what? Fuck that other person. They suck in comparison. It's a really universal thing, I think for everyone in whatever type of relationship configuration you're in.

Jase: Like you said, Emily, that idea that if my partner had free will, if they had their choice, clearly they wouldn't stay with me. Which, if you stop and think about, is a pretty problematic belief to have. A lot of people have it and it is very difficult. I've definitely felt that way.

Emily: I used to feel that way about a lot of partners that I've had. I don't know. It's a really like debilitating place to be in, in a lot of ways. Let's talk about some ways that that can manifest.

Dedeker: Whenever we're feeling a loss of control, generally as human beings, it's such a disorienting feeling and often it can manifest as essentially, the phenomenon of like when you're falling off a cliff, you literally grab onto whatever it is that you can grab onto sometimes completely from a knee-jerk place without even thinking about like, "Is this the thing that's actually going to support me? Is this the thing that's actually going to bring me back into control?"

That's how we hear all these horror stories, all these stories where people have been so burned, my partner's really trying to control and manipulate and limit them. We can do things like limit information or keep things from our partner or the opposite. Be trying to Snoop around and like ferret things out, or really dictate our partner's behavior or who they hang out with or when, or things like that. A lot of this is just this knee-jerk reaction to uncertainty.

Jase: Then if we look at healthier ways of dealing with that-- A lot of the things we've said in other categories also apply here of communicating about it, expressing your fears, but don't expect your partner to solve it for you, stuff like that. For this one, there's also, we'll give you some kind of less traditional things to think about that I think can be really helpful for this one that I think this loss of control is very hard for people to deal with because part of accepting it is letting go of the need of control rather than finding the best way to get that control.

I think that's a little counterintuitive and can be really challenging. One way of doing this and Dedeker loves talking about this as well, which is taking a moment to go out of your way to do something nice for someone else, whether that's a partner or maybe it's even a metamour. It also could just be some friend you haven't talked to in a while or even a random stranger, I suppose. Getting your focus outside of yourself into how can I make the world better for someone else I think can help us get out of this idea that "Well, if other people have free, will they're always going to screw me over." Because you're proving, "Hey, it doesn't have to work that way. It doesn't necessarily work that way."

Another one is tapping into your other resources, your other friends. People that you hang out with just to have other things going on in your life so that you're not entirely reliant upon, "Well, if I don't have control in this one area, this one area of my life, meaning my partner, is all I have." This one has been shown to particularly show up with straight men that often once men are in committed relationships, we're taught that you don't really value any other relationships. You don't really maintain other friendships so that romantic partner can be your only emotional support at all.

That can really lead to that fear of loss of control or fear of uncertainty being incredibly heightened because you've got all your eggs in that one basket so to speak, all of your support system eggs.

Dedeker: Perfect.

Jase: Another thing to try and this one's maybe a little bit more woo-woo, but there is some science to back it up. We're actually going to talk about this a little bit more in our bonus episode for Patreons after this. It's this, if there's a particular thought that is about uncertainty, that's causing you to be upset, to be scared, right? Something like, I don't know that my partner won't cheat on me. No, it's a double negative there, but there is always a possibility my partner could cheat on me or there's always a possibility my partner could leave me.

Those are just, that's true, that's a fact, there's nothing you can do about that. If that thought is something that really can preoccupy your mind, something that you could try is giving yourself an opportunity to reprogram your body's physical response to that thought. This can look a lot of different ways and you can find therapists who can help do this in a much more structured and controlled way, especially if this is a very serious anxiety that you have.

A little version of this you could try at home is maybe taking a bath or in some other way, getting comfortable feeling good and say, that thought that you're struggling with out loud of, I don't know if my partner will leave me. Say that over and over again, a few times, maybe 15 times, or something like that while feeling good. The point of this isn't for you to have no feeling at all when you say it, but by just acknowledging it while feeling uncomfortable, can just take a little bit of that edge off and doing this even for maybe a few days in a row, will just help take a little bit of that edge off to just reduce that level of agitation or intensity that comes with that thought.

Something to try. Like I said, it's a little bit more woo-woo and out there, and we'll talk a little bit more about some of the science having to do with that in our bonus episode.

Dedeker: I'll be honest. I'm someone who loves being in control. I don't know if you know this about me.

Emily: No. It's fun. I'm glad that you are in control most of the time.

Dedeker: Not that was a thing of specifically to this whole pandemic is really, really been challenging. My sense of being able to be in control of all the things at all times. These days I can't even really get to these higher-level healthy responses. Sometimes the best I got is like, "Well, I'm going to go cook something because that's something I can control or I'm going to go clean something. I'm going to go organize something because that's something that I can control." I think of it as in case of emergency break-glass response, to dealing with overwhelming feelings of loss control but that's just me.

Jase: Cooking is breaking the glass?

Dedeker: Yes. It's just some little tiny thing that I can control. I'm going to go work out or just something just some little tiny arena helps, helps to ground me a little bit.

Jase: That makes sense.

Dedeker: In conclusion, just remember, y'all, that feeling jealous, feeling any of these things doesn't mean that you're failing. It's totally normal. I think part of being a human being that continues to grow and change is using these feelings as a cue for figuring out what is it that you need in your life and what is it that you need in your relationships. If you're listening to this, and this sounds like a person that you know, or a partner that you're with, as we always say, don't weaponize this shit against them. Be kind, be compassionate. This is hard. I think all of us need to develop just a little bit more care for ourselves when we're struggling with these things as well.

Jase: Absolutely. Care for yourselves. Also just remembering that the feelings are natural and it's okay to experience that.

Emily: You're normal.