A wonderful post on jealousy by Cory Kerens
------------ Forwarded Message ------------
Date: Wednesday, February 25, 2004 12:30 PM -0500
From: Cory Kerens [address removed]
To: chat@[address removed]
Subject: [pbc] Two Jealousies?

Hi, Folks.

I won't be able to be at the discussion tonight, but I have some thoughts about jealousy, so I thought I'd contribute my two cents to the discussion through a post.

It seems to me that there are two main kinds of jealousy: what I call Possessive Jealousy and Informative Jealousy.

Possessive jealousy is the kind that's usually brainwashed in by our only-monogamy-is-okay society. It's a feeling that one owns the loved one, and if the loved one loves anyone else, that is automatically a betrayal, one has automatically lost something important and been damanged or done dirty to.

This is the kind of jealousy that produces such an "Eeeew!" reaction in poly people and the kind that poly people either never felt in the first place, have overcome, or are working on overcoming.

Informative jealousy, on the other hand, is a message from yourself to yourself telling you that something in your life is wrong. Maybe you feel like you aren't getting enough time with your lover, or you aren't getting enough of something else, from romantic dinners to walks in the park to sex. Maybe your lover is growing, and you aren't, and that hurts. Maybe you're feeling insecure about your own desirability or your own worth as a person. These kinds of jealousy are different from thinking that one owns a person -- they're more like "I'm not getting what I need."

Informative jealousy doesn't necessarily imply that one's partner needs to do anything different. If you are insecure, for example,
maybe your partner isn't giving you what you need, and you should ask for reassurance, or maybe your insecurity comes from your own stuff, and your partner has nothing to do with either the cause or the solution.

My experience is that many good-hearted poly people have a horror of jealousy in themselves and/or an intolerance of it in their lovers. I think that adopting a zero-tolerance policy with possessive jealousy makes sense. I think that blaming or accusing oneself or one's lover for feeling informative jealousy is counter-productive. If it's informative jealousy, it's a message to tell you that something's not right. What do you need to do differently to get what you need?

I think that it's important that informative jealousy not be used to hold one's lover hostage -- "I'm feeling like I'm not getting enough of X, and it's your job to give it to me" -- but I also think that it's important that people care about whether or not their lovers are in pain.

So I think that when people feel jealousy, the first question to ask oneself is "Is this Possessive Jealousy or Informative Jealousy?" If it's the first, deprogramming oneself from the cultural brainwashing makes sense. But if it's the latter, then look at yourself and your relationship -- what do you need to change?

Okay, so maybe that was THREE cents. :-)

Cory

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