Jealousy

[leo9]

Me and my Master have been going through bad times with the jealousy issue for about a year. We never gave up on trying to find better ways to deal with my jealousy... My sickness is gone. (jealousy)

Well done! Far too few people can get there.

We made a breakthrough. I learned that jealousy for me is insecurties about myself and irrational thoughts that i started to believe. Nothing Master could say would help me overcome my fears and my way of thinking. I couldnt see what was really happening. All i thought was that he was going to find someone better than me and the more i became jealous and showed myself badly, the more i knew that was true. I was making my irrational thoughts come true.

Well seen. Insecurity - fear of loss - is nine tenths of what is called jealousy, and yes, it becomes a self fulfilling fear. My mother once observed that when someone fears they aren't loved, they respond by acting as unlovable as possible.

People who are jealous are insecure and they need to trust the other person.

You're only halfway there: they also have to trust THEMSELVES. Trust that they are worth loving, trust that they are loved, trust that they are strong enough to survive if their worst fears come true and they lose that love.

My first (vanilla) love never loved me the way I loved her; she was fond of me, but I was just one of a lot of men in her life, and she never pretended differently. In some ways, that gave me a head start in giving up jealousy: there was no point being afraid of losing what I didn't have. I learnt to live with her other loves because it was either that or give her up. I learnt to be glad that there were other people who could make her happy when I wasn't there. Later, when I was in the poly scene (with a later partner) and a man asked me why I wasn't jealous, I said "You're doing good things for the woman I love. How could I mind that?"

I wrote once in another forum: "It is a conventional sign of love to say you couldn't live without someone, but there are nasty implications behind the flattery: that you stay with them because you've no choice, and they'd better stay with you or they'll have you on their conscience. More loving is to say 'I could leave if I chose, but I stay with you because I love you.'"