Is there a Cure for Jealousy?

Dear Maxwells, Lately, my partner and I have both been struggling a lot with jealousy in our relationship. We have both been cheated on in the past, and as ashamed as I am to admit it, we have both cheated on partners in the past as well. Even though we both get jealous about different things in the relationship, our jealousy is becoming a regular source of conflict between us. Does jealousy ever go away?

Dear Reader, thank you for this question. Jealousy is so interesting because unlike so many other emotions that come up in relationships, most people generally relate to jealousy as something bad, that they don’t want to face or experience at any cost. This is unfortunate because jealousy is a very powerful emotion that is here to teach us something about ourselves, our attachments, our self-worth and our level of safety in relationship to our intimate partner(s.) There are both biological and psychological reasons for feeling jealous and by facing jealousy head on, staring it right in the eye, we can learn more about ourselves than we ever can if we turn our backs to it. So to our reader, who has both cheated and been cheated on, the fact that jealousy keeps coming up for both you and your partner is actually a good thing!

Let’s face it, to many of us, jealousy feels “icky” in that it can be a profoundly uncomfortable emotion to feel. The idea that our partner may leave us for somebody else or desire somebody else can threaten our feeling of safety in the world. Biologically we are wired to know when we are in danger and in that sense, jealousy can be connected to, or trigger our fight or flight response. However, the biological components of jealousy barely scratch the surface of where jealousy, especially the “icky” parts of it, come from. For example, people don’t feel jealousy at the thought of losing their partner to illness for instance. Sadness, fear, grief, and many other emotions, absolutely, but not jealousy.

So aside from the biology of jealousy, what is jealousy trying to tell us? There are two forms of jealousy as we see it: “relational” jealousy and “personal” jealousy. Relational jealousy has to do directly with your relationship with your partner. Relational jealousy is directly proportional to how much trust is built between the two of you and therefore, how safe you feel with each other. If there is minimal trust between you and your partner, due to either being in an early phase of the relationship where you just don’t know each other that well, or due to breaches of trust in the past with this person if you are in a longer term relationship, jealousy is actually a helpful warning sign. It is your nervous system telling you “hey, you might not be completely safe in this situation.” The antidote to relational jealousy is more trust. It might sound simple, but that’s because it is. This is why we talk so much about transparency in relationships being one of the main pillars of relationship success, because trust is built over time through transparency in communication and consistency on behalf of each person in a relationship demonstrating they are trustable. Building trust really is the cure to relational jealousy. And you can build it, with the right roadmap.

Personal jealousy, on the other hand, is jealousy that is triggered because of feelings of inadequacy, attachment issues, personal history and issues with self worth. Personal jealousy is, in our opinion, where the “ickiest” feelings of jealousy arise, and can feel like someone is massaging salt directly into the crevices of your deepest wounds, fears and insecurities. Personal jealousy, as uncomfortable as it is, is also a wonderful messenger because it is telling you to take a look at these parts of yourself and to deal with them. If you have issues around your self-worth, and the idea of your partner desiring somebody else triggers them, that’s an opportunity for you to do the personal work to address those issues, learn from them and learn to love yourself more. If you have issues that haunt you from the past, as in our reader’s case, cheating and being cheated on, jealousy is telling you to properly unpack them, either on your own, or with a trusted professional to understand why they happened, how you co-created those situations and what steps you can take in the future to assure they are far less likely to happen again. Personal jealousy is really an arrow pointing in the direction of where you can improve yourself, and as we’ve written about before, nothing triggers these personal issues with ourselves like our intimate relationships!

So to answer our reader’s question, “does jealousy ever go away,” our answer is both yes and no. Relational jealousy can indeed go away, almost completely when real and deep trust is built over time between two people. Personal jealousy can go away so much as one addresses their deeper issues powerfully. But really, instead of wanting or needing jealousy to go away completely, the best thing to do is to turn towards jealousy and be thankful to it for being one of our greatest emotional teachers, and to subsequently learn the lessons it’s trying to teach us.