Jealousy

I'm an introspective, analytical type o' gal. I like to take the crystal sphere of my thoughts out, metaphorically of course, hold it in my hand, and look at it from all directions to figure out why I'm feeling the way I am, and where something went wrong, if it did. (By wrong I mean any emotion I'm not happy to be experiencing, like sadness, hurt, hopelessness, insecurity, jealousy or anger (some people may like being angry; I'm not one of them).) We've all probably done this on one level or another at some point, and I just do it very deliberately. Like taking time to breathe deeply.

I never felt jealousy in my relationship until after our Sex at Dawn reading and subsequent discussions. I think I never worried before about what I meant to George, since he made it pretty apparent (and still does). But I wasn't wrong when I thought such a life-altering transition might be scattered with small complications. It's only natural, really, and I don't mind the complications as long as we continue to work through them together. Luckily, George never minds working through them, either, be they my complications or his.

For the record, I do feel like I'm writing this from a naive position. We're young in our open marriage, and I don't intend to come across as a 22-year old who tells a random 40-year old mother how to raise her young children, since she obviously knows. I'm still learning; this is just what I know so far.

So, at this point, jealousy is a feeling that seems to crop up whenever I'm not really paying attention, and I do think a lot of it is related to the newness of sharing him physically and emotionally (theoretical or literally). Thus, it's a subject I've paid significant attention to, spending more time than usual staring into my own glass ball.

Jealousy for me stems from insecurity. Let's say, for an earlier example, that George looks at a picture of a beautiful girl, or someone walking by. For the most part, I don't care. If that picture is of a girl looking seductively at him (the camera) or the girl walking by smiles at him (not me), I'm more likely to be jealous. There's a risk there, albeit small in these examples, that George could choose to have sex with one of these women. There's a strong likelihood that he's going to feel at least a small bit of excitement by the encounter, especially the latter encounter.

Embedded in that possibility is the additional risk that he may choose to walk away from time he could be spending with me to spend time with her and the risk that he could feel a level of excitement with her he doesn't feel with me. Ay, there's the rub.

So it comes down to fear. To insecurity, really. I'm afraid there's something better than me out there for him. Insecure in my ability to be...not enough per se, but as good as it gets. I'm afraid that an interest in pursuing other options may be more important than time with me, with familiar, known-quantity me. And I'm insecure with my own body, everything from my fair features to my size to the tightness of my vagina (not always insecure, to be clear, just momentarily; I usually think I'm fairly sexy and working my way up the hotness scale).

A sidenote: I try to quickly eliminate any feelings of "I want to be enough" as fast as they come. Since reading Sex at Dawn, when the term "enough" refers to "only", it's no longer allowed. By nature, humans, and perhaps to a greater extent penis-endowed humans, crave variation and thrive from it. So I deny any assertion that I should be the only. I no longer believe that's the healthiest lifestyle, or I wouldn't be writing this blog. I do believe it's possible to be monogamous your whole life, but not the happiest option.

Great! Do you see how amazing it is to look through these thoughts and figure out exactly why I have this jealousy? Do you know what that means? It means I have the root of the problem, and when I have the root it means I can fix the problem. I'm a problem-fixer by nature (and go crazy when I can't fix problems, which is an issue for me at times), so I'm practically at victory here. But just practically, because another hard part is coming (did you think all that analyzing was easy? ha!).

I've tried to do the next part on my own, and it doesn't work. The next part is reminding myself

1. That I'm as amazing as it gets for him, which is why he's with me.
2. That he's not going to give up time with me that I don't offer to pursue other subjects (I do try to be generous), and
3. He's madly attracted to me, which is why we have incredible sex all the time.

I've tried telling myself those things, and they're good reminders on a regular basis, but if I have a real moment of jealousy that doesn't go away after a little while (6-48 hours, depending on what happened), I have to talk to George. Lucky for me, George is happy to talk to me. In fact, he always says he likes it. We haven't been the type to have those crazy emotional talks throughout our marriage because we've always been pretty happily married, with a few normal ups and downs. But I think we both like the communication because it's comforting to know our relationship is important to the other person, and we really, really value feeling secure in knowing both how I feel about George and how he feels about me. (Probably if we didn't like each other, the knowing would not work out so nicely.)

So my method is basically to remind myself of what I already know, and if/when that fails, don't waste time asking for a minute to talk it out. My fears of being too high-maintenance are really overblown, and sometimes it's just my turn to need something in the relationship. That's allowed in a relationship, and it's good to remind myself of that.

I admit it's scary to me to feel jealous. I feel a disconcerting level of threat to my security in life and my opportunity to love my husband. The fear, though, makes me anxious to figure out what went wrong this time and what to discuss. And George, well, George is a strong 50% of why our relationship is so beautiful.