By Maria Padhila
I stopped doing a lot of things in the ’80s, and one of them was being jealous.
I realized this because I started to think back, trying to test myself to see if what I thought was my freedom from jealousy was real or just something I was gritting my teeth and trying to maintain. I think I owe it to myself and the people I’m with to do that kind of self-test, that awareness check-in, from time to time. While there are times a variety of jealousy jumps out and grabs me like a cat from under the bed — more about that later — it’s just about as significant, and makes me laugh (unless it’s just annoying because I’m in a hurry — or unless the ambush is intended to leave a scratch, in which case it needs investigating).
“Don’t you get jealous?” is the big question people ask when they talk about polyamory. The lazy answer is no, we don’t get jealous, we feel ‘compersion’, and that’s what I’d say if I fully understood compersion, which I may never do. The surface definition is that you enjoy another’s pleasure independent of you as much as you enjoy your own. Compersion is a very complex topic, and to write about it, I think I better bring in an expert at a later date.
But back to the ’80s — if you can stand it. Younger people I know seem to love to rehash those days. My daughter, set to work cleaning out her drawers and closets today, just came downstairs in a tulle skirt, leggings, glitter belt, torn t-shirt, one fingerless glove, and a pile of necklaces. I could have been looking into a time-tunnel. And there I was in my leggings and torn t-shirt (pretty much what I still wear today), face down on my then-boyfriend’s king-size bed that filled his basement apartment, in misery because he was out with his old girlfriend.