{"id":40728,"date":"2011-06-25T15:00:43","date_gmt":"2011-06-25T19:00:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/?p=40728"},"modified":"2011-06-24T19:13:09","modified_gmt":"2011-06-24T23:13:09","slug":"pulling-the-masks-off-of-jealousy-again-%e2%80%93-and-again","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/polyamory\/pulling-the-masks-off-of-jealousy-again-%e2%80%93-and-again\/","title":{"rendered":"Pulling the Masks off of Jealousy Again \u2013 and Again"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Maria Padhila<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

I stopped doing a lot of things in the \u201980s, and one of them was being jealous. <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
Poly Paradise at Burning Man. Photo by Eric.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

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\u2019m 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\u2019s just about as significant, and makes me laugh (unless it\u2019s just annoying because I\u2019m in a hurry — or unless the ambush is intended to leave a scratch, in which case it needs investigating).<\/p>\n

\u201cDon\u2019t you get jealous?\u201d is the big question people ask when they talk about polyamory. The lazy answer is no, we don\u2019t get jealous, we feel ‘compersion’, and that\u2019s what I\u2019d say if I fully understood compersion, which I may never do. The surface definition is that you enjoy another\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n

But back to the \u201980s — 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\u2019s king-size bed that filled his basement apartment, in misery because he was out with his old girlfriend. <\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

It was 1986, I think; maybe \u201987. Working sweatshop hours in a sexist industry with mergers & acquisitions-caused layoffs threatening, trying to finish up a college degree after dropping out once, severely underweight from wrongheaded treatments for undiagnosed health problems, broke as hell, car breaking down, trying to write, up late drinking and clubbing on top of it all. And I was crying with jealousy.<\/p>\n

Bad health and a life full of struggle leads to bad feeling, bad thinking. In some odd way, it\u2019s easier to push all your unhappiness as being caused by a single person, rather than face that there are class\/gender\/economic\/culture oppressions that you don\u2019t even know how to begin to address. I was crying for myself, I can see now. But it\u2019s so tempting to believe that everything else would be OK if this one person would only\u2026<\/p>\n

See, he was so tall and handsome. And kind of a ‘normal’ guy. I was an outsider, a weirdo, a punk. The young people who celebrate the ’80s forget the Reagan factor, the Preppie Handbook, the high price you paid for looking and being different back then. And she was the girl he really loved. Clear skin, straight blond hair, New England collegiate perfection. They were both WASPs — a culture I\u2019d never belong to and found scary and fascinating. She worked to explore and fulfill herself, not to pay the rent. If she was sick, she would stay home, or go home to her parents, and wrap up in a handmade quilt and sniffle and call friends, who would all feel bad for her and come and bring her stuffed animals. If I was sick, which seemed to be all the time, I would go to school, and go to work, and take extra smoke breaks, and mainline coffee and diet soda until work was over, and go out for drinks, and wake up and do it all over again. I was the kind of girl who took care of herself, out of pride and because no one else had ever cared much to.<\/p>\n

I did have a good time during those years, and I learned a lot. And he was great to be with — we\u2019re still friends, and I\u2019d go to great lengths for him if he needed it. His first wife I liked OK; his current wife I\u2019m crazy about. (Don\u2019t get any ideas; they\u2019d neither of them go for it.) But there were some very low days in the \u201980s, and this was one of them.<\/p>\n

The jealousy came from insecurity — class insecurity, appearance insecurity, economic insecurity; but deeper than that, I didn\u2019t have a place in the world and didn\u2019t believe I\u2019d ever have one. I still doubt there\u2019s a place in this world for me — I don\u2019t believe those with the big money who are running the show really want most of us around — but the difference is, nowadays I don\u2019t care. I\u2019m here whether you want me or not. <\/p>\n

A few years later, I saw our ‘relationship’ wasn\u2019t going to ‘go anywhere’. I was still thinking that everyone must follow a trajectory to marriage or break things off and try elsewhere. But I stuck around another year because I like him, and I loved sleeping with him, and that\u2019s rare. I\u2019d gone out with two other men over the years we were together — not really all that honestly and openly, but he knew and I knew he knew, we just didn\u2019t talk about it. When I look back, I see similar evidence that I was never cut out to be monogamous.<\/p>\n

After we broke it off, I began doing more walking and running in the woods near where I live. I took trips by myself. I\u2019d always loved the natural world — I was raised camping — but the connection this time was enriched by my growing pagan practice and understanding of the environment and the nature of creativity. This was a place I would always belong, even as sick and poisoned as I was and as it was becoming. I could feel and love the natural life teeming all around me, see its beauty, and enjoy its every function, even though, truly, it had nothing whatsoever to do with me. A rock doesn\u2019t long for the warmth of my hand. A creek doesn\u2019t flow to me in the hope of making my heart beat faster. A tree does not pine for my presence. Yet what I feel for them can only be described as love. So this is my version of compersion — I delight in existence.<\/p>\n

I may be doing it wrong, but for now, it works.<\/p>\n

So get in the DeLorean and head forward 25 years to the Next Time I Got Jealous. We\u2019ll visit the website — no such thing in the \u201980s! — of polyamory advocate and educator Anita Wagner<\/a>, whom I’ve met at several events and who has been very helpful and welcoming to all three of us on occasion. She has downloadable materials about jealousy on her site; one article, \u201cMaking Peace with Jealousy,\u201d I found hit home. <\/p>\n

Chris was out with a (young, beautiful, talented) woman. I had been cheering him on, and I was very curious about what would result. It was while I was working the next afternoon that I realized I hadn\u2019t heard anything from him in a while. Chris and Isaac are both communicative guys, who call or text or email several times a day.<\/p>\n

Hmm. I work on, but I\u2019m easily distracted. <\/p>\n

Oh, you know, I should finish up that poem while I\u2019m waiting for that client to call. Then I can post it to my blog, so I can get comments from a couple of people who think I\u2019m a good writer. Now let\u2019s check out some email groups; post something sort of intriguing and seductive. And Facebook, of course, the go-to source for instant and ersatz social reinforcement. Post and share a couple things — one article of urgent importance, and I\u2019m not just posting it to demonstrate my exquisitely honed social conscience. And share the one about the indie film, because I want to promote my friend\u2019s work, no, it\u2019s not just because I want to prove I\u2019m still the coolest woman in the room. And a few sharp, funny comments here and there, because I\u2019m really, really good at that kind of thing. Before long, I\u2019m dealing with such a flurry of return mails and comments that I have to shut everything down if I want to get any work done.<\/p>\n

And then I did get a text from Chris — a picture of the other woman\u2019s pet, in the window of her beautiful, stylish apartment. <\/p>\n

\u201cIt is safe to assume you will be jealous at some point when the circumstances arise that push your particular jealousy button,\u201d the article says. \u201cJealousy is almost always made up of more than one emotion.\u201d<\/p>\n

The article looks at four kinds of jealousy, including possessive jealousy, which I don\u2019t think I have much of. Fear of exclusion is another. Maybe. Jealousy appears to have more masks than a director\u2019s cut of \u201cEyes Wide Shut.”<\/p>\n

Competitive jealousy? A direct hit. According to the article, it is \u201ctriggered in response to fear that whatever made the relationship \u2018special\u2019 is being shared with or surpassed by another\u201d; and by \u201cimplications surrounding need to be \u2018most special\u2019 and concern about losing that status.\u201d <\/p>\n

I realize that part of being an artist means you need to ‘put yourself out there’ and show up on stage or at the event. I do this and sometimes enjoy it, sometimes wish I could hide. I get some pleasure out of pushing that shyness. ‘Forgetting yourself’ and getting into the flow of the work is supposed to be the gold standard, but I don\u2019t know that I\u2019ll ever achieve that, so I instead work with the dynamic of self-consciousness and make it part of what I do.<\/p>\n

But what I was doing that day was just pure, plain, being a showoff. Competitive. Waving around my skills to try to prove that I\u2019m the one who\u2019s the biggest deal around here. Being an attention suck. Waving a signal flag for reassurance that, when it truly comes down to it, I didn\u2019t really need or want as much as I thought I did. I looked at that photo of the serene cat in the window and had to laugh at myself, lashing out a paw from under the bed.<\/p>\n

\u201cRemember that there is no shame in being jealous, no nobility in a lack of it,\u201d says the article. \u201cWe are what we are.\u201d<\/p>\n

If you\u2019re interested in going deeply into the jealousy question, Planet Waves has posted the article Jealousy and the Abyss<\/strong><\/a>, a profound work on the topic.<\/em> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Maria Padhila I stopped doing a lot of things in the \u201980s, 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 … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":191,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"generate_page_header":""},"categories":[207],"tags":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40728"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/191"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=40728"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40728\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=40728"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=40728"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=40728"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}