Maybe Jealousy In Non-Monogamy Isn't Bad

It can be, but not in and of itself

You can't get anywhere near the world of non-monogamy without learning about jealousy, and then learning about how jealousy is a sort of problem to solve. 

Maybe it’s a problem with you! If your partner is on a date or having sex or being affectionate or even just paying attention to someone else and you discussed it and agreed to it and you get all activated about it then, well, that's on you. You’ll see it suggested that it is toxic cis-hetero-patriarchal-capitalist-monogamy doing it’s evil work within you, that you need to do *clap* the *clap* work *clap* to unpack all subconscious claims of ownership over your partner.

Maybe, sadly, it’s your wounded inner child coming out to cry. Nobody makes it out of childhood psychologically intact, so perhaps some deep pain that got frozen within you long ago just got thawed and shaken loose. Heck, maybe it’s a deep pain that got frozen within you as an adult - nobody knows what the hell they’re doing when it comes to dating and intimacy and we all end up torturing each other at least a little bit while we figure it out the hard way. 

Maybe it’s not a problem within you, but between you and your partner. Perhaps the jealousy points to some unmet need, some unfulfilled promise, some unkept commitment that’s leaving you feeling like this other person is getting what you yourself desperately want but have somehow lost access to. Perhaps you made a spreadsheet of your relational needs - someone to come home to, someone to go on cute dates with, someone to take to the kink dungeon, someone to go bowling with on alternating Tuesdays - and you have a lovely partner in each defined slot and you’ve really tried to do everything right but some accumulation of time and trust and connection has made it such that you are now madly in love with your occasional-bowling partner and you want more from them than you can ever hope to get in your committed relationship structure without someone being left with heartbreak.

Those three possibilities are valid ones, albeit bummers to consider. I want to offer a fourth possibility in terms of approaching jealousy in non-monogamy, namely that a) it doesn’t necessarily come from problematic sources and b) doesn’t need to go away.

What I want to offer is the possibility of jealousy being a natural product of desire itself. When I desire someone it means that I have a very personal response to their erotic and romantic energy, namely I experience a desire for that erotic and romantic energy to be pointed at me in particular. When someone I desire is experiencing a moment of passion with someone else and I am aware of it then I have that aforementioned personal reaction to their passion. I know it’s there, and I want it! I can feel as close to 100% comfortable as I can possibly be with the other person they’re with, maybe even experiencing some warm glow of support for the joy they’re experiencing together, and still feel myself boiling with desire for my partner’s passion myself. 

What this creates access to is the possibility of jealousy being a positive thing. It indicates an abundance of desire! Your partner can be out on a date and you can know about it and support it and still be craving them the entire time and then when they return you get to have an explosively-passionate reconnection.

None of the above is the Truth, by the way - I hope it’s obvious that no oracle has granted me access to the True Nature Of Jealousy. I feel called to assert that sometimes whatever jealousy you’re dealing with might be one of the above possibilities, sometimes multiple, sometimes none. Perhaps the jealousy you experience is an indication that non-monogamy isn’t right for you at all.

What I’m proposing here also isn’t meant to mean that you somehow *must* be jealous, that the *absence* of jealousy indicates an absence of passion or a worthless relationship. Some people really are wired in such a way that jealousy doesn’t occur for them, and some people really are in relationships where they are quite satisfied with the amount of intimacy they experience with someone. One of the virtues of non-monogamy is the possibility of experiencing relationships with people who would frustrate you if you integrated them too deeply into your life, experiencing relationships exactly where they work rather than pining after someone and idealizing them or jumping in with both feet into a relationship that’s obviously doomed.

What I do know is that it helps me quite a lot to find new and positive ways to think about painful feelings, and that this way of looking at jealousy - not as a problem, but as a happy (if uncomfortable) abundance of desire - has helped me a lot. Wherever you are on your journey of being with people I hope that it helps you as well!