I have never considered myself a jealous woman. The idea of jealousy, real honest jealousy, never has appealed to me.
I mean yes in general looking at jealous person is not a pretty sight. People do some radically stupid and ugly things in the name of jealousy that really are quite shameful in the end. However looking at someone else being jealous and being jealous yourself are also vastly different things.
Still, I like to think that for the most part I am not a jealous person. I find jealousy too be a rather wasted emotion. Why be jealous? That is sort of a rhetorical question really. I am not stupid. I know the reasons for being jealous, and I suppose in their own way they are valid. That does not make jealousy any less a wasted emotion.
Jealousy is a small petty emotion. It brings about unneeded anger and resentment and hurt feelings. Jealousy takes up a ridiculous amount of energy as well. In the end it never leads to anything that is good. It leads to arguments, and throwing things (tantrums and physical objects), and occasionally binge consumption of chocolate.
As rational as my views on jealousy are, there is one glaringly large problem with them.
Jealousy is an irrational emotion.
Mostly you can control the level of jealousy you exude, but even for a person such as myself, jealousy happens. Which is why while I do not consider myself a jealous woman, I am only mostly not a jealous woman.
You see I believe that the amount of jealousy you exude is directly proportionate in the amount of trust you have in the thing to which you are becoming jealous over. I can not say I ever find myself truly jealous of physical tangible things. I am not jealous of a person because they have more than me, or something I really want.
Covetous? Yes.
Jealous? No.
That sort of jealousy really does seem silly to me. If someone has more than me or does better than me, well they just do. I mean I like to take pride in the fact that I did the best I could and they did as well and certainly they deserve the honor that they are receiving. Such events tend to be grossly subjective anyways, so until I perfect the art of mind control there or become the most adored woman in the world, there really is very little I can do to control such things, so why care?
The only truly jealous moments I have are in relation to my husband.
Now this is not to say I do not trust my husband. I do trust my husband. I trust him from here to eternity (because I am not making some analogy about throwing things since everyone knows I can't throw anything any distance to make that a good analogy). My husband is a wonderfully loyal and loving man. He is also completely oblivious to the opposite sex's attraction to him.
Seriously, short of a woman box checking him or sticking her tongue down his throat, he has no idea he is being flirted with. He has it in his head he is unattractive and women are not ever going to throw themselves at him. Did I mention he is a little delusional?
So my husband is actually a big, strong, virile, attractive man. Women flirt with him all the time. I don't care because I trust him completely. For the most part I also trust the women I see flirting with him. In our world, in our group of friends, flirtation is a fairly common occurrence. We are incredibly affectionate flirtatious people. It happens. He trusts me, and I trust him, and I also trust the women flirting with him.
If he ever lost his mind and looked at one of them and honestly said "You, me, the bushes, right now.", they would look at him like he had grown a third eye and ask if he had lost his mind. It is a respect thing for me and for our marriage. They have respect and that is why I trust them.
There are however a few women who have no respect and that would pretty much throw a leg up and be ready to go right then and there with no regards to me. With those women I become jealous. There are precisely four women who set off this emotional reaction, and I must say it is a fairly extreme reaction.
On Sunday I went so far as to lick him in public because one such woman had been flirting with him. He was of course oblivious to what had happened and why I was licking him at faire, but he is pretty good about not asking questions.
I do not like it when I get like this. I hate feeling petty and small. I hate wanting to hurt people over something that I know will never happen. It makes me feel like I am showing that I do not trust my husband, which is so very far from the truth.
Still it is an irrational emotion and until I learn how to conquer irrationality (which will be up there with when I learn to control minds or get my husband to take his dirty dishes to the kitchen), I will have to just hope that my more rational tendencies keep me with just licking my husband in public and not punching some woman in the throat.
No comments:
Post a Comment