Jealousy Is Not Love
Jealousy is caused by insecurity, lust and fear that distance us from love, contaminate our relationships and destroy our freedom. That’s why it can not be synonymous with love. It is instead necessary to tie the knot of jealousy.
It seems to indicate a particular fear of loss, as if it were trying to get us to pay attention to a particular fact. It informs us that we risk losing the affection and attention of the person we love to another person.
When this type of mistrust arises, it is common to feel abandoned, dismissed and excluded in the presence of a third person. It is a painful feeling that causes anxiety. It signals that something is not working in the relationship and that it must be taken care of.
Jealousy initially serves to indicate that something needs to be resolved in our relationship with another person; remaining problems we have neglected and which make us insecure and full of mistrust. Maybe it’s just a warning that disappears when the problem is solved, or it can be problematic and pathological.
A widespread, erroneous belief is that this condition is synonymous with love. Feeling jealous does not mean that we love the person more; it only activates our fears, which are often related to emotional insecurity. As people, relationships, and love mature, jealousy diminishes.
Jealousy can be handled mature, and just like any other emotion, you can take advantage of it in a way that helps to re-establish and strengthen the relationship, so that you can move forward together and overcome your difficulties. This type of jealousy is not made up, but is triggered when a real distance is perceived to the other person.
When we feel that the person we love neglects us and focuses his attention on other people, jealousy comes naturally. The alarm is activated, which mobilizes us and illuminates our fears.
For a moment we return to our childhood. What normally happens when there are two children in the household and the adults only pay attention to one? When a lonely child realizes that it is no longer a lonely child? That’s how it all starts, in order to guarantee our survival.
Jealousy is healthy when we pay attention to this alarm and try to use it mature. Being aware of our fears – for which only we are responsible – and being able to express them in words, can help us to intelligently integrate jealousy into the situation or circumstances that evoked it.
This type of jealousy is more related to lack of self-esteem, feelings of insecurity in the situation, whether it is real or made up. It becomes a problem when you start to interpret and assume, which inevitably leads to misunderstandings because you are constantly reinforcing the state you are in.
You do not want to resolve the situation or mature by becoming aware of your fears. Pathological jealousy catches you in your fear and makes you react disproportionately to all the actions you interpret as a lack of attention.
Many people try to make their partners jealous as a way to measure their love. These people have a strong belief that this feeling will unite them and that without jealousy there is no love. Jealous people maintain this belief and justify the characteristics of childlike love.
The need for attention and continuous demonstrations of affection can lead to this type of situation through manipulation. They try to make the other person worry, to make them feel as if the relationship can end at any second if they do not constantly give the manipulator attention.
If we can understand the function of jealousy, what it does, what it tells us and how we can solve it, we will understand why it occurs. And more importantly: we will know how to use it to our advantage; we will be able to control it and avoid falling into its destructive claws.
