Grace walks out of the bathroom bar and sees
her husband Eric laughing with Mary, one of his female co-workers. He smiles from ear to ear, and his cheeks
look a little flushed. Grace remembers Eric telling her that Mary
had graduated from Harvard too and that she used to model in the past. As she walks closer towards them, Mary sees
her and smiles. “Grace! So nice to see you. I was just asking Eric where you were. You look amazing!” Yeah right, thought Grace. “Me? Look at yourself! With that dress, you look like you should
be on the cover of a magazine.” “That’s what I told her too,” said Eric,
chuckling. “Oh stop! You guys are too kind. Well, I’ll let you guys be. I should go and find my friend.” Mary waved goodbye and went off to find her
friend. Grace waved goodbye, but inside, she burned
with jealousy. *** Jealousy is the feeling you get when your
relationship to something is threatened by a rival. In my example, Grace feels that her relationship
with Eric is threatened by Mary. But jealousy doesn’t just apply to romantic
relationships. When we see someone get a promotion that we
think we deserve or achieve the spot at a university that we’ve been working hard
towards, we can feel jealous in those situations too. And jealousy is similar to, but separate from,
envy. Envy is the feeling that arises from someone
else having what you want. For example, Grace might notice that Mary
gets the most attention anytime she walks into a room and feel envious. Mary has something that Grace wants. But when Mary talks to Eric, her husband,
and gets his attention, she feels jealous. Because now Mary threatens to take Eric away
from her. And in every instance of jealousy, there are
at least three parties: The Prize, The Rival, and The Jealous. In my example, the jealous person is clearly
Grace. The Prize is the thing the jealous person
wants. In my example, that’s Eric. And The Rival is the thing that threatens
the jealous person’s relationship with The Prize. That’s Mary. Jealousy is when your relationship to a prize
is threatened by a rival. For good reasons, jealousy is often viewed
as a destructive emotion. Jealousy causes us to suffer from constant
fear and worry that we’ll lose our Prize, and so we waste a lot of energy defending
and controlling the Prize—energy that could be used in more productive ways. It can also make us feel angry and vengeful,
either towards our Prize or our Rival. For example, Grace might spill some wine on
Mary’s dress and claim it was an accident. Or she might start to withdraw and give Eric
the cold shoulder, as punishment for talking to Mary. By taking either of these actions, she makes
her relationships with Eric and Mary a little worse. But on the other hand, if honoured and understood,
jealousy can give us insight into our lives. Maybe Grace’s jealousy is accurately signalling
that her relationship is threatened. Maybe she accurately picked up on the fact
that Eric actually is attracted to Mary, and maybe they do have something going on behind
the scenes. Or maybe the jealousy is a signal of Grace’s
own insecurities. Maybe she feels threatened anytime someone
pretty talks to Eric, even if nothing more is going on. Or maybe the jealousy is a signal that Grace
and Eric need to establish better boundaries within their relationship. Maybe some of the things that Grace sees as
inappropriate, Eric sees as harmless. Or maybe it’s some combination of all three
scenarios. But at the end of the day, if it’s respected
and mined for insight, there’s a lot Grace can learn from her feelings of jealousy. If we return to the idea of jealousy as a
triangle, we can start to map out the potential insights we can learn from it. First, we draw a triangle. At the bottom left corner, we write The Jealous. At the top most point, we write The Prize. And at the bottom right corner, we write The
Rival. This shows the relationship between all three
parties. Now on the line connecting The Jealous to
The Prize, we write trust. This is the first insight jealousy gives us,
that we might need to work on the trust and boundaries between ourselves and our partner. We need a clearer understanding of what is
and isn’t acceptable within our relationship. Now on the line connecting The Prize to The
Rival, we write value. This is the second insight that jealousy gives
us, that we might need to realize that our partner doesn’t value us as much as we value
them. If we feel they’re disrespecting us or making
themselves open to other people, then that’s something that needs to be discussed. Or maybe we need to cut our losses and move
on. And lastly, on the line connecting The Jealous
to The Rival, we can write security. This is the third insight that jealousy gives
us, that we might need to work on how secure we feel within ourselves. If anybody and everybody presents a threat
to our relationship, we might need to realize why we feel that way and work on it. If our minds are always racing with and consumed
by jealous thoughts, we’ll likely destroy any relationships we have, unless we learn
to overcome that jealousy. And if I were trying to apply these insights
to my life, I’d probably do it by asking myself a series of questions. The first question would be how secure do
I feel within myself? Do I feel inferior to someone else based on
their qualities? Second, do I feel my relationship is truly
threatened? Is my partner disrespecting the relationship
or making themselves open to other people? And lastly, do me and my partner need to establish
better boundaries and rebuild our trust? So that’s the jealousy triangle. Hopefully you found this insightful. In the end, there’s no one size fits all
solution. And in fact, I hope I made it clear that jealousy
is less of a problem to be overcome and more of a signal to be understood.
