Jealousy

Love's Favorite Decoy

by Marcianne Blevis with Judith Gurewich

Would Valentine's Day be less glorious if jealousy were eradicated from the book of human emotions? We assume that jealousy is a necessary evil, the collateral damage of love; given a choice we prefer to do without it. Jealousy hurts. It creeps in without warning, crashing the party, leaving us clueless and stunned. Our attempts to express ourselves in the face of jealousy, frailty, or rage usually backfire. We become either apoplectic or silent, but always irrational. "Jealousy lives upon doubts," said the eighteenth-century moralist Francois de La Rochefoucault. When we are jealous we invent scenarios on the basis of the slightest hint: a phone call hung up too quickly, a conversation at a party that seemed to last a little too long. "It becomes madness or ceases entirely as soon as we pass from doubt to certainty," added La Rochefoucault.

But what exactly do we doubt? I have a friend who claimed to be immune to jealousy. He had an open marriage. But his free-above-it-all spirit turned out to be a self-protective device. This man's self-loathing was so immense that he couldn't even imagine competing with a rival. When he felt the first twinges of jealousy, he did not know what hit him. With the help of his analyst he was eventually able to celebrate it as a victory, an affirmation. Now he could face the risk of falling in love, of being loved, or possibly, rejected.