The Root of Jealousy

Hey, Cadre family doctor Carrie here. Just getting started on the live stream. We'll wait for a few minutes for people to join. I am your resident trauma and relationship life coach and director of coaching on Cadre, and today's topic is the root of jealousy. Now, we can go many different ways with this topic, so I'm gonna dive into a few different areas, but who here would say that they have experienced jealousy at some point in their life? You can raise your hand silently in your living room if you want, and maybe you've experienced it more than once.

Maybe you've experienced it only in certain relationships. But I think it's a pretty common human emotion to experience jealousy, and that's okay, because it is an actual human emotion. But what I want to talk about today is more of what is the root of why we feel jealous? And is that a bad thing or a good thing? Because some people would say an element of jealousy, especially in relationships, it's a good thing because it keeps you committed to your partner. And I'm going to argue that I don't think it's ever a good thing, because if you're feeling jealous, usually at the root of jealousy is an underlying insecurity or need that's not being met.

So I'll give you some examples. When I was married, I was jealous all the time. Everything came before me in our marriage. My husband's work, other people sitting on the couch and watching tv. Everything literally came before me. I was never a priority. So I was jealous of things. I was jealous of people, I was jealous of his work. And my jealousy was very valid because I was never made a priority in his life. And so at the root of my jealousy in that experience, was actually a fear of losing him, a fear of him saying to me, I don't want to be married to you anymore because you're not really important to me.

And also at the root of that jealousy was anger, because I was angry that everything else was taking the place of me, that everything else was more of a priority than I was. And this then continued in this pattern after I got divorced, in dating other men who often did not put me as a priority. And. And in one situation, it was a sport that took priority over me. And so I would get angry, and I would be jealous of the fact that this sport took more of his attention than I got. And so I just wanted to give you those examples to say, like in my intimate relationships with significant others, that the root of the jealousy was a fear and an anger.

But think about even jealousy with, with friendships, like, let's say your friends go off and do something and don't invite you to do something, and you usually go out as a group and you weren't included, you can be kind of jealous of that situation and jealous that they went off and did this and have fomo. But at the root of that jealousy is an insecurity that they don't want to be friends with you anymore, that there's a fear that they aren't interested in hanging out with you anymore. And so I would argue that the root of jealousy is usually an insecurity, like fear or anger.

And it's never really a healthy thing if you're feeling jealous. But it is helpful to note when you feel jealous because that means that something is not like a need is not being met. And so if you think about this, if this is occurring in your relationships, especially if it occurs frequently in your relationships, figuring out met, and I want to be able to communicate this with my friend, with my partner, whatever it may be. So my suggestion for that is to first of all, figure out kind of what is that underline and how can you calmly communicate that to someone else.

And I would argue that doing it in experience. So pick a time when you, unfortunately, you're going to have to bring up like an uncomfortable subject and almost like confront the other person. But it's better to do it when it's in a calm situation and say, hey, I have some feelings over here, and they might seem a little bit silly, but I just want to talk about them. And maybe you're concerned that bringing this up is going to cause an issue because you don't actually think you have a reason to be jealous.

I bet you have a reason to be jealous if someone is spending their time doing all sorts of other things and not putting you as a priority, like in my example, you have a reason to be jealous. You have a reason to be upset. You have a reason to have that emotion. That's why your emotions come up. So don't disregard them. Excuse me? Don't disregard them and say, oh, I really shouldn't be jealous about this because they're just doing this. That's in this or these things. No, your feelings are valid, but how can you communicate them in a way that says, you know what, I'm struggling with something here and I want to talk about it in a calm manner and have them acknowledge those emotions.

Now, if that conversation can't happen, that might be a symptom of an unhealthy relationship. Like, underneath the surface of everything, you might be in a dynamic that doesn't allow those kind of conversations to happen. Then we need to take another step and look at what is going on in the relationship that you can't have those kind of honest conversations about how you feel in a calm manner. So I hope this was helpful. I hope it gave you a little bit of insight into some of our emotions that we experience.

And I think you guys tuning in with me today. I'm glad you got something from this guy.