Jealousy - the Anti-Love

We do not become anyone's property, and no one becomes ours, either


We have all been guilty of it, some of us more than others and more of us more often than a LOT of people. Jealousy has no place in Love, in relationships, and there is nothing else that will kill a relationship faster than jealousy, than possessiveness, than trying hard to make the other person or people believe that they are nothing more than possessions to be kept away from the rest of the world.

Here's a story for ya


I have to admit to it - that for a lot of years...more than 20, that is...I have been the object...OBJECT of one man's desires, and as great as that may seem to a lot of women in their younger-than-41 years, this is what Love is. Love, to a lot of women half my age...and hell, to a lot of men half my age...a lot of people my age, sadly. Love to anyone who has not yet really thought about the way that they expect to be Loved is an emotion which causes us each to lose our friggin' minds, makes us crazy with lust, and makes us think that we have to put all of our eggs in to one basket, proverbially. If I knew what I know now, way back then, I would not be sitting here trying to get at least one person in their twenties to read and take to heart this one message, and that message is that Love is NOT an emotion that will make any one of us crazy with anger or rage, and worse, with feelings that we are somehow Loving another person the wrong way.

God bless him, no matter how insane I have always thought he is


I must come to the table with this much right now - I have always loved my old man, always. He fathered my kids, took care of me for a lot of years, and in that time I had the unique 'opportunity' to teach him that being a man's wife does not equate to also being that one man's property. It took him a long time to realize that when I left the house to go to see my friends, to visit my family, to do anything that was not within ear shot or sight of him, I was NOT out messing around on him. I make light of that quote made famous by that cartoon vixen, Jessica Rabbit, when she said in the movie "Who Framed Roger Rabbit?" that "I am not bad, I'm just drawn that way," because it basically sums up the thing that I have had to deal with for a very long time.

I am not bad, not trampy, not a skank, not a slut...I just have a tendency to be built very much like the highest paid porn stars in all of the San Fernando Valley. I am not someone who has ever been able to act the way that I look, ever. Come on!! I was raised 'in the church,' had the hell scared into me by my mother, God's secretary - of COURSE I am NOT going to strip naked every chance I get - no way !! Yet, this is not something that anyone who came from a home where the mom DID cheat on the dad, and the dad DID cheat on the mom, and eventually that 'union' came to an end, all over the possessive nature of one or both of the  married individuals, will think about or even consider. All they know is that their parents did it, and as much as it hurt them, this is normal. Sorry, but that ain't normal, even though it may be normally the everyday behavior in a lot of households.

That sucks, doesn't it? It sucks to think that there is an entire population of people on the planet  who live this hell everyday. There are also a lot of people - namely women people - who go to great lengths to vilify this treatment, and to them I say that unless and until you have been squarely in the middle of being the object of another's possessive desires...well, just shut up, ok?You can't relate, and you never will, and God help you if you should decide to say something stupid like "I would NEVER be in THAT situation," because that will cause you to be in that situation, whether you want to believe that or not. It is not something that anyone just falls into - it takes time and a LOT of being manipulated, to the point, even, of being fearful, and if you have never seen me afraid, then you cannot possibly know that I do not 'do' fear very well at all. I won't sit here and tell you either that there have not been times when I have not been jealous, but at the times that I was it was over a misunderstanding, and of course, I was very young.

Does this make it ok? No, it doesn't. Does it make it a human response? Oh, why hell yes it does!!

We belong only to ourselves and God


The thing that was drilled into my head when I was growing up was that I belonged to God, that God has me and always will. What also was drilled into my head was the fact that biblically, women were expected to just take their place next to the man they married and just deal with it. Imagine the confusion I felt when I was taught that as well as being my own person. The mess was huge, because I did not realize then what I know now - that everything demands balance, and when there is none, balance just tends to let itself in and teach us what we were supposed to already know.

Love is kind, not jealous


Love is something that we know from the very beginning of our lives, and unless the woman who birthed you was a crackhead, there is no reason that any one of us should feel like we are not worthy of being loved just as we are. NEVER let anyone try to change you. I was a very young bride, having no idea what the hell I  was getting myself in to, and ever since then I have lived with the idea that this life - the one with the jealous and possessive husband - is not the one that I was meant for. I am not the cheating sort. I tend to like being a role model (yes, foul mouth and penchant for doing shots of Vodka and all) to my daughter, to my sons, my sister and my friends' kids, and when they find out that this is how I lived for this long, they look at me cross-eyed when I have the balls to tell them that they do not have to live this way, that the clergy who married me, because he was my father's associate pastor, felt he knew us both well enough to NOT counsel us, and when I marry people to each other, I am very concrete on the idea that there are things that we need to get out into the open between the marrying pair, things that have to be said so that more clarity can be had about what happens after I sign that license they so eagerly hand to me.

New couples are flying high on the idea that very soon they are going to be joined at the last name and the jointly filed taxes, that 'his' is going to be 'hers' and 'hers' will be 'his', and that everything is going to be 'theirs,' but they are rarely prepared for the realities that come with being married. They do not realize that this is the person with whom they will be sleeping every night, the person who, if something awful happens, they will be expected to make serious and life altering decisions for. No newly to be wed couple thinks about the things that hurt, that will hurt, that will be, in a lot of cases, the thing that can and sometimes does tear couples apart.

Never does jealousy make for a happy union. I won't lie to you all and tell you that my whole marriage has been completely wonderful or completely awful. I will  tell you, though, that it has its ups and downs, that you will be faced with things that you never thought you would be, and yes, sometimes, you will cry because this person to whom you are glued at the last name to has hurt you with his or her words. This is what being married is all about and it is NOT about the dress, the ceremony, where the nuptials will take place. That stuff is all irrelevant in the grander scheme of things and when you get to that 20 year mark, it is like a distant memory, almost like a movie trailer - gone, not forgotten, but seemingly not as big as deal as we made it to be.

Jealousy is the Anti-Love


We gals (and even a few guys) plan our whole lives for this one event- our wedding day- and when it comes down to it, we never fully can grasp that the day we marry is NOT the thing that will make or break us in the way of being married will. Marriage changes people in ways that cannot be described here because every single union is different. This writing is not about marriage, but rather, relationships and how it is that being jealous is not a good thing. It brings about severe misunderstanding, makes one partner feel as though they are not good enough, even as the other partner makes it seem that way. It is perplexing, someone else's level of low self esteem, and it erodes the person who is the object and the target of that jealousy in so many ways that if I have to sit here and tell you about it, I might as well just write another blog entry.

I call it the Anti-Love because there is no way that feeling awful about one's self over the way that another person seems to think they own us can be Love, no way. Again, some folks are flattered by the unending jealousy of their betrothed, but the greater majority of us don't deal with it very well. I didn't. I still don't, and  yes, he still is, and I guess that at least now, in this part of the game, he is willing to admit to it, because for years his jealousy was my fault. It is confounding to think that someone thinks so little of his or herself that they have this weird need to make someone else know what it feels like to have that massive lump formed in the middle of your chest, waiting there to become tears of misunderstanding.

Being the target of someone else's jealousy makes a person feel like they are stranded in the middle of the ocean, waiting for someone to rescue them, waiting for the person who is jealous to come along and say that their jealousy is not our problem, and it never happens. Many a spouse have been beaten over something that never happened, something that the jealous partner only assumes happened, still happens, will happen, and it is never a good day in the house of the jealous partner, because they are always suspicious of you. Even in his infirmity, he is still jealous.

However, I am no longer the cowering wife, no longer the one willing to be the target of his jealous and ranting foolishness. I simply let him be, and when he is done with his man sized tantrum, and after I have told him that I am better than a lot of spouses would be, he sees the ridiculous nature of the way that he thinks, namely about me. And always, I have to remind him that I am really not bad, but very simply just drawn that way.

It takes a lot 


The one thing that I ask couples who are marrying after being married already is the reason they are getting married and of course, are each of the intended spouses jealous of the other. Yes, it is invasive, but as clergy it is my duty to NOT marry people to each other who are only going to hurt each other. Now, I realize that their lives together after I have met them at the altar is none of my business, but it is also not my business to make sure that there is yet one more unenlightened couple whose life together is going to be rife with tears, with anger, with resentment and with pining for better days and in some cases, a different spouse. That is where I never want it to go, where I never want to see anyone end up, because that is not the reason that any of us gets married.

It takes a lot of swallowing of the pride, a lot of taming of the ego to be able to deal with another person's jealous nature. It takes patience, and it takes understanding. All of these things are what make for a coupling that is better off than one that includes blame, includes one spouse not stroking the other's ego, includes the things that have nothing to do with being together, for better or for worse. The end of Love is not the end of a marriage but rather is the end of the trust that people who Love one another should always have. Too often we see that there are people who come from bad situations who are ready to Love again, but there is that little piece of themselves that they just cannot grow out of. It is almost like watching newly paroled prison inmates being released into normal society after having been locked up for so long and they have forgotten about what it is like 'on the outside.' Like a former inmate, jealous partners apply the method of living they once employed to the way that they approach a new relationship. They seem always on the edge of panic, as if the one person they have learned to Love is going to do them wrong or something, and never do they realize that even as they 'Love' another, they have forgotten the one person who they need to learn to Love the most.

It is not as easy as you think, but it is worth it 


I write much about the concept of Loving the Self within. It is imperative in the lives of those who we Love that we know how to Love our Selves as we are. We want our other half to Love us implicitly, with abandon, with affection and with everything in us, and normally we do. The problem is that this is not the same that we receive. We receive contempt and our efforts at trying to help them gain understanding are thwarted by a past love, by someone who is no longer there, by a memory, and we suffer needlessly. Again...pre-marital counseling with your clergy is of utmost importance.

Learn to Love your Self first, guys. It is not an easy thing to do. We have to wade through the muck that was placed there by well-meaning parents, sometimes parents with no regard for the idea that we are different people, by friends who judge us from the time that we are little tiny kids, from the first crush we had that crushed us. We have to deal with the things that we told ourselves, the lies that we believed, and we have to deal with our crap AND someone else's, too, and that is a crapload of crap to deal with.

Love your Self first, and everything else is easy.

In the end, it really doesn't even matter


In the end, when the flowers have been given away, when the limousines have gone back to their respective lots, when the bride's maids have taken off their shoes and hopped into some trouble with the groom's men, none of the pomp and circumstance of the day matters. The only thing that does matter is that there are two people who loved each other enough to want to spend the rest of their days and nights together, enough so that they would make it legal and would declare their Love for one another in front of x-amount of their closest friends and the relatives who are there in support of this newly minted married couple. Jealousy does not only abound in marriage or Love relationships. It also is there in friendships and there in the workplace, is there in the classroom, and there, sadly, in the congregation.

There is no need to be jealous. Just  be yourself, no matter what. After that, everything else is easy...sorta...

I LOVE YOU ALL !!!
...Roxanne...