How to keep jealousy in check

To downplay a very human feeling. And to soften it in the lightheartedness of life. Knowing that, in moderate doses, jealousy can even be useful.

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Jealousy
A hint of the very human jealousy never hurts: it keeps a relationship alive, and it's a sign that a bond, even if it's weakened over time, is still important to us. In some ways, this form of jealousy protects the relationship, ultimately strengthening it, and pushing us to act before it's too late.
Raise your hand if you've never been jealous. Of a man, a woman, a...friendship, of a child. The entire spectrum of human relationships, at every latitude, is pervaded by this ambivalent feeling, which, as such, has no obvious meaning. Neither positive nor negative. Confirmation of its neutrality, at least initially, comes from the definition of jealousy in the Treccani encyclopedia, which speaks simply of "a complex emotional state."
even Sigmund Freud, when dealing with the curves of neurosis in interpersonal relationships, did not give a particularly significant weight to jealousy. And he considered it as a part, an expression "of those affective layers that, like pain, can be defined as normal." In other words, a love, of any intensity, implies a certain degree of jealousy. This is normal. Otherwise it would be a cold love, devoid of anything substantial, disguised, likefriendship, a noble form of love, when it only hides an exchange of interests.

When jealousy becomes toxic

If jealousy is a "normal" expression of our affection, if it somehow belongs to our DNA, before looking more closely at its toxic (and therefore dangerous, even as a waste of a human relationship and its potential) version, it's useful to reconstruct something we have inside that we struggle to bring out. We fear losing the person we are closest to: this happens, for example, when we failed to preserve a marriage and let it dissolve. Our jealousy is synonymous with fear, low self-esteem, mistrust , and lack of authority. In short: a beautiful jumble of moods that poison life and certainly don't lighten it. Love, when jealousy is toxic, is extinguished in the daily fire of suspicion, the obsessive need for control, chronic distrust, constant and often pointless arguments , and the restriction of the other's freedom.

Paralyzed by this accumulation of feelings, jealousy arises when we give it free rein. We almost transform it into a shield to protect ourselves from our own weaknesses, which are actually crippling us. We're jealous, for example, not because we doubt our partner's fidelity , but because we no longer feel reassured by the implicit pact that binds us. A void has opened up, and that's where jealousy creeps in.

Jealousy as a sign of possession of the other

The next step is the transformation of jealousy into a disease. With unpredictable outcomes, and unfortunately often involving the use of violence —cowardly if it is exercised by a man, physically stronger, against a woman, naturally weaker. This transition, however, does not occur gradually, like a disease that, without the necessary treatment, worsens our physical condition. There is a shift in our mental framework and our attitude that completely poisons the Freudian "normality" of jealousy. It is called possession. It is the instinct to possess, to consider a person "my property," that pushes jealousy beyond the limits of tolerability and transforms it into a toxic bomb. The only defense against such a distorted use of jealousy is prevention. Women, just as they are able to recognize a man in love very well, should keep a violent man at bay from the very beginning , recognizing him by his first gestures. And without granting him the extenuating circumstance that so many men assign themselves with the magic phrase: "I'm so jealous because I love you." Bullshit. The truth is something else: "I'm so jealous because I think I own you."

How to fight jealousy

If you're convinced that the escalation of jealousy I've described is well-founded, you can try to stop it in time. We have all the tools to overcome jealousy, not be crushed by it, and the man (or woman) who can never emerge from the darkness of jealousy is a living representation of a gallery of characters from the immense catalog of films (the best perhaps being The Drama of Jealousy, starring Giancarlo Giannini, Marcello Mastroianni, and Monica Vitti) and novels (starting with Tolstoy's unmissable Kreutzer Sonata ). In reality, the jealous man can shift the axis of this feeling and bring it back within the confines of "normality." Remembering—and this can certainly be considered good news—that according to research from the University of San Diego, California, even dogs are jealous. And they can become jealous even toward a stuffed dog. A jealousy based on nothing, like that of men when they believe they possess rather than love a woman.

Jealousy is overcome on the ground, even with small interventions that limit the scope for our actions. For example: never check your partner's messages, emails, conversations, or communications. Cultivate your own relationships and interests, regardless of the person you share your life with, speak frankly and clearly, guided by lightheartedness and without inquisitive tones. And accept the idea that jealousy, even if not obsessive, is part of our lives.

Famous quotes about jealousy

  • "It's not love that's blind, but jealousy." Lawrence Durrell

We become blind when jealousy is pathological. We don't see the other person, with their identity, but we only think about how to take possession of them: nothing to do with love, with its openness and generosity.

  • "Jealousy always arises with love, but it doesn't always die with it." La Rochefoucauld

The classic case is the breakdown of a relationship (a marriage, an engagement, a friendship) that wasn't mutually agreed upon. At that point, at least on one side, love has evaporated, and with it jealousy, but on the other, both remain. And without the guidance of reason, jealousy becomes a poison that sows resentment, recriminations, a desire for revenge, and even hatred. Blind, in this case too.

  • "Fear jealousy, gentlemen, it is a dark, livid hydra, with its venom." Arrigo Boito

In the libretto of Boito's Otello, the opera set to music by Giuseppe Verdi, jealousy is the protagonist, in its most wretched and contemporary form. A poison that kills both the victim and the executioner.

  • "I want to die of jealousy. Tell me about all the men you've had." Philip Roth    

The great American writer was a careful explorer of human feelings and knew how to observe them under a microscope. There's certainly a masochistic component to jealousy : hence the obsessive search for information about the partner, the attempt to uncover "evidence" that justifies a kind of paranoia. All this wasted time and health, while in true and lasting love, a margin of discretion and absolute intimacy must always be preserved. Privacy included.

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