SimplySxy

Tag: Jealousy

  • Try the New Compersion: Jealousy Be Gone!

    Try the New Compersion: Jealousy Be Gone!

     

    Tired of those nagging jealous emotions you can’t seem to shed?

    Ready for a new emotion?  Then try the new and improved, emotional response called “compersion”.  It’s so new it’s not even in the Internet dictionary yet.

    So why am I jealous?  As a poly believing, free love kind of Leather-woman, I practice and teach adults to explore their kink, fetish, or other expressions of expanded sexuality and loving.  But that green monster can ruin a hot dungeon scene every time.

    Jealousy has caused many of my relationships to crash and burn.  I honestly don’t know when love changes to possessiveness, but it does.  After one ex-boyfriend decided to date my room-mate, my response moved into violent attack mode.  Thank goodness the internal rage also temporarily blinded me, so all I could literally see was red, and I was frozen in my tracks.  That gave me time to think, calm down, walk away, and find a new place to live.

    I would prefer another emotion than the one that beats up my heart and mind like a bronchitis attack.  Jealousy has a way of kidnapping my time and energy in directions I don’t want to go.  I recall the rush of unpleasant emotions that made my stomach knot up, my hand forming a fist, words spewing forth I would regret — all part of the cycle I wanted to break.  But how could I break free of the green stain?

    With the divorce rate in America comfortably above 50%, partnering for life is no longer the norm.  I needed another emotion that could keep up with our societal change.  At a polyamory meetup, I was introduced to the word: compersion, the antithesis to jealousy.  Here’s the Wiki on compersion:

    “Compersion is a state of empathetic happiness and joy experienced when an individual’s current or former romantic partner experiences happiness and joy through an outside source, including, but not limited to, another romantic interest.  This can be experienced as any form of erotic or emotional empathy, depending on the person experiencing the emotion.”

    Nice concept, but the million-dollar question is, how can I be happy when MY old lover is loving someone else?  Then I remembered the C.S. Lewis book, The Four Types of Love.  Lewis defined the following types of love: Agape, Philia, Eros, and Storge.  I’ve paraphrased his concepts:

    Agape is the spiritual love you have that comes from your beliefs.  Philia is the bond of friendship.
  Eros is the emotional intimacy we share in a relationship.  (Venus is described as the “Fifth Love” and is the passion and energy of sexual exchange, its trademark being a temporary state of experience, like orgasm and infatuation.)

    There is another more powerful love that helps to explain the ability to convert jealousy into compersion:

    Storge is the familial love of parent to child.  Storge can be more powerful than all the others combined.  It’s the type of love that gives a parent superhuman strength to lift a car to save a child’s life.

    Compersion suggests that if we can adjust our thinking, heal our emotions, we can celebrate our partner, lover, spouse, or ex’s happiness in another relationship.  We can replace jealousy with joy.

    You also receive extra feelings of contentment and maturity with every use of compersion.  Like when your child goes off to school for the first time or the last, (hopefully) away to college.  There is pride of being a part of making that success happen.  And I like being a part of someone’s success.

    Jealousy can hold me in this knee jerk reaction of anger, hurt, and then retribution.  By reminding myself that the experience has passed, I can change my thoughts.  If that doesn’t work, then I remember why the relationship needed to end in the first place and my head clears, fist relaxes and I can look for the good of this new coupling and let the joy of compersion build in me.

    Now have I done it?  Not every time, but I’m working on it.  It’s not like one day you wake up compersed.  It’s the art of letting go of past anger that takes time and practice.  And when I have a surge of emotions that race up to my brain and fist at the same time, I acknowledge the emotion and look at it.  I then look at where I want my emotions to be and go there.  No need to replay the old tapes.  My heart calms, pulse slows, teeth unclench, and I can think without anger.  I take a deep breath, let compersion in, and make a choice to celebrate my (ex) lover’s new relationship and wish them well.  It’s that simple and that difficult.  But the end result is my joy and happiness and I’m definitely worth the effort.

    Cover image courtesy of Shutterstock

  • The Love Experience

    The Love Experience

    “Sex alleviates tension. Love causes it.” – Woody Allen

    Sexual stimulation is a pleasurable experience that can be fun and relaxing.  Sex and love can both create strong attachment feelings and one of the most profound experiences we have as human beings.  The capacity to love and feel loved leads to healthy and intense sexual interactions.  Love is one of the most well-known and least understood conditions in human nature.  Scientists say it’s a drive, similar to hunger or thirst, while psychologists may define it as a social or cultural phenomenon.  Regardless, it is the most universal emotion in the world with elements of each model that drives our need to love, including how sexual attraction and attachment style play a role in our relationships.  Studies in neuroscience show that as people fall in love, the brain releases chemicals that activate the pleasure center of the brain similar to drugs leading to side effects such as increased heart rate, loss of appetite and sleep, and an intense feeling of excitement.  Love can be experienced in different forms.  Our first connections with love are during infancy and childhood, and can set up love schemas that determine our capacity to love others during adulthood.

    Self-Love

    Self-love and selfishness are sometimes confused.  Each has different sources and consequences.  Self-love brings feelings of confidence, competence, and we are much kinder and loving towards others.  Selfishness causes withdrawal, and lack of respect towards self and others.  Self-love and appreciation are directly related to the capabilities of loving and appreciating others.

    The following questions can help differentiate between self-love and selfishness:

    1. When was the last time you felt unhappy with yourself (insecure, irritable)?
    2. When did you last feel happy with yourself (proud, pleased with your personal qualities)?
    3. How did you behave towards other people on those two occasions (happy/unhappy)?  On which occasion were you kinder and more generous towards others?

    When you are unhappy with yourself is probably when you were more selfish.  When we dislike ourselves, the energy we put out is directed towards protecting ourselves and is not focused on how we are treating others.  It is when we love ourselves that we are most capable of giving to, and loving others.

    Love Schemas

    How we are in adult romantic relationships is related to the working models or schemas we develop early in life – usually from our first loving experiences with caregivers. As we grow and develop these schemas become more complex. There are six different love schemas that are similar to the attachment styles that develop during childhood:

    1. Secure – seldom worry about being abandoned and believe other people are trustworthy and have good intentions.
    2. Skittish – wary of intimacy and uncomfortable with closeness, expectations that relationships fail and fear of depending on others.
    3. Clingy – desire closeness and worry that their partners don’t love them or will leave them and fear being on their own and abandoned.
    4. Fickle – uncomfortable with closeness and independence and never comfortable with what they have. They are suspicious of commitment and fear entrapment.
    5. Casual – view love affairs as fun and lacks desire for commitment often fearing intimacy.
    6. Uninterested – not interested in relationships and gets little pleasure out of it and when they end often feels relief.

    The development of these love schemas depends on how comfortable we are with closeness, independence and how willing we are to be involved in romantic relationships.  Identifying our love schema can give insight on our attachment style and patterns in relationships.

    Love vs. Lust

    The beginning stages of love are full of arousal, intense sexual desire, anxiety over rejection, and an array of positive and sometimes negative emotions.  Whether it is lust, infatuation, or romantic love, a preoccupation with the loved one is common and unavoidable.  Lust is actually a normal and healthy human emotion and can be very pleasurable for two people in the expression of sexual interactions.  If two people do not deal with feelings prior to sexual activity lust can sometimes lead to pain and guilt.

    There is this old cliché’ that men use love to get sex and women use sex to get love.

    Even though society is slowly moving towards more gender equality in views of sex – surveys show that more women than men find sex only acceptable in a love relationship.  If one partner is more motivated by lust than love, it can lead to difficulties in a relationship.  The sharing of feelings and intentions by both partners can minimize feelings of guilt and exploitation that can arise when two people have conflicting motivations for a relationship.

    Dependency and Jealousy

    Feelings of dependency and jealousy are often associated with love and are often experienced by individuals that lack self-confidence and self-esteem.  The consequences are a false love that consists of manipulative, exploitive, and unhealthy love behaviors.  These feelings of dependency and jealousy are human and we all feel them at some point in our lives – they are painful and often unavoidable.  The healthiest way to cope with these feelings is to communicate them instead of accusing, attacking, blaming or shaming your loved one.  It will reduce the negative effects of dependency and jealousy.

    Here are questions to assess healthy love in your relationship:

    1. Have you continued to maintain individual interests, including meaningful personal relationships with people other than your partner?
    2. Are you and your lover friends? If your erotic relationship ended, would you continue to see one another as friends?
    3. Have you maintained a secure belief in your own values as an independent person?
    4. Is your relationship integrated with the rest of your life rather than set off or isolated from your other activities?
    5. Do you feel improved by the relationship? Have you become stronger, more attractive, more accomplished, and more sensitive since becoming involved with your partner?

    These are great questions to ask yourself and your partner if you are in a loving sexual relationship.  If either of you answered “no” to more than one question it is worth discussing and looking at possibilities of changing aspects of the relationship.  The quality of a relationship is not measured by the absence of problems – there is no such thing as a “perfect” relationship.  The qualities that are important include honesty, integrity, and concern for resolving problems in a way that meets the needs of both partners.

    Independent, mature, and self-confident people have the greatest capacity for healthy and loving sexual interactions.  Two adults in a relationship that form an erotic bond can share their whole self – and can enjoy each others similarities and accept and be comfortable with their differences.  If someone makes the other person the exclusive focus of one’s life, it can reduce the vitality of a relationship. The healthier way is for each partner in a relationship to develop her or his own potential and be able to contribute individual, unique qualities to a mutually satisfying and stimulating relationship.  This ideal is not easily attained or constantly maintained, but striving towards it contributes to the hope and pleasure that characterize lasting and loving sexual interactions.