joreth: (Purple Mobius)
The following is a paraphrase of a conversation I had recently. The first sentence is a direct quote, but the rest is basically a summary of what was said following that first sentence. I have lots of reasons to be afraid in love, as do many people. Change is inevitable and my crystal ball is in the shop so I can't predict what form that change will take. And that's scary. But I leap into love anyway, even with my fears. And there are things that I do not fear.

One of the things that I have learned to fear about love (not within love) is that people will not respect my independence or my agency, and to discover that only after I've started to love them is very painful. So when I find people who do respect my agency, it is a rare and thing. It is a liberating experience to feel this sort of love and to be loved by someone in this way.

Although this came from a specific conversation that I had, it actually applies to both of my current long-term partners. I might even say that this is part of the reason *why* these men are my partners at this point in my life. Respecting my right to make my own life choices, even if it comes at their own expense, is one of the most valuable qualities I can find in another person.

People talk about "unconditional love" - I don't believe that really exists because I don't believe people really understand how big that word "unconditional" really is. But when they talk about "unconditional love", I do believe that this is the kind of love they think they mean. This is definitely the closest I've ever seen anyone come to "unconditional" - the ability to love someone enough to trust that the choices that they make for themselves are right for them even if it hurts one to have their partner make those choices, and the ability to love someone enough to risk that kind of hurt, knowingly, consciously, deliberately, to take that chance.
"I'm not afraid to love you because I know you'll let me go if I need to leave. I also know it'll hurt you if I leave so letting me go won't be because you don't care, but precisely because you do care. Your willingness to love me and risk being hurt by me is another reason I'm not afraid to love you. I'm also not afraid to love you because I already know that our relationship can flex and accommodate change, so I'm not driven by fear of an uncertain future."
I once had a conversation with someone who said that, although he enjoyed being in a poly relationship while he was in it, and he respected that it is a valid choice for others, he preferred to be in a monogamous relationship because he would rather have a partner who cared about what he did. He said that it hurt him too much to be involved with someone who didn't care what he did or who he did it with.

I was so stunned that this is what he thought polyamory was about, that I couldn't even respond in the moment. And that conversation has been bouncing around in my head for a good long while now. Because, in my experience, polyamory doesn't work if the partners "don't care" what the other does, and jealousy is the opposite of "caring" about the other person.

Jealousy is the epitome of selfishness and lack of caring for the other person. That doesn't mean that anyone who feels jealousy is a bad person, or even that they don't care (I know, it sounds self-contradicting, but stick with me a moment). No one is their best self at all times. We can all be selfish and petty and childish and other not-best-self things, that's not a judgement that I'm making about anyone. But *jealousy* is not about caring for someone else. It's about caring about ourselves, about prioritizing ourselves. That's not necessarily and automatically a bad thing either, in principle, but in the context of jealousy, I do believe that it needs to be addressed.

The reason why I say that jealousy is selfish is because jealousy is fundamentally a fear-based reaction towards someone else's behaviour or towards that person about "how does this affect me?" Jealousy is being afraid of how something will affect me, of fearing or assuming that something will affect me in a way that I don't want. Jealousy is not a fear on behalf of someone else, it's all about me, although it can masquerade as a fear on their behalf.

If my partner has sex with someone else, and I'm jealous because I'm afraid he'll leave me for someone else, that's an emotion based on what will happen to me, not what is in my partner's best interests or what is best for him. If I'm jealous (or envious) because he's doing something that I want to do too, that's all about me, not what is best for him or what will make him happy. If I'm jealous because someone is trying to "get between" us or trying to "steal him away" or trying to destroy what we have, that's all about what I will be losing, not about what will make him happy or what's best for him.

Wanting to be with my partner, not wanting to be without him, wanting to experience something, wanting to experience something with him specifically, wanting to continue our relationship - none of those are bad things and wanting those things does not make me a bad person. Jealousy does not make me a bad person. Jealousy is a sign that something is wrong. But it is fundamentally a selfish concern - wanting something for our own sake *without regard to what's best for the other person*. By the very definition of the word, jealousy is selfish.

Which means that jealousy is not a sign that someone cares about or loves *me*. It *can* be borne out of caring or loving someone, for instance if the reason why I don't want my partner to leave me is because I love him. But it's not a sign, itself, of love.

"True love" is about not being more concerned with what my partner does without me than with how he feels about what he's doing. I can be concerned *and* love him at the same time. But being concerned about my partner having other partners is not a sign that I "care" *about him*. It's a sign that I care about me and how what he's doing affects me and what I want. "True love" is being more concerned with what my partner wants for himself than with what I want for him based on how I feel about what's right for him.

Engaging in relationships in which my partners have the freedom to do what they want to do, be who they want to be, even if that means they leave me, is the ultimate sign of caring for my partners, because it places their happiness for themselves as priority. People say that being a parent is an act of true love. But parents have to let their children go, to live their own lives, and once they become adults (some of us would argue on when that point is, but that's irrelevant to the point I'm making now) their lives are now their own. My relationships with my partners are no less a truer love than a parent for a child, for all that it's a different love in structure (romantic, vs. familial).

And since I only have romantic relationships with adults, that means that I have to skip right to the "let them live their own lives" stage of the love. They *have* to be able to make choices that are right for them. And sometimes those choices will hurt me. Sometimes my choices will hurt them. That's the risk we take when we make ourselves vulnerable to another human, which is another part of what love is.

Contrary to pop culture, love does not mean never having to say you're sorry. It means knowing that you will have to say you're sorry at some point, and that they will have to say they're sorry at other points, and *trusting that you both will actually be sorry* after the inevitable hurt occurs. It means knowing that you will each cause each other pain and trusting each other with your most vulnerable parts (your heart and soul) by believing that the pain is a cost worth the benefits of being able to share those vulnerable parts with each other, and that the pain won't outnumber or outweigh the pleasure.

And sometimes it turns out to not be worth the cost. Sometimes we guess wrong. But the love that once was is a true love even after deciding that the cost was too high, *if* we trusted each other with our most vulnerable parts. And that trust requires us letting go. We can feel jealous and insecure and that we think they're making a mistake. We can feel those things and still love, truly, deeply, honestly. But in order for it to be love, we can't stop there. We can feel those things, but we have to let go anyway.

If we truly love someone, we have to recognize their agency, their autonomy, their ability to decide for themselves what is right for themselves. Even if that means we feel hurt because of it. I am not afraid to love my partners, not because I think we won't ever hurt each other, but because we each acknowledge that sometimes we will hurt each other, but we trust and we hope that we will each do what is best for ourselves because love means wanting the best life for the other person, even if that life doesn't include us.

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‪#‎ConversationsIHave‬ ‪#‎ThePeopleInRelationshipsAreMoreImportantThanTheRelationships‬ ‪#‎GoodPartnerSelectionSolvesManyProblems‬ ‪#‎FlexibilityInRelstionshipsCreatesStrongRelationships‬ ‪#‎ThankYouForTheOpportunityToExperienceThisKindOfLove‬

Jealousy

Date: 8/14/14 09:22 am (UTC)From: [personal profile] ewen
ewen: (Default)

Without disagreeing with what you say (I agree that jealousy is about "protecting oneself"), I've found that some people use expressions of jealousy as a (strong) proxy for indicating how much someone cares about them. As in "if you loved me, you'd be jealous if I did..." (but if you're mostly indifferent then not so much).

Many years ago, I had an odd conversation with a long distance (then) partner who told me that a former partner of hers was visiting her town, and they were going to go out to dinner. She seemed very surprised when I said pleasantly "I hope you have a lovely time", or words to that effect. I only realised in hindsight, much later, that she'd expected me to act jealous about her "going out" (to dinner!) with someone else (a former partner even!). But it simply didn't occur to me at the time. Especially over an "I'm in town, let's have dinner" situation.

So I think the very axioms that you start with (eg, "Jealousy is the epitome of [...] lack of caring for the other person.") are not universally shared by everyone. One can disagree with the choice of axioms, and even speculate that they may choose different axioms if they thought about it deeply enough. But starting with, eg, the axiom that "jealous is a proxy for something being important to them", the rest seems to follow logically from it.

Personally I don't find "If you loved me, you'd..." to be a useful starting point, pretty much no matter what follows. But it seems to be a fairly common meme to believe that phrase, for at least some things following that preamble (with exactly what varying somewhat from person to person).

Ewen

Date: 8/14/14 03:08 pm (UTC)From: [identity profile] robin goodfellow (from livejournal.com)
Yes. All of this. I think a lot of relationships would be healthier if people realized this.

Re: Jealousy

Date: 8/15/14 08:45 am (UTC)From: [personal profile] ewen
ewen: (Default)
Countering someone's belief in something as an axiom with (effectively) "you're wrong" is basically an argument by assertion -- and thus it tends to be difficult to change someone's mind that way. (Even "I don't see it that way" tends to be more effective IME; not that effective, but a little more so.)

I do definitely agree that the received culture often encourages the point of view that jealousy is a good proxy for caring -- and discourages critical thought about whether that's necessarily true, or even the best way to look at the world. I also wish more people would go back and examine their first principles. But it no longer surprises me that some people have... different interpretations from me of what certain feelings or actions mean, and believe them as "universal" fact.

Ewen

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