Jalousy only appears when love gets involved.
Some people are immensensly jalous, both men and women.
It would be hard to survive a relationship like that, either way.

I Wouldn't even bother.

Flirting is all fine and dandy.
But, there is such a thing, as getting carried away with it,
and going too far... Without physically cheating.

When you flirt with others in front of your partner,
do you do it with class?
Or, do you do it in such a manner, as to strip your
partner of their dignity?

It does make a difference.
And, dignity, is a very individual thing.

My ex used to be jealous of comments on my poetry, me talking to strangers at the pub, etc.
It is about their insecurities and fear.
If you happen to want to be in a relationship with a very insecure person, it is important to make them feel safe, verbally let them know often that you only want them.
Until you get sick of that draining vampire and move on to someone else who is emotionally secure and your equal.

Yes.It is irrelevant whether there is any serious intent behind the flirting.The person who feels jealousy has no certainty about their partners intentions.The only certainty is the feeling of jealousy.

For me it was usually about fear of abandonment. I craved undivided attention and if their attention swayed a trigger would go off in me and I would cling for dear life out of fear that I was going to lose that person. This response came from having been abandoned as a child. It took years to work through those issues as the feelings surfaced.

There are times still when I experience jealousy, but I'm able to recognize it and work through it much quicker than before. I find when I'm not nurturing myself and looking to others to "take care" of me, I experience more jealousy than when I am taking care of/nurturing myself.

Jealousy is a form of emotional immaturity and has to do with insecurities surrounding fear of losing the desired love/affection of the person you're with to someone else. The third party becomes a threat.

Sometimes that feeling is warning us that somethings up/not right, and other times it's an irrational feeling based on past events/hurts that are resurfacing.

Regardless of the reason for the feeling showing up, it's important to deal with that feeling in order to grow past it and not have it become a destructive force in your relationship.

I found this article that relates to what I'm saying. I believe in researching stuff and getting information about it. Especially when it comes to growth and development of self. I found when I understand more what's going on with me it no longer controls me and I am able to work with it to make the changes I would like... if I choose to.

Edited in... Forgot the article, lol

https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/basics/jealousy

Thank you River!

That’s more the kind of answer I was looking for. I will read that article to see if I get more understanding.

Honest

Hope it helps

Where have you been? I missed you.

Stalking guys at the grocery store


Missed you

Did you find a good one? Hit him over the head with a frozen chicken.

Yes it did help, thank you.

Some jealousy is healthy in a relationship. It’s not always a bad thing as most people think.

It stems from fear, insecurity, and the need for control. All three go hand in hand.

If the person you are with (long term, something more than a casual date) does things that make you jealous/ insecure...it's not *your* fault..

If they openly flirt in front of you, get other women's phone numbers...have phone and text conversations with other womne (that *clearly* aren't business or anythng of that sort)..then most people can't help but feel something like jealousy...

True, you can dump the cad (and better to find out he does this sort of thing *sooner*, rather than later)...but, that doesn't negate that what you are feeling is *real*, and has nothing to do with insecurity/ low self-esteem..but rather betrayal and disappoinment..which are natural in this scenario..

This applies to women acting the same way as well...
Someone that has so little respect for you that they'd openly flirt on front of you, get other mens' phone numbers, make "sneaky" phone calls (where they suddenly hang up when you appear)...
Then any normal person would feel something like jealousy.

These three questions were intentionally linked. They were not meant to be answered individually, but to demonstrate a thought process that a jealous person might have.

The second question is perhaps the most important. If your partner no longer feels special in your eyes, then you are headed toward some sort of conflict or rift. If your partner sees you doing something "special" with somebody when it used to be reserved just for him or her, there's a good chance your partner is going to become jealous.

Personally, I feel jealousy is a natural emotion. It takes work, experience, and emotional maturity to overcome it.

But I don't believe ANYONE who says they never feel jealous. They may hide it. They may suppress it. They may subdue it. Or they may just rationalize it away. That is, they use some sort of coping strategy to move past it, and no one ever notices.

But if you never feel jealousy? Just how emotionally detached is such a person? Jealousy is one of the primal emotions. It evolved into some of the deadly sins. It gave birth to crime, bullying, rape, and thuggery.

Hence, Cranky is right - control often plays a factor with jealousy. When people see something going a way they don't like, their first impulse to take control over it, to guide it back to where they want it.

I too have never believed people who say they "don't care" if their partner flirts with someone in front of them, or gets phone numbers or whatever..
I wonder how invested *they* are in the relationship that they wouldn;t care at all...
I don't know *other* peoplre's thought process..but, i do know that for most people..it is more about feeling disresepcted and betrayed..neither of which have anything to do with "emotional maturity" or insecurity...

I want to take what everyone put in, including the article from Psychology Today, and ESPECIALLY what RockGnome mentioned, and try to draw it all together.

We have a few things that we commonly refer to as discrete emotions, but which I have come to see are actually not at all.

Jealousy is one of these (guilt is another).

The reason why jealousy feels as it does, AND why it causes as much confusion and resentment as it can, is because it is NOT an emotion, in and of itself. It is a confusion and conflation of emotion (mostly fear, but often combined with anger)that has been turned inside out or twisted around back on itself, due to the person also being unsure of how to react.

It most commonly arises, or is said to exist, in situations where someone's mate is behaving in a manner that the other did not expect, and which they worry (or fear) means that the relationship is in jeopardy.

That jeopardy isn't always straightforward either. In fact, the confusion that causes what would be straight fear or anger to be turned INTO what we call jealousy, is often due to the person experiencing it being uncertain of their own sense of how things SHOULD be.

In other words, someone who has (as the OP specified at the beginning) never been betrayed by another person can very much experience jealousy in a situation where their mate behaves in a way that simply doesn't match what they expected, and which they aren't sure whether they should object to or not.

That is what I think RockGnome was talking about.

If you are in a relationship, and have been enjoying that your mate and you flirt back and forth as a part of it, the first time you witness your mate performing the same friendly flirts with someone else, and start to recognize that they don'T ONLY flirt with you, the confused fear that gets called jealousy is likely to result. You THOUGHT that the flirts from your mate, were direct indications that you were special to them. When you see that they also do the same things with strangers and other friends, you suddenly understand that YOU WERE WRONG. Their flirts with you were NOT indications of love or dedication.

And this is where things like guilt and jealousy screw themselves up even more: because most reasonably intelligent people DO know that THEY are the one who made the mistake in thinking the flirts meant other than they did, they don't feel at ease in putting a stop to their mates behavior, nor are they at all happy with it. So they stuff the fear and anger inside themselves, very uncomfortably, while they try to come to a new understanding of their situation, and that's VERY unpleasant. And it often leads quickly to an explosion of confused anger or resentment.

By the way, I strongly disagree with anyone who proclaims that all jealousy is a sign of immaturity. It most certainly is NOT. If anything, believing that all jealousy is inherently "immature," indicates that someone hasn't looked closely at jealousy themselves yet, and has "maturing" of understanding to go through themselves.

As the article says, the sensation of jealousy, as with all emotions and emotion-linked reactions, is an INDICATOR that something need to be looked at.

I suggest using the modern dashboard "Engine Light" as a simile.

Most cars still just have an Engine Light that comes on, and tells you NOTHING by itself. It just means "something's wrong." You need to hook up a reader and get the associated CODE from the car's computer, then do some more research to figure out why your car might say THAT.

Same thing with jealousy or guilt. Do NOT ignore it, do NOT declare that it's proof of "immaturity." Look directly at what you feel, and allow yourself to sort out the fear from the expectations from the resentment from the fantasies, and then address the REAL detailed concerns, one at a time.

In many cases, many of us find, unfortunately, that our feeling of jealousy was an indication that our mate was NOT compatible with us after all; that they did NOT really love us, they only liked or enjoyed some aspects of how we lived.

And so the next step to take, after identifying what our jealousy actually translated to, is that we depart from the relationship. But because we DID do the work to figure OUT what was and wasn't really true, we feel much better about ourselves, and often, about the person who we then leave behind.

And sometimes, as I think Riverspirit alluded to, we discover that our jealousy IS over something from our past, which we have already mostly resolved, and we can allow our fears to drain away and we can stay with the new person as they are.

I threw some celery at him but I think it just pissed him off

I absolutely love getting all this input.

Romantic jealousy served an evolutionary purpose. It motivated our ancestors to prevent mate poaching. Jealously still fits into our modern day worlld as a “justified response to losing someone”

As long as it’s not extreme jealousy, it’s a normal healthy response.

Jealousy isn't always involving a third person, or a person at all.
You can be jealous of your love's job, hobby, car or any personal interests that causes them to lose focus on you. The Atari, the computer, fishing, hunting, going out to clubs, bars or anywhere you don't get to go or do with them.

I think nearly any reaction, besides joy, roots in fear.
Betrayal roots in fear of losing trust which can result in anger.
Anger and sadness is a reaction to the fear.

It is possible to have control over your emotional states.
It is possible not to feel jealousy over perceived delusions.
It is possible to control the actions you do AND the words you say.
It is possible to be proactive instead of reactive.

Just because one is in control of themselves doesn't mean other's won't do things that cause a need for action.

Up front in the relationship I make sure she knows I am with her because I choose to be. I only want her to understand that she should only be with me because she chooses to be with me.

If her actions cause me to no longer want to be with her, there's no need to get jealous or angry, throw a fit and try to hurt her.
Just end the relationship and go your own way.
We are full grown adults so there is no place for high school drama in the relationship.

So yeah, if I catch her kissing on a man that isn't her father, son or sibling, its over. I just refuse to stress over it.