When I talk to people about being non-monogamous, the most frequent question I get asked is:

Don’t you get jealous?!

My answer to that question is, yes – of course, what human doesn’t experience jealousy?

“People ask the million-dollar question about non-monogamy of, “How do you handle jealousy? What do you do about jealousy?” These days, I end up spinning off into this deep, philosophical, monologue about, “Really, if we look at jealousy, there’s all these different composite parts of it. These days my struggle is more about dealing with sadness, anger, or trauma.” I just go off this big old monologue, and usually, the person is like, “I don’t know, I just wanted to hear that you were an enlightened being who didn’t feel jealousy.”

Dedeker Winston, Multiamory Podcast #314

When drafting this post, I had initially titled it “The J-Word” but after some reflection, I realized that such a title would only be perpetuating the thought that jealousy is some big, terrible monster. While it may seem that way sometimes, it’s a human emotion that no human is immune to. We’ve all experienced it at one point or another perhaps in friendships, with siblings, or towards coworkers. This post will focus on jealousy in relationships with an emphasis on non-monogamous relationships, but may still be applicable to readers in monogamous relationships as well.

• The following blog combines information from various sources that I’ve come across while seeking out information on working through jealousy in regards to ENM including the following:
  • PolySecure by Jessica Fern
  • Polyamory and Jealousy: A More Than Two Essentials Guide by Eve Rickert & Franklin Veaux
  • Multiamory Podcast – various episodes

Let’s begin by defining jealousy.

Merriam-Webster describes jealousy as “feeling or showing an unhappy or angry desire to have what someone else has; very concerned about protecting or keeping something”

If we dive a little deeper, we understand that jealousy is an emotion that can present through a variety of feelings including insecurity, rage, and fear. It occurs in all humans regardless of age, gender, sexual orientation, or relationship style when an individual perceives there to be a threat which may be real or imagined.¹

Immune to Jealousy?

I want to touch quick on the fact that jealousy is an emotion. I am a member of various online polyamory groups and communities and on various occasions, I’ve witnessed individuals proclaiming that they are “immune to jealousy”. Jealousy is a complex emotion. An emotion is a conscious mental response experienced as a strong feeling. Humans experience basic emotions (happiness, sadness, disgust, anger, fear, etc – think Inside Out characters) and complex emotions (jealousy, guilt, pride, shame, worry) as the brain’s response to the stimuli around us. Depending on a person’s attachment style, they may be more or less inclined to feel jealous in response to certain triggers², but there is no “immunity” to emotions.

Being a complex emotion, jealousy is different for everyone, and may not always occur the same with every relationship. For the individuals who claimed to be immune, I believe that they simply may not have experienced jealousy in any of their relationships so far, but it doesn’t mean that it won’t ever happen, and it doesn’t mean that these individuals are “better” at polyamory.

• Side note: I’ve seen sentiments tossed around in the groups I’m in that if someone is “too jealous”, then they won’t be able to “handle polyamory”. I am thoroughly against this mentality and hope that this blog post will help you understand why statements like this make me incredibly enraged.

As NP and I began the ENM chapter of our lives, I had some small insecurities pop up here and there, but I can’t say that I really experienced jealousy. As time went on, I started to believe that I was just exceptional at subconsciously crushing through jealous emotions, but boy was I wrong. Two years into polyamory and nine months into my relationship with my partner “Ryan”, he began a new relationship with “Lena”. This partner had an existing NP (my metamour), who I never once felt threatened by, but suddenly as Ryan began a third relationship I began experiencing the most intense jealousy I’d ever experienced. It caught me totally off guard since I’d never had issues with jealous emotions in the past – and that’s when I realized that jealousy triggers can sometimes be a complete surprise.

“People practicing CNM typically embrace the following ideas and principles: love is not possessive or a finite resource; it is normal to be attracted to more than one person at the same time; there are multiple ways to practice love, sexual and intimate relationships; and jealousy is not something to be avoided or feared, but something that can be informative and worked through.“

(Fern, 2020)

You’re a Person Experiencing Jealousy, Not a Jealous Person

As we’ve already defined, jealousy is an emotion. I often see people referring to themselves as a “jealous person” as if it’s a personality trait. What these people probably mean is that jealous emotions pop up often for them, and they haven’t effectively found ways to address them yet. While it may just seem like semantics, when people think of themselves as their flaws, it can be hard to accept that things could ever be different. However, over time by actively working on themselves, people can lessen the intensity and possibly even eliminate jealousy from popping up in scenarios where it used to.

Common Reactions to Jealousy

When Ryan began wanting to spend more time with Lena, the jealous emotions I had would cause me to spiral terribly. My “jealousy storm”³ would cause me to feel insecure and inadequate. I became territorial as I had fears of loss and abandonment. I allowed these emotions and insecurities to chip away at the meaningful experiences Ryan and I had thus far. Often times people allow their jealous emotions, to evolve into jealous actions. Jealous actions are ways that we act out our jealousy emotions.

Comparisons:

Comparisons tend to be rather destructive in polyamory, but because of jealousy, suddenly comparisons were all I could think about.

• What if Lena is better at sex than I am?
• Lena is smaller/skinnier than me, what if Ryan decides he likes that better?
• What if Ryan enjoys the time he spends with Lena more than the time he spends with me?
• What if Lena is funnier, smarter, sexier than me?

These tend to lead to competition for time, experiences, attention, etc. Being in competition with metamours/new partners can lead to a lack of appreciation for the time we do get, and a desire for whatever the new partner has even if it’s not an experience we actually want.⁴

Rules/Restrictions:

Often times, in order to avoid the negative feelings we experience from jealousy, we will try to “take back control” by restricting our partner. If someone fears that a new partner will be better at “x” sex position than them, they may make a restriction that the partner can only do “x” sex position with them. This solution is only a band-aid that isn’t addressing the root issue and it won’t bring any relationship safety or security.

Blaming Others:

When jealousy hits, it can be hard to realize where the negative emotions are coming from. Ryan spending time with Lena was giving me uncomfortable feelings; it made me feel like it was him doing this to me. It took me a while to realize that the negative feelings were coming from my own insecurities and not my partner’s actions.

We have these reactions to jealousy out of desperation to hold onto a relationship or partner tighter, when in reality, these reactions most often end up pushing the partner away and crumbling the relationship.

Whose Responsibility is it to Work Through Jealousy?

Often times in the facebook groups I’m in, I will see people putting the onus on partners to alleviate jealousy. “You are triggering these uncomfortable feelings, you need to fix this”.

“If you’re someone who’s at the beginning and you’re first having to be faced with this idea of experiencing jealousy but then just having to push through it or get through it somehow, that can be daunting when we’ve been told our entire lives that romantic jealousy is completely unacceptable. That it’s our partner’s responsibility to make sure that we never feel jealous.“

Dedeker Winston, Multiamory Podcast #152

Because jealousy is our emotion, it’s actually our responsibility to do the inner work. That’s not saying that we can’t go to our partners for support, but it isn’t up to our partners to “fix our jealousy”. On Multiamory episode #140, Kitty Chambliss, author of Jealousy Survival Guide, explains that “the whole first section of [her] book, it’s really a lot about mindset and really doing a lot of inner work and a lot of exploration, personally, before you even approach your partner. It does take time. It does take effort. But it’s really important to look within first before you start talking to your partner and making sure it’s a productive conversation.” (Chambliss, 2017)

So how do we begin to do that inner work? What do we do? We need to determine the cause of the jealous emotions.

Get to the Root Cause

Jealousy is caused by triggers to the environment around us. In order to do the work to lessen its effects, we need to know what the triggers are. Through working on my own jealous emotions, I have come to learn that almost all of my jealousy in polyamory has been triggered by some sort of insecurity (thank you preoccupied attachment style). In the case of Ryan/Lena, my main insecurity was that I wasn’t good enough. I worried that Ryan only had a relationship with me because it was convenient at the time, but I worried that the moment anyone else came along, they would be better. Ryan spending time with Lena wasn’t hurting me, my low self-esteem was.

One of my root causes of jealousy is a fear of being replaced, which I think is a common insecurity within polyamory – especially for those of us who were brought up monogamously. Something that helps me is to remember that no other person is the same as me – therefore, no one can replace me in a relationship. My partners are with me because I am me and they value that. They are with their other partners because I’m not them.

NP experiences the majority of his jealous emotions stemming from loneliness. I can be gone for hours at work functions or out doing errands and he’s fine, but occasionally when I’m out of the house for romantic experiences, his jealousy will be triggered.

Whether it’s insecurity, loneliness, or something else altogether, if you can get to the root cause, you can begin working to remedy it. Overall, something is making you feel uncomfortable and it isn’t just “I’m jealous of this person”, so you’ll need to dig deeper to uncover the true cause.

Long Term Effects of Unaddressed Jealousy

Things may work out short term without root causes being addressed, but jealous emotions don’t just go away on their own. Remember that jealousy is an emotion – and emotions are your brain’s way of communicating that something is up. If we ignore or suppress those feelings, over time they’ll grow and cause even more negative feelings. If we allow ourselves to constantly make unhealthy comparisons, create rules for our partners, or blame them out right – no matter how strong the relationship is, it will likely crumble eventually. By allowing our jealous emotions to control our relationships via jealous actions, it makes our partners feel like we don’t trust them, that we don’t have security in the relationship.

Remember that jealousy is bound to pop up in ENM relationships, so learning to work through it early on ensures greater success down the road.

“This path requires owning jealousy as it arises, accepting others as they are, developing [one’s] own sense of personal wholeness, and letting go of the belief that loving someone more means loving someone else less.”

(Life, 2004, as cited in Fern, 2020)

What to Do When You’re Experiencing Jealousy

The following step by step guide has helped me work through my jealous emotions immensely. It comes predominantly from the book: Polyamory and Jealousy: A More Than Two Essentials Guide, with pepperings of other resources that have helped me.

While Experiencing the Jealous Emotions:

Until the hard feelings subside – don’t worry about doing any processing. Focus on self care and riding out the emotions.

Recognize and Accept the feelings

• Accept that you’re experiencing jealous emotions, it’s okay!
  • You are a person having totally normal emotions and feelings
• Experiencing jealousy does not make you a bad candidate for polyamory
• Recognize how jealous emotions affect you
  • For me, I experience anxiety spirals and panic attacks; for some, they may experience other full body symptoms including headaches, nausea, or dizziness
• As the hard feelings come, ride out the emotions as best you can with self-care
  • Try to remember that emotions will pass; avoid any of negative jealous actions mentioned above
  • Self care for me includes:
    • listening to a specific Spotify playlist I’ve made for when experiencing jealousy; it’s a mix of lofi covers that are chill and lowkey enough to match my mood, without being depressing and adding to my emotional spiral
    • taking a relaxing bubble bath with bath bombs I have on hand for these specific moments
    • making some soothing herbal tea, my favorite is Pukka’s Chamomile Vanilla & Manuka Honey
• Sometimes jealousy will give you the urge to act out immediately and in destructive ways
  • Try your best to ride out the strong emotions so that you can later process what’s actually going on

Ask for Support

• Physical contact aids in soothing primal fears
  • If the specific partner isn’t available, turn to another partner, a close friend, or even a pet
    • My jealousy always occurred when Ryan was out with Lena, so I was never able to use him for support during the emotional jealousy storm
    • For many of my jealousy spirals, I was home alone; on the upside my two cats seem to be empaths and are always quick to come sit on me and snuggle when they sense I need them
  • Just having someone/a pet hold you or have physical contact with you will help your body return to an untriggered state (Rickert & Veaux, 2016)

After the Jealous Emotions Have Subsided:

Once you’re out of the jealousy storm, you can begin to process the root causes.

Understand the Feelings

• Separate triggers from causes
  • Example: If you’re feeling jealous because your partner is on a date with someone else, dig down to the “why”
    • Trigger – your partner is going on a date
    • Cause – fear of being replaced
  • Once you are able to separate the triggers and causes, you can work to better manage them
• While our fears and insecurities can be genuine and come from our past experiences, it doesn’t mean that they’re always 100% true
  • Perhaps you had a bad experience with a dog once – it doesn’t mean all dogs are dangerous
  • I have a fear of being abandoned; but my partner having a new partner doesn’t mean I’ll automatically be abandoned/replaced
• Jealousy is almost always rooted in some type of fear
  • Most often it isn’t about the person you’re feeling jealous of, it’s about you
  • In Multiamory episode #140, Kitty Chambliss describes her “less, loss, or never” idea of categorizing fear
    • are you fearing that you will get less of your partner’s time or affection?
    • are you fearing that you will lose your partner completely?
    • are you worried that you will never get to experience a date like the one your partner experienced with a different partner?
    • using these categorizations may help you to better vocalize the fear you’re having⁵
  • Sometimes it may have nothing to do with your current relationship at all
    • Triggers may be reminding you of past unhealthy relationships
• Questions to ask yourself:
  • Am I uncertain about the value my partner sees in me?
  • Am I not sure why they want to be with me?
  • Does the idea of my partner having a new lover, mean that whatever my partner sees in me will no longer be valid, or they will want to choose that partner over me?
  • Do I feel that most other people are sexier, more good looking, more worthwhile, funnier, smarter, or just generally better than me and I can’t compete?
  • Do I think that if my partner falls in love with another person, my partner will leave me for that person?

Talk About It

• It’s not solely on us to work through our jealous emotions; healthy relationship partners will work with you to help reassure you about your fears and insecurities
• Once you’ve worked to understand your triggers and feelings, communicate your fears to your partner and learn the way your partners feel about you
  • “When you’re on a date with this person, I feel jealous, it doesn’t mean you shouldn’t do it but I could really use some love and support”
• Ask your partner what it is they value about you, and trust that what they say is true
  • “There is nothing wrong with needing to hear why you are wanted and valued by your partners and it is important for you to be able to communicate to your partners why they specifically matter to you. Experiencing expressed delight and knowing the ways you are precious in your partners’ lives can be an important resource to lean on when feeling jealous or threatened by a metamour or potential new partners. Instead of spinning out into doubt and fear, being able to recall the ways your partners experience you as special, even irreplaceable, can soothe the anxious mind and allow for more compersion to arise.” (Fern, 2020)
  • If you’re like me – this doesn’t always stick the first time around. Ask again and listen
  • Over time, the things that make us great in our partner’s eyes will start to sink in

Practice Security

• Jealousy will creep up and tell you that you’re not valued, you’re not loved, and your partner doesn’t want to be with you – even if those things aren’t true
  • Sometimes these things feel so real, but most likely, they’re not
• We become good at what we practice
  • If we practice convincing ourselves that our partners don’t want us/don’t want to be involved with us/don’t value us – we become good at believing it
    • As a result we may act out in destructive ways, become withdrawn, or destroy the relationship
  • If we practice convincing ourselves that we have value and worth and that our partners appreciate the relationship they have with us – we become good at believing it
    • As a result we will start to act with confidence, trust, and openness, and the relationship will flourish. (Rickert & Veaux, 2016)

When Insecurities are Rooted In Truth

The majority of this post and the book Polyamory and Jealousy: A More Than Two Essentials Guide assumes the fact that our insecurities are rooted in falsehoods, but unhealthy relationships do exist

• Signs your fears are probably rooted in truth
  • Your partner has a lack of empathy for your concerns
  • They are unwilling to communicate about your jealous emotions
  • They brush off your fears
  • They use emotional abuse tactics to keep you constantly off balance
• Signs your fears are probably rooted in falsehoods caused by jealousy
  • Your partner is willing to support you and listen to your fears even when they are irrational
  • They listen with compassion and empathize with your feelings
  • They take responsibility for anything they’ve done to hurt you and they look to improve things
  • They give concrete reminders of why they love and value you (Rickert & Veaux, 2016)

Summary

Working through jealousy is hard work – but I can assure you that it’s worth it. In the scenario with Ryan and Lena, I worked through the above steps on my own and with Ryan, and while it wasn’t an overnight change, eventually my jealous feelings subsided. Our relationship was stronger because of it and later as Ryan added more partners, I didn’t experience the intense jealousy I did the first time he got a new partner. As I was reading PolySecure, the author made an exceptional point regarding one way she finds security in ENM relationships.

“Personally, I find security in the fact that when I’m in CNM relationships I know that my partners are not with me because they are obliged to be, but because they continue to choose to be.”

(Fern, 2020)

Remembering this helps me to remember that my partners are with me because they do value me. For any polyamorous folks out there struggling with insecurity, I just want to leave you with the following nuggets of reassurance:

• Your value comes from who you are
• You are not replaceable
• Your jealous emotions do not make you a bad poly person
• Jealous emotions can be alleviated over time, first through self processing and then through communication with your partner(s)

**names have been changed to protect the privacy of individuals referenced**

References:

1. Jealousy. Psychology Today. (n.d.). Retrieved January 12, 2022, from https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/basics/jealousy ↩
2. Fern, J. (2020). Polysecure: Attachment, Trauma and Consensual Nonmonogamy (pp. 103; 181; 137). Thorntree Press. ↩
3. Rickert, E., & Veaux, F. (2016). Polyamory and Jealousy: A More Than Two Essentials Guide. Thorntree Press. ↩
4. Lindgren, J., Matlack, E., & Winston, D. (Hosts). (2021, March 23). Deconstructing Jealousy (No. 314) [Audio podcast episode]. In Multiamory. Multiamory LLC. https://www.multiamory.com/podcast/314-deconstructing-jealousy ↩
5. Chambliss, K., (Guest). (2017, October 10). The Jealousy Survival Guide (with author Kitty Chambliss) (No. 140) [Audio podcast episode]. In Multiamory. Multiamory LLC. https://www.multiamory.com/podcast/140-the-jealousy-survival-guide-with-author-kitty-chambliss ↩
6. Life, M. (2004). Spiritual Polyamory (pp. 87-95). iUniverse. 87-95
7. Lindgren, J., Matlack, E., & Winston, D. (Hosts). (2018, January 2). Polyamory: The Most Common Questions (No. 152) [Audio podcast episode]. In Multiamory. Multiamory LLC. https://www.multiamory.com/podcast/152-polyamory-most-common-questions