What Polyamory Has Taught Me About Jealousy

When I was 24, my core group of three girlfriends had a huge falling out when two friends accused the third of having hit on their boyfriends. I spent hours and hours thinking about what each claimed had happened, and could not reconcile the idea that my dream of a Golden Girls-esque future was kaput. I imagined how I would feel if one of my best friends, in a good place after years of depression, had planted a sloppy drunken kiss on or danced suggestively with my boyfriend on her birthday. I truly could not see letting a moment like that ruin ten years of friendship.

I have never been what you might call a “jealous person” in my romantic relationships. My friends, on the other hand, turned venomous towards the woman they perceived as having interfered in their romantic relationships. She was kicked out of one friend’s wedding, and that was the end of our close-knit foursome.

A decade later, in my three years leading our local polyamory discussion group, jealousy is a topic that comes up at every meeting in one way or another. Sometimes we dive in with the green-eyed-monster as the main topic, but in other meetings it almost always comes up in the natural course of our discussions.

Often, the questions being asked center around eliminating jealousy. How do we stop ourselves from feeling jealous? Sometimes, those new to non-monogamous relationships would ask “but, don’t you get jealous?” The idea that polyamorous people don’t get jealous is a misconception. We definitely do! It’s a topic we talk about a lot.

Knowing ourselves and recognizing our boundaries and limitations is awesome, and it’s not always easy work. I’m not one to believe that humans are naturally non-monogamous, I think different types of relationships work for different people…

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