Green Eyed Friends and Jealous Lovers

I chose to remain silent.

Sitting in foreign and hostile territory, I held my breath. I had been in this situation before, but no where as near as outnumbered. It was as if my back was too the wall, with three hostile harpies poking at me with sticks, waiting for me to lash out. I bit my tongue, making sure that no matter what happened, I would not yield, would not succumb to their petty psychological warfare.

Meeting new people can be difficult. What should be a pleasurable experience can be marred by malice and motive. This is especially true when you meet the friends and family of a significant other.

The American Heritage dictionary defines jealousy as being "Fearful or wary of being supplanted; apprehensive of losing affection or position."

Jealousy is a natural human emotion, rearing its head whenever a friend or loved one appears to be removing themselves from your life. This could be due to a variety of factors, but jealousy is a constant force to contend with in life.

And most of us do. We swallow our jealously down, using the tools of clarity and logic to diffuse it's destructive power. We are civilized beings, and we know that all emotions have some sort of cause, as irrational as it may be.

Jealousy is an emotion that stems from the desire to possess - so why do people in the throes of jealousy take actions that would be detrimental to the relationship they hold so dear?

Friends sabotage relationships, willing to deny their friend the happiness of connection in order to satisfy their own selfish needs. They want you around, and this new person is in the way. Or friends fight other friends, foolishly squabbling and creating divisions to ensure that their place in the friendship hierarchy is preserved at all costs. In the most radical of cases, the jealous person chooses to extract themselves from the situation, willing to forfeit a friendship for the perceived slight to their ego.

Jealous lovers are a more dangerous creature. While friends may cause a friendship to end over their foolish insecurities, a jealous lover can end your life. For some reason, love and jealousy create a potent concoction, with a high rate of mortality. An article in Post this week recounted the story of a woman who was nearly burned alive by a former lover - and that that pattern was on the rise. The idea of possession of a loved one is so strong that some people cannot fight the temptation to give in to the ideal. Some paramours want you to isolate yourself, to frame your life around them, to become a part of them. They react violently when you want to assert yourself, see different people, spend the odd night away from them.

Since jealousy can temporarily heighten emotion, it can also produce heady feelings of love in the target. We all want to be loved, treasured, cherished. Some feel that jealousy is their mate's way of proving how much they care.

The feelings are different for everyone. However, I think that the best way to deal with jealously is to see it for what it is, to diffuse its power by acknowledging its presence.

On that uncomfortable night, I stared at jealously's lure, and refused to take the bait.