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The Lessons I Learned the Hard Way about Jealousy
Four ways I could have handled jealousy better in my non monogamous relationships
I recently wrote about how my husband and I really struggled with jealousy when we opened up our relationship. In a rather astounding short amount of time, we went from feeling pretty good about our decision to become non monogamous to feeling seething jealousy. Like the kind of jealousy that gives you gas, keeps you up at night and makes you want to poke someone’s eyes out (my husband’s much younger girlfriend for example, read about that here).
We went through a pretty shitty few months. We tried to work through it on our own at first. We read tips on handling jealousy online and even tried to fill out a few worksheets in a “how to deal with jealousy” handbook. But we were in too deep. We had gotten to the point where we simply no longer trusted each other.
I knew that we could simply decide to take away the experiences that were making us feel jealousy and close up our marriage. But I didn’t want that. I wanted to keep exploring my sexuality through non monogamy. My husband also didn’t want to return to being monogamous. He also wanted to enjoy his new found freedom to have sex and relationships with other partners. In desperation, we looked for outside help and ended up…