Return To Show NotesHi, thank you for joining the Empowered Relationship Podcast. I’m your host, Dr. Jessica Higgins, licensed psychologist and certified coach. Today’s episode is 267, “Four healthy ways to manage jealousy in relationship”, an interview with Dr. Joli Hamilton.
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Before we get started, I wanna just invite you to take a deep breath in, and a deep breath out. And as we just take a couple breaths into our body and bring our focus and awareness more to this present moment, I just wanna invite grounding in the intention. And you may have a personal intention that you want to name and identify, and please do if you feel so called. And I am just gonna reiterate the intention of the podcast here on the Empowered Relationship Podcast, and that is to support you in the journey of long-lasting intimacy, and setting you up for success.
So often we feel ill-equipped or unprepared in how to deal with and handle the challenges that might emerge… And more than anything, I just want to support you in looking at what gets activated as an opportunity for your healing, and also for the development of your relationship. So often what gets reflected back to us or what we experience in relationship is an opportunity for this development, for this growth, if we so choose… And really, the ultimate goal is to feel more happiness, more intimacy, more connection, more fulfillment, more passion, more authenticity and more security.
If you would like access to today’s show notes, you can visit DrJessicaHiggins.com, click on Podcast there in that navigation bar and you will find all of the episodes. Again, today’s episode is 267, “Four healthy ways to manage jealousy in relationship”, an interview with Dr. Joli Hamilton.
I wanna note, before we get started – Dr. Joli Hamilton has worked a lot with and researched with polyamorous couples, particularly on this topic of jealousy, and I think there’s something that can be really gleaned from this research and this understanding, and that there are principles that apply to all relationships. And I know that the Empowered Relationship Podcast is really helping two people in monogamous relationships cultivating a long-lasting partnership. Okay, let’s get started in today’s interview.
Dr. Jessica Higgins: Dr. Joli Hamilton is a research psychologist, best-selling author, TEDx speaker, and AASECT certified sex educator. She has spent the past two decades balancing a wild entrepreneurial spirit with a deep desire to have a secure, passionate partnership, and she raised seven kids along the way. Joli is committed to helping women create sustainable, soul-nourishing relationships without sacrificing their career dreams.
Joli, thank you for joining us today.
Dr. Joli Hamilton: Thanks for having me, Jessica. It’s great to be here.
Dr. Jessica Higgins: Yes, I love being able to talk to professionals in the field that have done a level of research in their own career, that are bringing something specific and original, and you’re gonna be talking to us today about jealousy, and I know a lot of people struggle with that. So help us, where should we start in the sense of how are you defining jealousy, how do you help people recognize that?
Dr. Joli Hamilton: Yeah, so jealousy is a topic near and dear to my heart, and I studied it at the doctoral level. That’s where my research is. So of course, defining terms is super-important. I approach jealousy — the first thing I do is think about how is it different from envy. Because we tend to overlap these two terms. And then people say jealousy – anytime any sort of yiky negative feeling shows up in their relationship, we can rush to jealousy. So let’s be specific. Jealousy is the real or imagined fear that we experience when we think a love bond is going to be interrupted. So it’s important that we notice that it’s real or imagined. So it doesn’t matter whether our connection is actually objectively speaking interrupted. If we imagine that it’s being interrupted or imagine that it could be interrupted, or imagine that it’s being Instagram-interrupted, that can all provoke jealousy. And jealousy isn’t a simple emotion. It’s not happy, sad, angry, mad. It’s not that simple. It’s complex. Jealousy is made of layers, and a tangle of all this gross stuff that we don’t like to feel, like sadness, and anger, and fear. We can’t actually separate it from fear. There’s always some fear, because it is about this separation… But it also comes with sadness and grief, and anticipatory grief, along with sometimes arousal, and this strange tinge of [unintelligible 00:07:08.21]
Jealousy reminds us that we want something, either love, or lust, or just desire someone… So it has this strange tone where we are caught in all of these gross feelings; we don’t want it. And yet, there’s also something sort of intriguing about jealousy, something that pulls us in.
So I looked at jealousy in the context of people exploring or living in polyamorous relationships. So those are people who are living in consensually non-monogamous relationship agreements. If you’re gonna have more than one love, jealousy is gonna have to get talked about. So that’s my research container.
I’m just now starting to look at it from the monogamous perspective, and it turns out it’s a little different, but the core of it is the same. Jealousy is messy, and it’s not simple, and it causes lots of troubles in our relationships.
Dr. Jessica Higgins: Yes, there’s so much to be said. Thank you for just giving us a little bit of a rounded explanation around what you see is involved and the multiple layers that are at play.
Now, when you’re talking about jealousy, I know a lot of people label some of their feelings as insecurity… How much do you see the difference in that?
Dr. Joli Hamilton: Yeah, so I started by saying I separate it out from envy… I like to make sure that people remember that jealousy is a triangle. Jealousy is about an interrupted love bond, so insecurity plays into that. If I am not secure in myself or I am not secure in the type of bond or type of agreements, if my agreements don’t feel explicit and well-communicated, then I can easily imagine some third-party interrupting my love bond. However, envy can also result from insecurity. Envy is a dyadic experience. It’s about two. It’s about wishing that we had something someone has, or about wishing that we were like someone… And those feelings – they’re awfully similar, and we can work on them from the same spot, because in fact, insecurity is one of the root causes of intense jealousy, or intense envy. And that insecurity luckily is something that we can actually do something about, because often when we’re talking about jealousy, we put it off onto another person. We think “Someone needs to stop making me feel jealous. I need your behavior to stop, I need your attitude to stop, I need you to stop posting certain pictures”, whatever it is. We make a request of someone else.
But you’re bringing up a great point right away, which is that if we start with “Where is my level of insecurity, where is my level of self-worth? Do I believe in fact that I am lovable, wantable, desirable, at my core?” I think we all struggle with insecurity at some level, so if we’re struggling with that and we start to do that self-work, then we become more resilient. Jealousy is still gonna show up; it’s completely normal, it’s completely typical. Trying to get rid of it is like the last thing to do… So yeah, by shoring up your sense of security, which starts with you and your grounding, not with somebody else’s behavior. There may be problematic behaviors out there, but that’s not where the solutions start. They start from within.
So yeah, you do have to separate it from the insecurity. However, if there’s insecurity, there will almost always be jealousy showing up somewhere.
Dr. Jessica Higgins: Right. I appreciate you naming how normal all of these feelings are, and also the natural human impulse to wanna control the outside circumstance, or our partner, to feel better. It looks and appears as though that if that threat were to go away, then we would feel better.
Dr. Joli Hamilton: Exactly. And that threat can be so many things, because the imagination is so powerful. I’m a depth psychologist, I studied [unintelligible 00:11:12.05] archetypal psychology, so the imagination is super-important to me. We can just imagine a third into being. We don’t need some real person into our life. In fact, if we’re prone to feeling jealous, regardless of who our partner is, we may find that if we look back over our relationship history, we’ve invented lots of third-parties. And sometimes that’s fun. People love to play with that in sexual fantasy. That’s exciting. Groupsex is the number one sexual fantasy. [unintelligible 00:11:43.24] work clearly shows that. In America, that is our number one sexual fantasy.
So we play with the idea of the third (or fourth, or fifth, I suppose), but then if we play with it and we bring it into our day-to-day imagination, we imagine our partner experiencing another relationship outside of the agreements we’ve made, and now all of a sudden it’s not about them. It’s about whether we feel like we have something to give… And often it’s about whether we feel like we’ve made our relationship agreements clear, but we don’t know that that’s the thing. You can be both aware and unaware of how clear your relationship agreements are, right? You can know on the one hand “Yeah, we don’t really talk about that” and still deep-down believe “Yeah, but we know. We know what our agreement is. They wouldn’t ever interrupt it. They wouldn’t do anything.” And then secretly to ourselves we sort of say “Um… Have I made that really clear? What are those supposed rules? What is protecting me?” Because that’s what we long for. We wish that there was something that could protect us from jealousy, so it could just go away, be wiped out.
Dr. Jessica Higgins: Right.
Dr. Joli Hamilton: It’s not that simple, sadly.
Dr. Jessica Higgins: I know, I know… There’s so many aspects to this. There’s so many times that I have been working with a couple and ask them “Did you guys have a conversation about this at any point? How did this evolve? How did you get to this norm or this expectation?” And a lot of times, people don’t have these really unpacked understanding and explicit agreements.
Dr. Joli Hamilton: Yeah. I feel like it’s the easiest piece to add to a relationship, that feels so obvious once you start doing it. But before you’ve started making really clear agreements, the cultural story, the norms that you grew up in feel like enough container; and that’s on purpose – we grow up in a society, and our parents teach us a certain way, and whatever we’re in, schools, religious circumstances, all of that, they teach us a certain way… And it’s supposed to feel like a safe container. Honestly, the more reliable our childhood felt, the less likely we are to have had the conversations that delve into the dark corners and say “Oh, but what else do I need to make clear?” The more we’re likely to think that it’s obvious. Obvious to us, obvious to our partners, and obvious to everyone else who we interact with. And it’s not obvious. [laughs]
Dr. Jessica Higgins: No… I mean, even when we’re talking about the United States, there’s a general cultural context to what the norms are and the social scripts, but there’s also geographic, and then we add how bi-cultural sometimes couples are… There’s so many layers here around cultural understanding.
Dr. Joli Hamilton: Yeah. You could just be talking like [unintelligible 00:14:44.05] That is simple enough. Not to mention any other identity differences. They can completely change. So if you have people who have different backgrounds and identities in any respect, or an age difference… I mean, a generational age gap is not uncommon in relationship. I have a ten-year gap in my primary relationship, and that creates an expectation difference. And having implicit expectations is just fertile ground for jealousy to grow, and then we get caught in these bizarre — but they’re because they’re so overwhelming; these bizarre shame stories about whether we’re worthy, about what our partner is doing… And we can spin up a whole soap opera around ourselves so fast.
Dr. Jessica Higgins: No kidding…
Dr. Joli Hamilton: Yeah, so fast. And it’s just dangerous, because we can get off the rails. It sounds like you’ve talked to people who’ve been in that spot… Like, they’re already at this super-escalated place, but the basic conversations were never had. So they could even have an actual mutual understanding, but it hasn’t been made clear, and that’s where the jealousy can really grow.
Dr. Jessica Higgins: Mm-hm. I mean, jumping to conclusions, filling in the blanks, and not even checking things out, what it visibly looks like… We can go into, like you said, deep dark corners… And I’m curious for you, how much do you see – this is probably a little bit more of a tender topic, but for people that have known trauma or have known loss, or not secure relationship and family upbringing, what do you see in how that potentially relates to insecurity, or jealousy? Because we don’t have that secure base. I get how the agreements can be the difference, but there’s also, like you said, so many layers.
Dr. Joli Hamilton: Yeah. So that’s great. And for someone like me, I tend to operate from extroverted thinking. So for me, an explicit agreement holds a lot of weight. And I do have trauma myself. I see clients who have trauma backgrounds and I think to myself, “Okay, what’s the most important feature here?” And it’s gonna be different for each of us. So you’re bringing up an important point. Recently, a book came out by Jessica Fern. It’s called Polysecure. And to me, this isn’t a monogamy versus non-monogamy thing; this is about “How do we actually experience security?” And if we have had difficult backgrounds with relationship, whether that started when we were little children or whether that started because we got into a really tumultuous relationship pattern later, we have one opportunity, and that is to start with ourselves, and start repairing the sense that we are not worth loving. And that’s not a move, that is a lifelong journey. And if we start creating a self that can actually relate from a secure place, where we can actively reparent ourselves, where we can actively learn soothing techniques so that we’re not running to check our partner’s phone when they’re in the bathroom, so that we’re not imagining that any coworker of your partner’s desired sexual preference, whatever they like… And I’m talking even just like “Hey, a new tall girl at work” and that’s gonna bother you.
Dr. Jessica Higgins: Or the age proximity of what would be a potential mate.
Dr. Joli Hamilton: Exactly. This could be just whatever sets you off… Those things are gonna happen. So I always like to just return to “Where are you at?” And when it comes to having a trauma background, it doesn’t seem to me that the research shows that that makes one more or less capable of managing their jealousy, managing their agreements. It’s really about how conscious you are about how you create your relationships… And in fact, when I did my doctoral study, something fascinating to me showed up. I had presumed that I was going to hear a lot of stories of really secure-feeling people, and instead I heard a lot of stories from people who were — well, they’d been in really difficult relationships, and they’d had very challenging young adulthoods, coming into relationship… But they’d done a lot of work on what that meant. So they had started to make meaning out of those negative experiences, and by doing that, they’d started crafting relationships that were really intentional… And I think we all want to believe that our relationships are really intentional, but when I listen to stories, I’m struck by the difference between someone who is now practicing that conscious, intentional conversations, having difficult conversations over and over again, versus someone who is identifying themselves as being intentional. Like, they just grabbed the identity and they are sure that they are. I think this is tender, it is, if you identify as someone who’s really self-aware and really intentional, but you’re experiencing jealousy or pain in your relationship that feels outsized – there might be some dissonance.
Maybe this is a time for positive, useful cognitive dissonance. “Hey, I could show attention to this. How did I get here and what do I wanna do differently right now?” And it’s gonna be the little baby steps. We don’t just leap forward into “I don’t feel jealousy.” That doesn’t happen. In fact, no one in my study didn’t experience jealousy. Instead, they experienced it and they had techniques for managing it. They had ideas, they knew what to do with hit when it showed up. Whereas I’ve started doing my monogamy interviews and not everybody has those tools. Some people do, but not everybody does. They don’t even have the same language to discuss raw feelings like jealousy, because they imagined that they wouldn’t have to. We imagine that monogamy will protect us from having to feel jealousy, and unfortunately, I haven’t found any relationship strategy that will actually do that. Luck, dumb luck, I guess… [unintelligible 00:20:54.06] it never came up. But you’re not gonna know that until you roll into your 60th wedding anniversary, right? Did you get lucky that way? I guess maybe, but I don’t wanna count on luck myself; I don’t know about you…
Dr. Jessica Higgins: Right. It sounds like you’re saying something really powerful, in that it’s the capacity to deal with the jealous feelings, and how to relationally address the agreements or however you’re managing that experience; that’s the big determinant for success. Versus whether or not you get jealous, or to what degree, how lucky you are… And even to some extent how much pain and loss and trauma you’ve known, because the activation of jealousy will trigger… Some who have had more trauma will activate a little bit more in that trauma response, and have more to work with… But the capacity is the same, and it’s just having a little bit more of a working process. It’s a practice, and it’s something that as we develop skill, then we can start to rely on that security, rather than an idea or an assumed context that we lean back in.
I mean, I get that, like you’re saying, with norms we can feel some container and safety in that, but we’re all cultivating and co-creating a relationship that’s so unique to two individuals, and there’s a lot more at play than just that container… So am I hearing you right, that the capacity and the practice is really where it’s at?
Dr. Joli Hamilton: Totally. The thing that struck me was when I started analyzing the data, I noticed that grief was higher in people’s story of jealousy. It wasn’t sadness or anger at the partner and the situation right now, it was this grief which was really about their whole life. So yeah, no matter what had happened before, everybody had some sort of “Yeah, I’ve been here before. I have felt this before.” When we’re little, we start dealing with jealousy; like, little, little kids. Researchers can see jealousy in children at six months old, you can witness it. So it’s totally normal to feel it. And this is a tough one for me – nothing, not even an explicit relationship agreement is going to protect you from feeling jealousy from time to time… Because stuff happens, and because we change, and because our capacity will feel diminished at times. I may have the overall capacity to manage my jealousy, but that doesn’t mean that during final season I’m not like “You know what – I just do not have the bandwidth for this.” Or you may experience a loss, and you’re like “I can’t…” This is where we start to see people having to have a flexible set of agreements, and a flexibility to deal with their partner’s heightened and lessened ability to manage their jealousy… And that becomes hard. Sometimes we’ll hear people say “I thought we already dealt with this.”
Instagram jealousy is the thing I actually see the most right now. It’s not even — we’re all in these quarantine boxes, so it’s not so much co-worker jealousy; I’m seeing as “What’s happening on your Instagram, on your Facebook, who’s in your DMs.” If you have a firm and flexible understanding of what your partner and you have agreed to do, then you may also understand that that needs to shift when there are times of heightened stress. You may need to allow for change. And what I hear is people saying “We already dealt with this. We have an agreement.” So what’s the deal? The deal is nothing is ever fixed. It’s actually really complicated, and sometimes you’ll have to allow that sensitivity to actually be the barometer of what can go on in your relationship right now.
Dr. Jessica Higgins: Right. So it’s not so much that it’s the holding so, so tightly to the agreement, but more having that relational rapport and the kindness and the care and the sensitivity and the compassion and empathy for one another that can round some of this out, given the flexibility of our own capacity, given whatever the circumstances are. This is so helpful. I feel like I could keep kind of going with you, but I’m aware for listeners that are like “Okay, okay… So what if I notice I’m jealous?” Can you give people a starting place around how to potentially start working and dealing directly?
Dr. Joli Hamilton: Right. So jealousy is so messy that even if it doesn’t come up for you a lot, you can apply these steps to jealousy as it comes up in your friendships, jealousy of our children and their accomplishments, or jealousy of a coworker… So no matter where you are, there are four things that I’ve seen people do that are really the basic constituents of dealing with jealousy… And the first is just to notice it. If we have internalized messages from when we were kids that being jealous is bad, we may actually go straight to a shame story about ourselves if we feel jealous. And it’s so weird, because Dr. Maya Angelou wrote that great quote, “Jealousy is like salt in food. A little adds to the savor, but too much ruins the dish.” That sums it up. You wanna notice it while it’s still just in the savor… Because once it blows up, you can’t — you can’t pull back a beef stew that’s got too much salt in it. There’s nothing much to do about it, right? That’s really hard.
So we wanna start noticing our jealousy when it’s in its smaller stages. It might show up for you in your body, you might get a really clear somatic indicator, so you can look for a weight, or a heat, or a vibration somewhere in your body that says “There’s something going on.” Or you might even have a phrase that you hear sort of in your mind. You might find yourself judging other people. I hear women judging other women on Instagram for how polished and perfect they look. That might be an indicator for you that jealousy is awake. I think of it as a beast that wants to protect you, but it doesn’t know how; it’s clumsy, and it’s gonna bang around in there and hurt some people. So we just wanna notice it, and then we’ve gotta —
Dr. Jessica Higgins: Can I chime in really quickly?
Dr. Joli Hamilton: yeah.
Dr. Jessica Higgins: So my hairstylist – she was saying something that is so to the point of what you’re saying. She was talking about a friend of hers that gets a lot of work done… And we were sharing something, and I was like “I’m non-judgmental”, kind of trying to say I don’t really have a lot of judgment… And she said, “Yeah, typically me too, but it often depends on how I feel about my own aging process. It depends on the day and my own comfortability with my own aging. That determines how judgmental I am.” I thought that was so aware of her to say.
Dr. Joli Hamilton: That’s a beautiful self-awareness, yeah. And noticing how we’re feeling about ourselves and how that impacts our assessment of other people showing up in our life – I mean, you talk about a small move that you can do just as you’re scrolling – there you go. Watch what’s your little voice saying to you; what are the messages you’re getting. Because that’s a great opportunity. I’m hearing she was aware that she had an opportunity right there to pull back and say “Oh, this is about me and how I’m feeling about myself.” If I had that moment, I would be flipping right to Sonya Renee Taylor’s “The Body is Not an Apology” and say “I need a refresher, obviously.” [laughter] Because I need to remember that I’m a changing human in a body, and jealousy is so often tied up to our self-worth that when we notice it like that, like you’re saying, that’s a great opportunity. But it’s gonna feel gross. It’s not pleasant.
Dr. Jessica Higgins: No, I get the body — when you were talking about the somatic, when I’ve experienced it, it’s like this jolt, and like you’re saying, the heat, and the rattle…
Dr. Joli Hamilton: Yeah, some people described it to me like their ears will go on fire, or other people described a lightning bolt under their sternum… It’s different for each of us, but when you notice that particular feeling, then you can move into “Okay, I see that you’re here… Now, what the heck are you?” Because jealousy – we often say things like “Oh, it’s just jealousy.” Or “I’m just jealous.” Or “He’s just a jealous person”, as if jealousy is some sort of pre-stamped character trait. But while we might have a different level of typical experiencing of jealousy, I don’t find it to be a trait. It’s more of an experience that we move through. So what we need to do is peel back the covers and say “Okay, what are you made of?” Are you experiencing anger? Sadness? Fear? Are you in full-on terror? Are you enraged? Are you actually way past sadness and you’re into deep grief, that’s actually about some other relationship, or goodness gracious, about your parents? All of us are carrying our stories from our whole lives forward.
So when we peel back the things that we’ve noticed, we say “Okay, jealousy, you’re here”, I look in and I notice the feelings, and I just name them. “Oh, I feel angry.” Okay, now this buzzing sensation makes a lot more sense. Now my snippy response to my husband makes a lot more sense, even though he was handing me a coffee at the time and just smiling at me. What was the deal? Oh, I’m actually angry.
So it’s not that the jealousy isn’t there, but it’s actually covering up all of these emotions that most of us have been working on – how to deal with anger, how to deal with sadness. We do our work around that. Jealousy work is really about learning how to look under the surface of the jealousy for all these other emotions. Start applying our tools to those, and then allow ourselves to accept the fact that jealousy is completely normal. It’s completely normal. It serves a purpose. Now, I don’t go so far as — the preeminent jealousy researcher, David Buss, I have nothing for him. I’ve got nothing for him, because he thinks that jealousy is as important as love. It’s right on the cover of his book, and he’s been doing this research for like 25 years. He comes too close to rape apology for my taste; I just can’t handle this. And he feels that jealousy is very normal because of the biological impulses that we have.
And I would say this – while we often in our culture describe jealousy as like “Well, it’s natural because of this biological impulse to protect, and to only have my DNA passed in a certain way”, and I get it, that can make us feel sort of safe. Like, we want this monogamous agreement to be utter and complete. But there’s also a real loss here; it’s a loss of our humanity. We are also capable of compassion, and empathy, we’re capable of executive functioning and thinking about how we don’t have to act on every feeling we have…
Dr. Jessica Higgins: Right, we’ve evolved beyond just our animal instincts.
Dr. Joli Hamilton: Exactly. So when we have jealousy, that doesn’t mean we have to act on it. So once we’ve noticed it and we’ve named it, we’ve named all the parts that are in there, what we can start to do there is actually just normalize it, and think “Okay, how am I going to deal with deal jealousy? How do I want to show up when jealousy shows up?” One option is to actually turn toward your partner. “Whoa. Indicator. I love this person. I’m jealous, which means I want them.” I hear people all the time describe to me how they have this desire discrepancy… Like, “I don’t know, I just don’t want him anymore. I just don’t feel that fire.” Oh, but do you have jealousy? Because there’s something there then.
Dr. Jessica Higgins: Right.
Dr. Joli Hamilton: So I think of it as a nice way to remind me, “Oh, there is still fire.” So use that.
Dr. Jessica Higgins: I know so many times people are like “Oh, my partner is so much more attractive when they see someone flirting with their partner.”
Dr. Joli Hamilton: Exactly. So we can play with that energy. And this is something that I’m looking forward to doing in my future research – playing with that energy is exactly what lots of people are doing when they’re engaging in group dynamics, in swinging, in all sorts of slightly taboo sexual practices; they’re playing with that energy. And it can be done just in your imagination as well. So the jealousy can be a tool, but you have to learn how to relate to it. If you shift into a shame story and say “Now I’m a bad person because I’m feeling jealous”, or if you shift into a shame story that tells you “They’re a bad person because they’re making me feel jealous”, neither one of those leads you closer to your person. So if you want it to help you turn towards, allow it to just show you. It’s like shining a light on their best features. This is a part of them that is so attractive, that you know they could be swept away by someone else. Now you’re gonna bring your executive functioning back online and say “Yeah, and here I am, with them. Yay! Lucky me.”
So those are the first three steps. And the last one is about a word that we haven’t talked about yet. You can nurture this feeling called compersion. I don’t know whether you’re familiar with the term compersion. Compersion is a little like compassion. Compassion is when we practice feeling empathy for someone when they’re suffering. Compersion is the feeling of joy for another person’s joy. It’s a great word, and you probably have heard it, like “Oh wait, it is.” But it’s not in the dictionary yet, so my spell-check still corrects me.
Compersion is a great word. We’ve all felt compersion. You watch a three-year-old eating ice cream, and you get all like “Oh, it’s so cute, with the balloon, and the ice cream.” That feeling, even if you’re dairy-intolerant, you’re like “Aww…” That’s compersion in its most basic form. When you can point compersion toward your partner experiencing joy…
I’ll just use an example. I’m at a party, I watch my partner across the room, talking to somebody I know that he’s likely to find attractive. And he looks like he’s having a good time. And we have a trusting relationship, and we have agreements, but out comes the jealousy beast and I’m like “Whoa…!! Okay, you’re present. Yeah, but he’s having a good time, and I trust him. And we’re going home together.” Right in that moment I have this opportunity to just enjoy the fact that he’s enjoying this conversation and this little bit of flirtation, whatever it is, that erotic energy that isn’t about anything other than just enjoying getting to be here on this planet, in this one life… And just experiencing relating to someone.
It’s not necessarily easy, because we often go to these dark places, but compersion gives us a chance to nurture something much different. It’s really, really delightful. And it takes practice. But we can practice it in little ways. We can practice it when our girlfriends have a really fun experience and we’re a little jealous, and we wish we were with them, but we’re also psyched that they got the concert tickets and they’re going out… Or your coworker gets a promotion and is getting attention from not just your boss, but also all of your coworkers… We can practice “I can feel gross, and jealous, and envious and all that, and at the same time I can feel joy for their joy. I can feel happiness for their happiness, even if it excludes me… Because I am a complicated individual. I don’t have to feel just one thing.” [unintelligible 00:36:39.04] So we don’t have to let go of jealousy and say “I’m a person who doesn’t feel jealousy. I just let it go.” We can just bring compersion in and sit it near the jealousy. Even if it’s a tiny bit of compersion, to sit next to the big jealousy beast. The tiny bit of compersion allows you to sit with your jealousy just for a little bit longer of a pause. Just a little longer pause.
So by following those steps – you notice it, name it, and then normalize it, and then just nurturing your compersion. You can really come to a different way of feeling jealousy. Jealousy is a wave. So it can be a tidal wave that knocks you over, or it can be a wave that you really surf really well. I’m looking for people to surf it.
Dr. Jessica Higgins: Yeah, no kidding… And I love that you’re bringing in the humanity of how normal it is… And it’s almost this irony, that if I can just be aware and notice, if I can have inquiry and understanding, and name it, and normalize it, let it be okay, but then bring in another resource, an emotion or experience around (in this case) our significant other, then it holds a level of tolerance… Like in EMDR, bringing awareness around our nervous system opens up a window for us to deal and work through, rather than this just by-passing, “I’m not a jealous person”, and then suppressing, and denying… So it’s an irony, it sounds like; the more that we can be with and lean in and turn towards, then we’re gonna have a little more capacity to deal with. Is that what I’m hearing?
Dr. Joli Hamilton: Absolutely. You name it – it is tolerating jealousy, learning to widen the window of tolerance for ourselves allows us to explore what we actually want in our relationship, rather that just shutting down. And sometimes that shutting down becomes a wall that you build between you and your partner. And sometimes it becomes just a blindness. “I’m not gonna look at this stuff.” But whatever you’re doing, when you bypass the jealousy, when you try to go around it or cure it… I see books all the time that say “We’ll cure jealousy.”
Dr. Jessica Higgins: [laughs] Yeah.
Dr. Joli Hamilton: Okay, great. It’s an archetypal force. We’ve never found a cure for that. And when I say archetypal force, I mean – we have entire mythologies based on jealousy. We wouldn’t have those [unintelligible 00:39:07.12] in every culture, we wouldn’t have —
Dr. Jessica Higgins: Because it’s a collective experience. It’s something we all experience and resonate.
Dr. Joli Hamilton: Exactly. So it wouldn’t be there if it was something that we could just cure. So instead, we develop that window of tolerance, and now we actually can come to know ourselves better. So our jealousy becomes a teacher of what we need, not a measure of who our partner is.
Dr. Jessica Higgins: This is so on point with things that are talked about on this show around what emerges in relationship. My dissertation was on couplehood, but also looking at relationship as a path, and so much of what gets emerged can be a teacher for us in our development, and as we grow ourselves, we also grow our capacity to be more intimate with another… So this is amazing. I love it, love it, love it.
I also am listening for people that are like “Okay, I got your steps.” Can you give people any tools or tips around when — because when you’re talking about a party, so often it’s happening fast, and we don’t always have the luxury to slow it down, and journal, or whatever we do to build that self-inquiry… What kind of suggestions can you offer people that are maybe beginning to turn towards this, that might feel overwhelmed in a circumstance where it’s all happening really fast?
Dr. Joli Hamilton: Right. That’s a great point. We’re not in partyland right now, so when we head back to it, it’s gonna be extra hard, because we haven’t been practicing. I am a super-practical person, and I find that a practical tool goes a long way. So when I was first learning to work with my jealousy all the time, I drew an infinity symbol on the back of my hand, with a ballpoint pen, anytime we were going out. And if I was getting caught in my jealousy – remembering that I already had these conversations, so this isn’t a bypass; this is I’ve had the conversations, I know who I’m going home with, this is all fine, everything is safe… I would just do finger-tracing of the infinity symbol, so I was getting just this little tiny reminder 1) that I am infinite, that the universe is infinite, and it’s a little crossing the midline, over to my other hand, and then I would just trace it for a while, while I’m watching… And what I noticed is that that body motion allowed me the chance to slow down. Because the scene may be playing out fast, but I’m playing out even faster. I start moving a thousand miles an hour inside of myself. So returning to my body is the fastest way for me to slow down. That’s a [unintelligible 00:41:44.05]
Dr. Jessica Higgins: Right, right, right. And it’s using the body, and the real somatic soothing, again, to perhaps give a little bit more space, so that it’s not just so reactional. And we’re even suspending some judgments around like “I don’t maybe have enough information, as much as my mind wants to make up a story here. I need to check this out, or I need more information” and “Can I just hold a little?”
Dr. Joli Hamilton: Yeah. So the other thing that I have done for people is help them come up with a mantra that helps them. And even just the concept, just having a phrase that you’re gonna say… A lot of times, people will name their jealousy monster for me; they’ll give that bugger a name and say “Okay, see you. Steve, you’re in the room. I see you, but we’re not gonna play right now.”
They’ll just have a little inner dialogue for a few seconds, like “Yup, I see you, you’re here, but we don’t have to play right now. We can just actually turn back t doing something else.” And it is a practice. That is active practicing of allowing the universe to be what it is. To actually be with this situation as it is. You don’t have all the information, you don’t know what’s happening. And interrupting that conversation… So the impulse is to beeline straight to your person and interrupt. Interrupting that conversation doesn’t actually get you the information you want. The information you might want is going to be in the conversation you have later. I would hope that that conversation would be held in a really structured way, where you develop a process… But even if it’s not, even if that conversation is gonna be a fight in the car, on the way home, it’s the after that’s going to give you the information. It’s not during; you’re gonna walk over, and now you’re part of the system, interacting with it, and you’re bringing the jealousy. Even if there was nothing going on over there, now you’ve brought the jealousy right into the whole thing. Now what happens? Now you have involved yourself and you can’t separate yourself out later… And you won’t actually be able to get an answer from your partner about what was going on really…
Dr. Jessica Higgins: Right. Or get your need met around reassurance, or attunement, or any type of support.
Dr. Joli Hamilton: Exactly. Yeah, because that’s when we wanna — afterwards we wanna have that session with our partner where we say what happened for us, we listen to what happened for them, we attune to what’s happening together, and then we come up with any sort of ritual or habit that we can pull off together to bring us back into relationship.
Dr. Jessica Higgins: That supports both people.
Dr. Joli Hamilton: Yes, exactly. That supports both of us. Because the person – there is actually no more pain, the hardest stories to hear in my research were the stories of the person who was jealous of the third person. That’s an incredibly painful place, because often they’re not actually attempting to do anything. They’re in this in-between; the imaginal realm that’s been created around them – it dehumanizes them.
So sometimes there’s a real active volitional interruption planned, but a lot of time there’s an imaginal interruption.
Dr. Jessica Higgins: I would say probably more often than not, that it’s intentionally–
Dr. Joli Hamilton: Yeah. And especially when we’re talking about “Well, what does it mean?” I mean, we have not said the c-word, we have not said cheating. When we’re talking about whether cheating is happening – that’s typically not gonna be the person you see across the room. That’s gonna be somebody hidden away, somebody you never see, somebody you have no idea about.
So it’s the imagination that we build up around a person, and then we forget that in fact they’re a person… And while we may not have a relationship with them, we do have their humanity to contend with. I don’t like to practice dehumanizing. And I don’t think your listeners do, either. I’m certain of it. They’re not spending all this time thinking about relationships and wanting to dehumanize. So if we can just return ourselves to the reality that is we’re people, and they’re on their path, too… And they may have no idea what they just wandered into; they’ve never met your jealousy monster… [laughter]
Dr. Jessica Higgins: Right, yes…
Dr. Joli Hamilton: They might have no idea. And if we’re really going to have a relationship – because I am so on board with you… I love the word soteriological for relationships. You get on the path together; this is your alchemical container. We are going on the journey together. Whatever shows up in the relationship is how we learn about ourselves. If that’s what we’re doing, then we can’t really be worried about others from the outside; we have to worry about who we are, how we’re showing up for our partner, and dealing with that, rather than projecting on to that third…
Dr. Jessica Higgins: Yeah, [unintelligible 00:46:34.17] gets activated. I think there was a time — yeah, I’ve talked about when I was crushing on a yoga instructor… This was years ago, when my husband and I lived in Boulder… And I have the commitment to talk to him and do [unintelligible 00:46:48.02] out of the two of us, I’m the more jealous one… But it was really sweet to just talk to him and feel that named… But so often my belief is it’s not even about that other person. For me, this yoga instructor was super-charismatic, and energetic, and at the time my husband was a little more sullen, and not as energetic, and I just was craving more of that engagement… So it was really a teachable, notable thing for me to recognize that longing, and just that human — you know, we’re gonna be attracted, that’s just a fact; so for different reasons, whether or not it’s physicality, or personality… And to be able to work with that, it sounds like so much of what you’re saying. It’s really not about the other person, it’s more of —
Dr. Joli Hamilton: Limerence. Falling in love. It’s largely projection. We’re imagining who that person is anyways. We don’t know them yet. So our imagination of them is that they’re whatever we need, or whatever we wish we were. I mean, let’s get real, we fall in love with ourselves outside, in other people, all the time. And so bringing that to your partner–
Dr. Jessica Higgins: To be clear, it was just a light crush, it was not anything like limerence, but…
Dr. Joli Hamilton: Yeah… [laughter] Those crushes though – they are a great thing to bring to a partner, because that light crush is an acknowledgment that you are a dynamic individual, alive in the world. You did not put a wedding ring on and all of a sudden magically your physiology that got turned on by people just magically shut off. And if it did – well, what would you do then? How would you then — yeah, but it’s just not how we work.
So if you can bring that — I bet that conversation was really helpful to have a whole new thing to talk about, about what you wanted in relationship, what you wanted right then… And sometimes our partner can’t give us the thing we want. But just having it acknowledged, like “Oh, I wish you were more vivacious and charismatic and gregarious right now. Then those things in the past – I just wish you had it right now.”
Dr. Jessica Higgins: Yes.
Dr. Joli Hamilton: I’m guessing my own partner really wished I had those things while I was writing my dissertation, but instead I was all heads down, right?
Dr. Jessica Higgins: [laughs]
Dr. Joli Hamilton: [unintelligible 00:49:10.00] but yeah, I’m guessing that his attraction was to people who had those qualities, while I was like “Don’t bother me. I’m reading”, for two years straight. But bringing that to your partner and having a conversation at a time when you can be connected and calm and actually hear it… Was he able to hear it?
Dr. Jessica Higgins: Oh, yeah.
Dr. Joli Hamilton: Yeah, that’s awesome. I love that.
Dr. Jessica Higgins: Well, I realize we could probably spend so much time supporting people listening, and I also know you do so much… Is there anything you wanna say on this topic for people listening today, before we transition to how people can get in touch with you?
Dr. Joli Hamilton: Yeah. You know, the thing I would leave people with is jealousy is not only normal, but it is helpful. My premise for my work is that we don’t need to cure jealousy, we just need to learn what it is and what to do when we feel jealous. If we tried to teach our children never to feel jealous, then we’re going to wind up with problems… And I think most of us recognize that. Inside of us, we have a little child to teach, too.
So if you’re feeling jealous right now, or if you’re feeling like your jealousy is off the charts and you could never come into a different relationship with it, I just wanna give you the hope that some of the people I talk to who imagined that they could never face their jealousy actually have done the most — they’ve come the furthest. They’ve been able to learn that their jealously is entirely within their realm of control. So it stops existing out there and starts being something that they could actually work with. This is actually a part of you you can reclaim and totally remake. And it’s gonna take some time. It’s not gonna happen overnight, but you absolutely have the capacity to remake this in yourself.
Dr. Jessica Higgins: I love that. It’s almost as if you’re saying we don’t wanna be victim to the experience of jealousy, but we can be in a place to claim power and be empowered… And there perhaps are even gifts within jealousy that maybe we wouldn’t know…
Dr. Joli Hamilton: Absolutely. So I’ll leave you with one last thing… The gift of arousal that’s inside jealousy shouldn’t be overlooked. So if you’re a person who experiences that, on the other side you’re like “Oh, but I kind of like jealousy”, don’t be ashamed of that either. That’s a normal part of jealousy, too. There are gifts in it.
Dr. Jessica Higgins: Wonderful. Well, thank you so much. For people listening that are intrigued by what you’re sharing, or are interested in getting more of your support and your teaching, how can people get in touch with you?
Dr. Joli Hamilton: I’m easy to find, I’m jolihamilton.com. So you can find me there, and you can click through and you can connect with me. I have a book called Project Relationship, and it’s got a lot of ideas about how to work with things. You can find that on Amazon. But really, if you’re interested in connecting with me, go to my website, you can have a strategy call with me, we can talk about jealousy and see what’s up with it, and where you might start right now.
There’s even a little jealousy clarity course on that site, too. Yeah, just a little bit of a walkthrough… So yeah, I’d love to connect with you guys.
Dr. Jessica Higgins: Wonderful. I’ll make sure to put all of those links on today’s show notes. And it sounds like you’re on social media…
Dr. Joli Hamilton: I am. You can find me on Clubhouse and Instagram @drjoli_hamilton. And I’m on LinkedIn and Facebook, too. But those are easier to search for my name.
Dr. Jessica Higgins: Gotcha. Perfect. Well, it sounds like the go-to hub is your website, and just the different offerings you have there, as well as your book.
Dr. Joli Hamilton: Yeah. And if people are listening and they are terrified of jealousy, I just wanna say that that’s okay. It’s okay if you’re scared at this episode. We didn’t even know for sure we were gonna talk about jealousy, because it’s so tender… But it’s a great topic, and it works better when you stop letting it scare you off.
Dr. Jessica Higgins: Wonderful. Thank you.
Dr. Joli Hamilton: Thanks so much for having me, Jessica. I really appreciate it.
I hope you have enjoyed today’s interview, again, with Dr. Joli Hamilton. To access today’s show notes with the links mentioned, you can visit DrJessicaHinggins.com, click on Podcast there in the top navigation bar and you’ll find all of the episodes. Again, today’s episode is 267.
On the website you’ll also find links around how to engage in coaching, as well as courses. You’ll also find a link that is giving many other resources. There’s articles, there’s other interviews that I have done on other people’s podcasts, and there’s book recommendations. So there’s lots of engage with. Also, I have lots of free gifts on the website as well, so I encourage you to check that out, all at DrJessicaHiggins.com.
Until next time, I hope you take great care.
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