206 The Grief of Jealousy

Welcome to Playing With Fire, the podcast for people who are ready to custom build their love. We're talking about non-monogamy, however you design it, as an individuation opportunity. Want to leave the default and make your life spectacularly you? You're in the right place. Jolie, I see you have a stack of books behind you. I do. I had an idea. You seem to have a theme in mind. Well, I was actually, I was in my library and I was...

as I like to do, recategorize the magic shelves. I love my library so much. And I noticed how many books I have on grief. I mean, that's just the quick stack that I grabbed, like looking at a couple of shelves and there I will put the list. I'll put the list in the show notes because I know people love.

They love my book lists. They're also all, if you want my reading list, you can go and get it. There's a dropdown. If you go to joliehamilton.com on the resources section, I have a free reading list. for all sorts of categories, sexuality, non-monogamy, but also individuation, depth psychology. It's there if you're my book people.

Where are my bibliophiles? You're so kind to them. But also grief. It made me think. So we had planned to do another episode on jealousy. My personal area of hyper-focus and academic interest. And I wanted to talk about how grief and jealousy interact. Because it's no small thing. I mean, grief comes up in a lot of different flavors from a lot of different directions. Right. So jealousy. What do you think the relation is there? What do we got?

Well, for people who've watched my TEDx or have heard me talk about jealousy before, they'll be familiar with me describing that jealousy is a complex emotion that comes with a lot of other emotions around it, right? So we can have grief that's, I mean. a part of jealousy, right? Just like we could have jealousy that has anger or sadness, shame, envy, all mixed in. Grief can also come up.

Grief's an interesting thing though, because there are, like we could talk about the flavors of grief, right? Grief, the word is often used as a way to describe loss and we tend to focus on death. as the loss, at least in this current culture. But there are other types of grief. In fact, a couple of the books behind me talk about specifically ambiguous loss and ambiguous grief.

And I think that's a fantastic way to think about how jealousy and grief intermix when we are shifting our relationship style or when we're experimenting with making. new changes in our relationship that are going to fundamentally change the ground that we're standing on. Yeah. Can you describe what ambiguous grief means? Yeah. So if you think about ambiguous loss being, well, if...

Let's take a really straightforward scenario. If a soldier is overseas and he's killed in action, then what happens? Do we have a body? Do we know for sure they're killed in action? Sometimes we don't. Sometimes they're missing in action. What happens then? This is a super straightforward example.

So it's loss. You don't know for sure whether it's a loss yet? Yeah, but exactly. Except also you do because there they are just not coming home. Okay. There are so many ways. That's an extreme example. But we could also talk about the loss that comes when you lose someone because they're lost. They are in an addiction and you can't get them or they go missing. They just go missing.

A person who is no longer able to treat you with human decency and respect, so someone you distance yourself from because you can't interact with them safely. But that doesn't stop you from grieving them. I think about many people in my life who I can't interact with the way I would like to. Some of them I still have a relationship with, but there's a... Another layer of ambiguity where I do see them, I do know them, but I don't get to have closeness with them because they don't like my life.

I can't, we can't seem to find common ground. So, so one of the ways can be like loss in place. Yeah. Still there, but that's another way. Okay. And this is actually where I think.

non-monogamy in particular. So as we shift away from a closed dyadic couple and that couplehood, as we shift into really embracing multiplicity, And recognizing that our partner's attention and interest, some of their desire, their energy, their curiosity is going to be pointed somewhere else. This to me really intersects jealousy and grief because if jealousy is when I feel a threat to a valued relationship because of another, a third person, well…

there is a level of threat that comes up when a person, when now my partner is turning attention away, especially if I've not practiced at that. I haven't felt what it is. So I used to have all of your attention and now I have. some of your attention. I used to receive all of your curiosity. I had all of your time. I had all of those resources pointed at me. And now some of them are pointed somewhere else. So I could feel a threat.

And in that threat, right? So there would be the jealousy. In that threat is also all of this grief over what I used to have, or at least what I imagined I had, and also the grief of... So there's so many amazing things that you get out of non-monogamy. I love it.

You get expansivity. You get exposed to new people, new things. You start talking about your relationship in new ways. Often there's a renaissance in a current relationship where now you see each other in a new light. We're bringing new things to each other. And it also brings with it a changed future. So there's the grief of...

I can't have the future that was, I can't have this relationship house as it existed. Now it's different and it will be different. And even if we all put it back tomorrow into somehow something resembling the past, it would. always have this so yeah okay so talk about ambiguous grief yeah ambiguous you so you could start a relationship with someone else other than me And I could watch how your attention shifts away from me.

You know, sometimes I spend less time with your attention and, you know, I could make a whole list of things that matter to me in the relationship and I can watch them change. One of the ways that that feels like ambiguous loss and attendant ambiguous grief is I don't actually know what it means yet. I know it's changing, but I don't actually get it. It's changing. And that. grieves me. Yeah. It could end up being better in multiple ways, but I don't know yet. So. And there's the thing. I don't.

Grief isn't just one thing. It's a human experience. And it's not something that we move through in some sort of linear fashion. It's something that we experience. Our experience of it is going to be... colored by so many factors in our outer world and so much of our history and also our understanding of what's happening. I see so many people who are deeply, deeply grieving.

but they think they're mad or they think that they just don't like this or they're feeling like intense depression, but they don't name grief. They don't name, they're not looking at like. oh, I'm experiencing a loss both of maybe things that I had, ways that my life was, but also of an imagined future. We've talked about the need for specific, explicit mourning when that's happening, but we didn't really get into how that and jealousy intermix. And I see people...

So jealousy at that point can also, it's protective in that jealousy can feel like, oh, now I have this rising up of hostility and, oh, a threat? Well, a threat is something that's less ambiguous. I'm a threat. Okay. Well, now if jealousy is here, well, I could point all of this feeling, all this stuff, all this stuff I don't even know how to name. I know a place I could pin it. I could pin it on.

My metamor. Absolutely. I could also pin it on my partner and all my big feelings about how we even got here. Maybe they were the one who initiated opening, so I could be mad about that. Or maybe I initiated it. but they're having this particular success. I could be frustrated about that. I could also just place the jealousy, the grief, all these big feelings that I may not even be able to tease apart on non-monogamy.

And just be like super pissed about all of it or super depressed. All of these things can be, they can get all twisted up. And jealousy is already complex enough that when.

When jealousy is present, we already have to look at, like, what's the flavor of it? What's happening in there? And often it's also a moving target. Some moments you're super angry. Some moments you're really, really sad. Some moments you're deeply ashamed because you also want this and also you consented or maybe you didn't consent. So now you're back to mad.

Well, it doesn't even matter whether I consented because I don't like what's happening. So now I'm back to grief and well, maybe it could be good. Now there's some hope. And now I'm like, okay, maybe this could be good. And then I cycle right back to grief because I'm like, yeah, but hope for what? I don't know what's going to happen. Right.

And you're describing the things that happen in our, in our imaginations and the way we can experience that roller coaster that way. And another, and then there's all the external. things that actually happen that we make meaning out of and um again you can you could go through the exact same you know flow that you just laid out you can go from you know shame to anger to sadness to all the different flavors of jealousy um and based on

what's happening around you, not just your imagination of the future. Um, and there are, there are all kinds of things. Some of them, some of them very specific to you as an individual. Like there's a culture, you know, filled with stories of where jealousy comes from. And it's, you know, everybody knows sex outside your marriage, outside your primary relationship as a monogamous person there, that's jealousy.

Now you can dive in and do all the things that we get to do when we're jealous, except that's not a great idea. But then there's all the things that are specific to a person. Like, you know, if you laugh at somebody else's jokes really hard, it might inspire jealousy. There's nothing that inspires a fear response kind of jealousy. Not the fun kind for me because I have fun jealousy. Nothing will inspire a fear response jealousy for me more than you finding another person really funny.

Like that being, being a person that you find witty and funny is, yep. That's right up there. Intelligence is another one. Absolutely. I would, I can. All day long. You point all of your want and desire and physical, like you see somebody physically attractive, all your sexual desire. That hits me with a jealousy that feels like, oh yeah, yeah, I'm there. It doesn't bring up grief.

But the stuff that touches other certain parts of how I might feel like I could be replaced. So now Envy enters the chat.

Because if I start comparing myself to my metamor through your eyes and seeing like, oh, what if they see them as better than? What if this is actually a competition? I'm not as funny as them. I am not as witty. Or what if it's even something measurable? What if I don't have as much business success or financial success or as many degrees or whatever?

Now that envy has entered, now I'm caught in a cycle of, okay, I'm experiencing loss. What's the loss of? Wait, maybe this isn't even about my partner. Maybe it's about a loss of my sense of. self-worth. Am I good? I'm feeling like I just downgraded myself. That by itself, I find triggers a grief response in me. What's happening here? I lost my image of myself as having a sort of a place in your imagination.

And now I'm comparing myself. It's really tricky. I hope this is making sense to others. When I'm teasing this apart, I always notice how the emotions... On paper, sounds so clearly delineated, but in my experience, they're all woven together into one picture, and often that picture is pretty gnarly. So you described a different...

jealousy tinged with different emotions. It's complex. There could be multiple in there, but it tends to be tinged toward one or another. At least in a given moment. In a given moment. Yeah. So I think what I just heard you describe is the particulars of an experience are likely to... lean you as an individual unique person in a particular direction. Because I was thinking, okay, so what gets, what would cause jealousy to be grief tinged for someone?

Yeah. And you just described something that would do that for you, which is. For me personally. Yeah. And it might not touch somebody else. It wouldn't, but it, but it's the thing that's related to loss. Yeah. Since grief is related to, is. Of a loss. Yep. Even if that loss is not something you can really pin down. Yeah. It's also the grief that comes up when we think about.

you know, anticipatory grief. Sometimes the ambiguity is in, I don't even know whether I'm losing this thing. So let's move back to talking about something we could. measure, right? The time someone spends with me. So I know, I happen to know that you just reopened all your dating profiles.

I had a moment this morning of realizing, oh, immediately I get an introduction of something that, is it jealousy? Well, there's no person. I mean, you've had them open for like two days. There's not a person there. There is an imagined person. There's like a space. I call that the perceived interrupter. There's this space that someone could fill, right? So talking about ambiguity. Oh my goodness.

There's a space someone could fill that could theoretically interrupt the amount of time that I get to spend with you. Or just the fact that you're on the dating app could also just interrupt the time. But still, there's this sense of like, yeah, and it's about an other. And that's what makes jealousy. This is what makes it different from envy. Jealousy is about this other that you sense is interrupting your relationship. And in that comes the grief of, oh.

I am anticipating a loss of your time. I'm just going to make it the most measurable thing I can think of. You have a finite life and a finite number of minutes in every day to spend, whether that attention and time is spent like. going out and visiting someone or texting them or creating a gift for them or planning a date for them, that time, right? When I all of a sudden move into the anticipation of

a loss. Now I'm in a real hazy area of, well, do I get to claim this as grief? I haven't lost anything yet. What am I, what am I exactly, am I saying I am Am I losing this? And also, it wasn't mine to begin with. Your time is yours. So wait, so now my good poly person comes out. My good poly person is like, no, no, no, no, no. It's his time. It was never mine to begin with. But we all walk around with expectation and a certain set of habits that have happened, right?

It's New England. Neither of us tends to date very much in January and February. The weather alone makes it such a buzzkill to date. I get a little complacent and I have a set of expectations. So now I have a wave of what I recognize as grief. That's anticipatory grief. It's, it's not even grief yet. But I feel the grief forming a tidal wave that could crash upon me if you fill that role with a particular person and your time and attention are spent somewhere else with someone else.

And what do I do with grief that doesn't even, it's not even like you literally haven't turned your time or attention away from me. Right. So if you've actually lost something. You can actively grieve it. There are things that you can specifically do. And other people can validate that. And other people can validate you. And you can validate it to yourself. But when it's all an imagined loss.

In the future. An anticipated loss even. Like there's imagined like, oh, I imagine it could happen. And there's like, oh, I see that the steps are happening that are kind of putting it in place. probably going to happen. And now my predictability, my hypervigilance is going off and I'm like, okay, I need to move into anticipation because in order to make this feel okay for me, I also need to start, I need to make space for that.

okay, right? I need to remind myself of my values and get myself into that space of, yeah, this is going to be okay. My partner has these other interests and that's fine. But I haven't actually experienced the thing that I am. I am thinking I'm going to grieve. I'm feeling I'm going to grieve. I have this anticipation of it. I even, I'm even 100% sure that I can predict it, but it hasn't happened. So also I'm in this zone of

Well, should I grieve it or should I just enjoy the moment? And many people listening are probably like, Julie, what are you even talking? Just freaking enjoy what you've got. It's fine. Nothing's happened yet. And the other half of the people are like, yeah, that's the worst. fucking time that is the worst i hate that you have in in another episode um admitted to your one of your not admitted but um described that one of your

roots of safety is predictability. Yeah. And this would be an upset to the predictability and therefore it's something that you would have to deal with. I have a question about grief that's coming up as from all the things you're saying. It sounds like, please correct me if I'm wrong, because I can't figure out how to say this as a question. It sounds like grief is for something that we have committed to having lost.

And I know that's a very simple statement, but I'm thinking if you're grieving something that you're expecting to happen in the future versus. Could like think could happen.

Right. Would we grieve something where we're like, oh, maybe, maybe not versus I expect it to. Well, sure. Let's talk about the difference between grieving and mourning. Okay, let's do that. The difference between the grief, the emotion of I'm feeling this emotion, which is a set of sensations and a set of stories I tell myself about what this loss is and could be.

And then the morning, the actions that I can take, morning, M-O-U-R-N-I-N-G. Right. The actions that I could take to actively like... process and, and, um, validate for myself, like, yes, this is a loss. I'm okay. So I, a couple times I've had brushes with my mortality and when I have. When I've gone through these brushes with my mortality, there is a part, like serious ones, there's a part of me that all of a sudden sees the world so crystal clear and so wants to be here and wants to just...

participate so fully. And in that time, I have the opportunity to sort of pre-mourn my own death. I can actually actively move into I won't always get to experience an embodied reality. Okay, I see. I could just take that as an intellectual exercise or I could go out and lay in the grass and like... be here. I could feel the sun on my face. I could really be in that. Different people will do different things. When I'm thinking about a loss that

may or may not happen, some people do really well to tap into that, to touch the reality that we don't know where our partner's time and attention are ever. going to be pointed. I find it really helpful to tap into, to touch, to let myself imaginally experience. The version of you who won't always be here, right? To experience the loss of you so that I take so seriously the fact that right now I get to experience you. Now, for some people that might sound morbid.

I don't find it morbid. It makes me feel more alive and more present and actively in touch with, wow, this person, I get to experience them. We happened. To be here and find each other in this, whoa, what are the chances that we, and then we, ah. Allowing myself to feel that fully. It brings an appreciation. profoundly embodied appreciation. And so I don't think it's necessarily true that we have to lose something or know we're going to lose something.

for grieving to be useful. I see. Okay. And that's, I mean, that's me. If this does not resonate with you, you do you, but that is part of how I let my life be real. Well, isn't that interesting?

So from that point of view then, jealousy tinged with grief is an opportunity to notice things to appreciate. Absolutely. Which jealousy is always an opportunity for that. So let's go back to one of the most primary mythologies of jealousy is Hera and Zeus, Greek mythology. Sister and brother. Husband and wife. In Greek mythology, it's all good. I don't, why do they do this in mythology? Actually, there's a good reason. It's alchemical and all of that. Anyways, okay, moving on.

These two, I mean, he is forever, can't keep it in his pants. She is forever jealous as all get out, right? And the thing that Hera... never does in the original myths, right? She points all of her jealous rage at the interrupter. She points it at the interrupter. She's setting them on fire, bursting them into flames, convincing them to have Zeus show his full ethereal being, and therefore that'll burst her into flames. And she's turning them into bees. She's turning them into white bulls.

She's just always doing that. And the thing she never does is turn her attention to Zeus. Truly turn her attention and appreciation to Zeus. Now, that doesn't... Zeus is still violating the premise of Hera is actually the goddess of marriage and monogamy. Zeus is violating the very premise of their relationship. I do not mean to be insinuating that Zeus is okay and it's all Hera's fault that she's doing this.

This is their story. The story, her jealousy requires the philandering. This is their mythology. But if we look at jealousy through this lens and now take it out of. the goddess realm. Take it out of it. The goddess is perfect in her imperfectness. That's what she's supposed to be demonstrating to us. But in my life, in my real life, when jealousy comes up, I have the full awareness that there is someone I value. I have the full awareness that we are not each other's only option.

picture presented to me of just how real it is that I am lucky to get to interact with them. I may also have a problem on my hands because I may have somebody who's violating agreements. All of these things might be true at the same time. Depending on whether your agreements are being held, I think it is more or less easeful to move into gratitude.

Okay, sure. Because you hold your agreements so well, I find it so easy. Thanks. When my jealousy comes up to remind myself that my job is to express to you. how, how wonderful I find our us to be. Um, and, and to then do all the work that I need to do to work with the anger and shame and envy and all the stuff that's coming up too. But the, the.

jealousy that comes with the grief, I get to do two things. I get to do actual mourning, mourning of, yeah, the very real things that I may experience as a loss, loss of attention, loss of time, loss of resources, loss of. loss of my illusion of being like the one and only everything for you, whatever, all of that. And at the exact same time, I get to fully express.

the wonder that I hold you in. And then all those little moments, all the amazing things. On the days that you're not here to make me breakfast, I get to recognize that The vast majority of my days, you are here and make me breakfast. That's not a bad thing. So I can grieve it and at the same time. Yeah, moving gratitude around what it demonstrates unerringly that I have. I...

This is why I judge that you have found jealousy so fascinating. It's an intense, complex emotion that can be used. To improve. Yeah. The very relationship that it's apparently seeing threatened. Yeah, we get... collectively, we've been presented a very, very simplistic image of jealousy. Um, we have not been taught what to do with it. And even most people who speak on jealousy talk about, so how do we not like, okay, so what, what do I do to not? And that's not my jam. I'm actually.

I think of jealousy as a companion. I think of jealousy as a part of my life that I would be less myself. If it were to just be gone, if I could take a pill and cure jealousy, I would not take it. It is excruciating. I find jealousy to be excruciating. I am still struck by jealousy regularly and it is. so hard for me. It is not easy for me. I cry, I wail, I rage. I have all the big things come up and I would not do away with it. It is complex.

And when I came to terms with the grief piece of it, and this happened quite a long time ago because I felt so out of control. I didn't actually get to decide what happened in my relationship. So jealousy and grief.

I mean, this is all the way back. 16 years ago when I first started consciously thinking about jealousy, instantly it was tied to grief and all the things I couldn't have or… I was losing and that I wouldn't choose not to have had in order to save myself that pain, which is very similar to the loss of a death. Yes. I am so struck by that. Like, okay, jealousy. Very, very uncomfortable for, I mean, I've never heard anybody say.

No, I like jealousy as a whole. It really lands for me. I search for it. Yes, I mean, you in particular like to play with it, like to use it. it's generally considered pretty intense. And so, but that's, that is such a would, that's such a good statement for me. Would I remove the relationship if it would remove the jealousy?

And I find that an easy question to answer for the relationships that I'm in. And the thing is, maybe there are relationships that you're like, yeah, you know what? This isn't worth it. And that's not where I am. But it might be. But there's the question that it brings up. And if it isn't worth setting down the relationship, then, well, then what can I do with the jealousy? Right, right.

If it's sad jealousy, I can look for what are the things in the relationship that make me happy that I'm afraid to lose. You know? Yeah. It's a way of bringing attention. You can reframe. You can reframe. But also you... Which won't stop the feeling necessarily of jealousy itself. Although the threat response also, I mean, we have a ton of other episodes on jealousy. You can go to the playlist on YouTube and see all the jealousy episodes.

Or go to the website and find the Jealousy Resource Center where we list my academic research on jealousy as well as the other jealousy episodes. As well as I've done over a hundred and... 50 guest episodes on other people's podcasts, jealousy information is out there. But honestly, I think we go deepest on it here because we keep coming back and pulling back new layers. And this is where jealousy isn't.

When I say jealousy is a complex emotion, I'm talking about it like having these multiple parts and all of that. From a Jungian perspective, we could also talk about jealousy as a complex. Jealousy as a complex is a way that energy moves through your psyche. There's so much there. We'll unpack that in another episode. But when I am weighing the benefits… of bearing my jealousy. I do. I absolutely do some cost-benefit analysis in there around wealth.

Sometimes I'm relating with someone who doesn't treat me very well, someone who provokes jealousy intentionally, someone who's not willing to be in... agreements with me, someone who is, or to someone who really doesn't have a lot to offer me. And in those cases, yeah, I don't stick around for the jealousy. But the jealousy itself is also, it's never been a reason why I would end a relationship. And yet it has helped me recognize when...

this relationship is not worth it to me, like you said. And I think it's hasty to make that decision before you've looked right at the grief piece, right? Because the grief can convince us. To just cut and run. It's just like, just get me out of here because most of us have not been taught how to actively mourn loss and what to do when we're experiencing that. And if you don't know how to.

to grieve deeply, clear, conscious loss like death and those kinds of losses that are very straight. You can point to them. You know it's a loss and you know it's final.

then of course we don't know how to grieve these much more ambiguous losses. So it's normal. If you're struggling with this, that's totally normal. This is why I always say the cultural conversation of jealousy deserves to be so much richer. Well, let me tell you how... How happy I am and honored that you will have these conversations with me. I mean, I love thinking about it. I love working my way through the ideas around jealousy. And my conversation is with you, who has...

spent literally years thinking about jealousy. And so sometimes I'm thinking, this must sound kind of primitive to you. No, because it's your lived experience. Well, that's sort of, yeah. And that's what I do. I know that's what I'm bringing. Stories of jealousy. Yeah. I mean, that's my job. That's my job. I'm a qualitative researcher of jealousy.

I am in it. I'm not here to count the beans of how many people are jealous. I am here for the nuanced story of what jealousy is for each of us. I really appreciate this conversation about grief and jealousy. I learned some stuff here. Thank you. We talk to you all the time. It is absolutely imperative to me that we get to hear from you as well. Yes, please. So we'd love to invite you to join us. Join Ken and I. We're holding monthly Ask Me. You can show up.

Bring your questions from podcast episodes, from your relationships. Bring questions about non-monogamy, about individuation, about relationship skills. We would love to share space with you. We're hosting these AMAs. free of charge for our podcast listeners. You are the Playing With Fire community and it matters a ton to us that we connect with you directly. Oh, I would so love to hear your questions and oh, it'd be so awesome. Yeah.

Go to JolieHamilton.com forward slash AMA and you'll find a way to sign up real quickie quick and get an invitation to join us in a small group where we're going to get together and talk about all things non-monogamy, individuation, and relationships. you