Jealousy is universal, but how you handle it matters. A non-monogamous person shares how they use honesty and self-reflection to work through it, sometimes asking for details about partners' activities to ease the feeling, other times not caring at all.
Chapters
I want to talk about jealousy. I suspect we wouldn't be human if we didn't feel jealous at one point in time or another. And I know I have a friend who has told me over the years that he's met women who always point out to him that he's being flirtatious with other women, they don't like it, and they would prefer he didn't do it. And he really gets upset about that and reassures them that that's not what's happening. And my own point of view about that is that either something really is happening and he's not being honest about it, or he's attracted to women who tend to be quite jealous. And there are people out there certainly who are very jealous. And conversely, I know people who really get off on jealousy and actually that feeling, that intense feeling, and kind of like the idea of you know, somebody that they're with flirting with other people, being attracted to other people, and feeling kind of like turned on by that. So we're all very different when it comes to jealousy. For me, it's all about honesty. I don't want to feel jealous, and I'm not monogamous, so all I ask of the people that I'm with is that they're honest with me about what they're doing with other people. Sometimes I want to know the details because it actually removes any of the intensity of emotion I might feel about that situation. Sometimes I really don't care. It just really depends on how close I am to the person that I'm with and how much I care about any of this sort of stuff. I don't think that I'm an overly jealous person, but I'm not somebody who doesn't experience it at all. And I know for myself that when I do feel it, I reflect upon what it is about that situation that's making me feel that way and how I can resolve it without necessarily attributing blame to the other person and making it all their fault. Because when I'm experiencing that emotion, I have to work out what it is for me.
