Jealous Woman

Dear Bee,

The simple answer is that it doesn't matter why you feel jealous. What matters is that you hate feeling this way; that you rightly realize that it is endangering your relationship with this young man and that you don't know what to do about it.

We don't ask for our thoughts, images, emotions, or urges. You didn't ask to have these feelings of jealousy. When they come, they come. So, you are not responsible for them. You are not faulty or stupid or inadequate for having them - they come, and that's that. Until now, your response has been to fight them, and this hasn't worked. Fighting a thought never works. To prove this, try not to think of the name of a teacher in your last year in school. This may be a person you haven't thought of in years, but now that I have mentioned it, can you keep the name out of your mind? Try it - just for one minute, don't think of this teacher's name. This will show you that the more you fight a thought, the more it is in your mind.

This is why the jealous thoughts keep torturing you and keep getting stronger: because you are fighting them, worrying about why they are there, giving them importance. They are there. Accept them, but don't believe them. Don't disbelieve them either. Simply say to yourself, "OK, here is that stupid jealousy again. So, let it be here." Just accept it, observe it, consider it to be no more than the annoying buzzing of a fly, or the TV next door talking about something that's of no interest to you - it's there, you can hear it, but you don't have to listen, or pay it any attention.

Until now, you have taken these jealous thoughts as if they were real, as if they were telling you something about the world. They are actually only thoughts in your mind. That does not make them either true or false, and you don't have to dignify them by considering if they are true or false. They just are. Instead of torturing yourself with examining the accuracy of the thoughts, you now need to do something else. Decide how a self-confident, strong, attractive young woman acts -- and then do that. Design a character for a movie. She is exactly the way you want to appear. Make the script sufficiently good that an actor can step into the role, and when you watch her play, you'll know that she is doing exactly what you intended. Then, be that actress.

Bob