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I do believe that every relationship has its vulnerabilities, and it's best that we consider examining and exploring how these vulnerabilities affect the unit of the relationship. The more 'baggage' we bring into a relationship, the more it is at risk, and therefore, it's best to work on these issues, which would allow the relationship to foster growth and maturity as it ages. Jealousy does occur in many relationships, and at times, it manifests itself in ways that permit the development of the relationship and the individual self. Partners may feel unwilling to take on new challenges because they accommodate their partner's jealousy (i.e., sharing your location with your partner). Part of the work I do at the clinic is to better understand how jealousy influences the relationship negatively and how most of the feelings of jealousy are actually manifested by anxiety.

When a person is jealous, it really isn't the root of the problem; it's more of a surface-level fear than a deep-rooted one. We often refer to their thoughts related to jealousy as a feared consequence. This means that when a person expresses jealousy (an emotion), they are likely feeling this because they believe that something terrible will happen. The bad outcome could be, 'my partner will leave me' or 'I will be left alone.' Through the use of various psychological interventions, most particularly the downward arrow technique, we can determine what the core of the fear is that is really influencing the feeling of jealousy. Sometimes, that core fear could be being alone, depressed, feeling like a failure, or feeling like a bad person. The core fear is what manifests jealous emotions.

In therapy, we work with jealousy using cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) and Exposure and Response Prevention (ERP). This helps our patient group better understand how their thinking may be influenced by cognitive distortions, but most importantly, we work on learning to accept uncertainty. Life is uncertain, and at any time, the controlling behaviours you believe are helping keep you safe are an illusion of control. In reality, your partner can leave at any time, and the bad things that you worry about happening can happen. We really don't have any control. This means we are faced with figuring out how to pick up the pieces if this does happen. The most important discussion that we have in counselling is learning how to manage the bad thing happening- your partner leaving you for someone else. Anything you imagine can happen, and part of learning to manage your anxiety, which is manifesting itself as jealousy, is to embrace the idea of it and figure out how to cope with it if it did happen. If it hasn't happened yet, then we just enjoy our life with our partners until a situation comes about (if it ever does). This also means we should stop the unhealthy behaviours that don't protect you anyway.

By Robert Roopa