When someone says: “I’m jealous because I love you”, it’s like a sudden chain snaps on – it can both connect and imprison.
Would you believe your lover if he told you he had never been attracted to another woman? Of course not. It’s a sweet thing to say, but you know it can’t be completely true.
It’s a wonderful fact of life that we can be attracted to all sorts of people in all sorts of interesting ways. The question is: why (and where) do we draw the line in a monogamous romantic relationship?
Many people are afraid they would be insanely jealous if they allowed their partner to have sex with others. Sometimes sex is not even the issue – people can be consumed by jealous rage when their partner has a mere drink away from home.
This form of jealousy seems only appeased by an exclusive and monogamous relationship, but are those relationships really empowering?
In their wonderfully honest book The Ethical Slut, two women who have been living an alternative lifestyle since the 70s say “we have been taught by our culture that when our partner has sex with another, we have lost something.”
The idea of “owning” another person can be romantic and its power seductive, but it can also do social damage. Women have fought for decades to be seen as more than male property.
Popular culture supports this idea of ownership. When “the guy gets the girl” in a story, it’s usually celebrated as an achievement. The implication is that there can be only one. If some other guy were to desire that same girl – well, then there’s a chance of losing the prize, a danger of being judged as weaker and less worthy. It works the other way round too: if another woman threatens to “steal your man” you can only “win” by keeping him faithful to you.
But what if you couldn’t lose “your man” so easily because your relationship wasn’t based on sexual exclusivity?
Parisian intellectual Catherine Millet made headlines in 2001 when she released memoirs of her wild sexual exploits. At the time, she was already connected to her current husband, photographer and novelist Jacques Henric.
Jacques was not happy about his wife’s promiscuous lifestyle, but he accepted it and she offered him the same sexual freedom. There were times when he took advantage of that fact, but far less often than she did.
In 2008, Catherine published a second book entitled Jealousy: the Other Life of Catherine M, which shared her painful obsession with the unknown women in her husband’s life and bed. This too stirred the public – there’s trouble in the land of free love!
Despite both books and the actions detailed in them, Catherine and Jacques remain married – and they both know exactly where they stand with each other.
There is no doubt that powerful emotions are involved, but the anger and pain that comes from your lover sleeping with someone else may not be jealousy. Often, it’s simple betrayal: the fact that someone you trusted lied to you and “cheated”. If that person was open about their desire for someone else, and asked you first, or perhaps even involved you – would it hurt as much?
Jealousy itself may be more related to your own self-esteem, feelings of inadequacy, fear of abandonment, or desire to save face, than to your partner’s disrespect or lack of genuine love for you.
A young Londoner recently said to me: “If a girl I know is in an open relationship, it feels like she's being disempowered. The man gets to have sex with whomever he wants and she just accepts it.”
I was stunned to find this archaic “men are players, women are sluts” paradigm within my own circle of friends. This is patriarchal oppression at its worst – taking freedom from both women and men in the name of some dominant story of how things “are”.
An unconsciously patriarchal old dame once advised me: “Darling, men aren’t strong enough to resist a beautiful woman. It’s your job to make sure beautiful women don’t have a chance to get in your way”.
To which another female friend commented: “The guy can sleep with whomever he wants as long as it’s not a beautiful woman!”
What a tangled mess these chains have become! Let your men and women free, let them sleep with anyone they want, enjoy your own body however you wish, and then don’t be surprised when your loved one chooses to come back to you at the end of the day – not because they can’t get hold of a “more beautiful” other, but because they love you!
