As I have tried to find subjects that my opinion on needs to change, there is a technique that has been particularly fruitful. That technique is to try to identify things that I assume to be unquestionably true. Ideas that are so ingrained in my head, or that are never challenged by my experiences in the world, that I assume they are the bedrock. Often these are things that I haven't given much thought to, and are therefore poorly justified. This has yielded many topics that under minor scrutiny I have found my belief in their foundational truth to be tenuous. It is often easy to find them because they might feel taboo or gross to even question. Things that might be taken to be "just wrong" or "just right" by society at large. These are things that often change once people actually start thinking about them. Gay marriage, interracial marriage, women's suffrage, etc. were all at one time extremely taboo subjects that only became clear once people got over the cultured feeling of disgust at the thought of women as equals to men or other respective uncomfortable ideas.
This technique led me to a questioning of monogamy as a relationship style. This changing of opinion was massive and took place over long periods of time with periods of suppression of my feelings on the subject. The final change of opinion on the matter happened quite swiftly but it was preceded by years and years of slowly rotting foundation. The idea of monogamy was as a large structure propped up by myself, my religious values and my culture, with many different supports, some of which fell slowly over time, and some of which were removed quickly. Eventually enough had been removed that when my scrutiny to turned to the larger structure it was easy enough to see the trend and to change my mind about the subject as a whole. However, since this is a many faceted and complex journey, I have decided to talk about each of these subjects more or less individually, somewhat similar to the fashion that I experienced the change in myself. The first of these topics I would like to write about is one that I found caused me some of the most unnecessary pain in my thus far short life, relationship jealousy.
I used to value jealousy in a relationship. I think I am not alone in this. There is a widespread support of jealousy as a healthy element of a relationship in popular culture. Nearly every song, movie or TV depiction of relationships point to jealousy as a signal of true care. Essentially the message is, "if your partner spends time with another person, you have got to show jealousy about that time not spent on you, or you are showing that you do not care about your partner." I took it for granted that if some a person was not jealous about their partner, it was a sign that they were no longer interested in continuing that relationship. I cultured jealousy within myself levels that made my partners uncomfortable and strangled the relationship. I did it in the name of love. How could I love them if I was not jealous?
Even at the time I valued this jealousy, I noticed its negative effects. I tried to restrain myself from constant surveillance of my romantic partners' time and communications, that would be a rather overt negative effect, but there are many more subtle ways in which jealousy can hurt a relationship that we are trying to nurture. Jealousy is a symptom of insecurity, and my insecurity has caused plenty of damage to all sorts of relationships, romantic and otherwise. When I feel insecure/jealous I start doing things that sabotage my relationships. I assume that since a person could not possibly like me as much as I like them, I might as well not try. Its a sort of vicious circle where I might not invite a person to an activity because, due to my insecurity, I don't think they would want to be involved in an activity that involves me. This leads to a dampening on my relationship with that person, which in turn feeds into my insecurity, making the cycle begin again from an even more disconnected place. There are plenty of ways that jealousy in a relationship feels bad and hurts the relationship, but I tried to ignore them as much as possible. However, I am far too stubborn for the negative consequences of this belief in jealousy as a valuable asset to be enough to make me change my mind
What did help me change my mind was learning that there were people who actually did live without jealousy as a relationship ideal. Jealousy as a valuable asset in a partner is really only present in the monogamous system of relationships. Monogamy is certainly the most common relationship style in the culture that surrounds me, but learning that there were other relationship styles that did not see jealousy as conducive to good relationships opened my mind to the fact I did not need jealousy. I don't mean to say that there is only one way to practice monogamy, and that way promotes jealousy, just that the way I understood it did. I had it so ingrained in my world view that I didn't see there even was another option. It took me actively scrutinizing the idea to realize that I could work on my insecurity, and that losing the symptom of jealousy would not only not be detrimental to my relationships but actually make them better. Changing my thought patterns was no easy task of course, but having realized the possibility, it was certainly less gargantuan.
Making this change of decision actually translate into a change in my life was a process of trying to understand exactly where my discomfort lied. I found that my jealousy was very vague and when I tried to find what exactly I felt jealous about, it was hard to nail down. This emphasized to me that I my jealousy was not fundamental, but was a symptom of insecurity. This was much more fundamental, and while difficult to overcome, it removed the pressure from the relationship and onto my self improvement journey. Internalizing the problem, recognizing that insecurity stems from within and is not on anybody else to fix, has allowed me to correct for it in my thought process. Just like any other systematic error or bias, recognizing its existence makes it much less powerful. When I have a thought that stems from insecurity, I can label it as such and give it less weight according. From here it is a much simpler problem. It requires effort, and training, but it is no longer some intractable issue with no solution. It becomes a matter of building the mental habit of correcting for that bias, just like any other recognized bias, and the benefits have definitely made such efforts valuable.
I have seen the biggest change in my relationship with my wife of 6 years. My increased ability to manage my insecurity has allowed us to be far more open with each other. I no longer put the responsibility on her to police her communication with me or her actions for things that may create jealousy within me, but instead take responsibility for my own feelings. I do still occasionally feel jealousy, but acknowledging it as an error in thought, to be talked through as such, allows fixes to be implemented without judgement. Instead of "You did this thing, and it made me jealous," the discussion can be more "I have this feeling, can you help me see why I do not need to be insecure?"I no longer have to get in the way of the help I need by making there a "thing that has been done wrong" (and definitely not by me), but instead can ask for help in correcting my bias towards discounting my own value. It is incredible what more you can get when you treat a partner as a partner and not as an enemy.
Some resources I have found helpful on changing your mind, and on jealousy:
The green eyed monster, Jealousy can be a very difficult beast to tame. Most of us are not taught to be 'meta' about our feelings. Even more of us are not taught how to handle our feelings, or better yet, how to express them in constructive ways. By taking the extra breath to look into ourselves and ask "why am I feeling like this?" we can retrain our thought process and in turn challenge our partners to listen to our expression of how we're feeling. On the receiving end we in turn must listen with the intent to understand, and not listen with the intent of replying.
ReplyDeleteIt is a very difficult process to learn, given that our feelings can overwhelm us so quickly and forcefully, yet also be so subtle that we do not notice it happening. The effort has definitely been very rewarding in my experience though.
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