Hey Jealousy

“Jealousy is a tiger that tears not only its prey but also its own raging heart” (unknown)

Jealousy is a funny thing. Some of us suffer from it more than others. Some of us experience it without justification. Some people probably like the power they get when they make someone else jealous. But I don’t think any of us enjoy feeling jealous. Let’s try to get to the root of it.

First of all, it turns out that describing jealousy is a easier said than done. It seems to have something to do with envy, but when we said things like “she can be a really jealous person” we, surely, we don’t just mean that she can be a really envious person. Envy and jealousy, while related, aren't the same thing. For them to be the same I think you'd have to be able give an affirmative answer to both: (1) is it the case that, when she sees some hoe flirting with her boyfriend across the bar and she become engulfed in rage, she’s simply envious for the flirtatious girl? And, (2) is she’s, when she tries to call her boyfriend and he doesn’t answer she becomes engulfed in rage, just envious of those she assumes he’s off having fun with? Some might think “yes” to these questions, but I’m hesitant.

In the bar example, we aren’t accurately describing the situation when we say that she wants to be in the position of the flirtatious girl (that’s what it means to be envious); instead she is provoked into feeling jealous by the situation – she doesn’t want anyone else to play with her toy; she’s possessive of her boyfriend – the situation triggers a different reaction in her than one of envy. The same is true for call example: his failure to answer her call triggers her feelings of emotional reaction. Here the trigger is speculation of what he might be doing; speculation fueled by an absence of trust. Envy doesn't enter in at all.

So, while there’s definitely a close link between jealousy and envy, they aren’t the same thing. And they have certainly different triggers; I don't think an absence of trust can trigger envy in someone. I Also don’t even think jealousy is a particular kind of envy reserved for “romantic” relationships. While a jealous person might be triggered to feel envious of the fun or attention she speculates people are having with her object of desire, she also experiences a possessive feeling towards that object of her desire (e.g. her boyfriend or, lacking that, her crush). So jealousy can occur simultaneously with other emotions.

Is jealousy a good thing? I’m gonna say no. As I’ve already mentioned, there are a number of different triggers for one’s jealous feelings. A key one, that I mentioned, was baseless speculation fueled by the absence of trust. An absence of sufficient trust is a hugely bad thing. While the absence of trust is only going to play in when some is jealous of his or her romantic partner (rather than someone she wants to be her romantic partner), it’s in such situations that a lack of trust will be most damaging. Because of this, jealously is gonna be a bad this. But, in when there's complete trust between a couple of lovers, one of them can still get jealous. (Some might challenge me on that claim.) And here jealousy can still have detrimental consequences: in additional to be potentially damaging to a relationship (or a roadblock to the development of a relationship, since trust is earned not granted), jealousy is also a bad thing for those who experience it. Jealousy isn’t a pleasant experience. And it typically makes you do bad or irrational things. I think this is intuitively obvious -- I can't think of any reasonable person defending jealous as a virtuous emotion.

So I guess, then, the question de jour is whether or not we should tolerate romantic partners who suffer from jealousy. A knee jerk answer might be "Of course! Why not, fool? It's not really their fault." But hold on a sec. We just finished saying that it's a bad thing; it can be descrtuctive; it can cause suffering and hurt feelings. So, then, my answer is no -- you’re a sucker if you stick with an exceedingly jealous partner. But I’ll soften my position a bit with the following caveat: if you want go ahead and tolerate a partner who sometimes suffers from moderate jealousy; someone who can manage her jealously. But don’t settle for someone excessively jealous, or someone unable (or unwilling) to mange her jealousy. Here’s why I take this position: it not really pleasant to be with someone who’s really jealous and, if they really cared about you, they’d work their hardest to keep themselves from expressing their jealousy – they’d suffer solely internally such that you aren’t worse off because of their condition. Some one that dedicated to your happiness is someone worth keeping around. I could say more, but I think that’s enough for now. This is just my spur-of-the-moment thoughts on the subject. I could be wrong. After all, what do I know.

A “Relations” 3-part Series - Part 3: The Effects of Love

“One is very crazy when in love.” (Sigmund Freud)

As I mentioned in my first post in this series, the first time a girl said she loved me was in the 5th grade. Since then a few other chicks have expressed their love to me; sometimes I was romantically involved with the girl, while others were just friends who had (up until when they uttered those three lil’ words) kept their feelings secret. With the exception of the 5th grade incident all of the other girls that have said it, meant it. What I’ve noticed is that love makes people do and say things they otherwise wouldn’t. But this post isn't a catalogue of my experiences, rather I'm going to talk about how being in love regulates your behavior; what sorts of things it makes you do.

So what I won’t do here is provide an account of what love is. Love's a tricky thing to define. Soo many people have already tried to tackle that topic and, without having read much of it, my contributions wouldn’t be particularly insightful. But even though my aim is to describe what love will make you do, it'll be worthwhile to at least make a few broad and sweeping statements about what it means to be in love with someone. First of all, let's focus on love between people in romantic relationships (by that I mean sexually active ones, or at the least ones that used to be sexually active… surely your grandparents are in love in the relevant way despite the fact that they don’t… ya know). When you’re in love you’ve got a deep and meaningful connection with her - a bond that isn't shared with anyone else - which is manifested in the feelings. It might be describable as feeling completely content with the person as she (or he) is. While you might prefer her behave or act differently, you’d be just as happy if those changes never happened. Moreover, the way you feel towards her is such that, were you never romantically associated with anyone else, you'd be happy (so long as you have the one you love). While there are undoubtedly other conditions or properties to being in love, at the very least this is an adequate description of the minimum standard. Suffice it to say that if you don’t meet this standard, you’ve either got "love-with-reservations" or maybe just a "deep admiration" for your significant other. When you get down to it, love is unqualified; to say that you love someone but don’t surpass this minimum threshold is to say that you love someone conditionally, which, ultimately, doesn’t count as love at all. I also want to reject the suggestion that love is subjective or relativistic – that everyone can have their own conception of what love is. Having said all that let's not get stuck on what we mean by love. I think, or hope, that we all more or less have a sufficiently clear intuitive understanding to move on.

Turning to the question at hand, if you're in love, how does that impact the way you act? In short, being in love regulates your behavior and your disposition towards others. So if you love someone you’ll act differently towards that person and approach the relationship with a different mindset than you might otherwise. But you’ll also relate to others differently. Let me explain. Being in love with someone will prevent you from developing a similar connection with someone else. The bond you have with your significant other is of such a privileged kind that you won't be capable of developing a similar conflicting connection with someone else. If you think you can fall in love with multiple people at the same time, then you aren't experiencing genuine love; the love you feel is incomplete; you fail to meet the minimum standard I described above. Love will also keep you from acting poorly towards the one you love (or, to put that differently, it'll make you try to be the best partner you can be). What this means is that love will make you want to, as much as is possible, keep from infringing on the happiness of your loved one (or, to put that differently, it’ll make you strive to be an enabler of her happiness). Ultimately, you’ll want your significant other to do that which will make her happiest and you won't let your feelings get in the way. So, for instance, if you're a jealous person, as much as you possibly can, you'll control that and let her associate with who she wants. After all, trust is a prerequisite for love. This also means that you'll be willing to let a loved one go, if it's in her best interest. By that I mean, if you genuinely love someone, you'd be willing to end the relationship if you know you’ll only hold her back; you’d be willing to sacrifice your own happiness for hers.

When you boil it down, what I’ve said here is that being in love will make you selfless. As I’ve said in a previous post (see: “On Being Jaded”) people are inherently selfish and self-interested. The caveat that I now add to that claim is that you’ll act selflessly towards a person you genuinely love. Because such behavior is atypical to how people normally are it might make you seem just a little crazy. I could say more, but I think that’s enough for now. This is just my spur-of-the-moment thoughts on the subject. I could be wrong. After all, what do I know.

NB: An interesting follow-up question (that I won’t blog about) is: Why does love make you act the way you do when in love? Off hand an appropriate answer would seem to need to be predicated on what I’ve said here coupled with a robust account of love is and its properties are.

A “Relations” 3-part Series - Part 2: Differentiating Friends and Lovers

“The only difference between friends and lovers is about four minutes.” (Scott Roeben)

This post was originally going to just be about intimate interpersonal affiliations - everything from one-night stand, to flings, to friends-with-benefits, to short-term relationships, to long-term partnerships, and everything between - but I've since come to think that that wouldn't be interesting enough and miss an important other way that people connect: friendship. So what I've decided do is distinguish between friends and lovers and point out that the difference between the two kinds of relations isn't as substantial as, I think, most of us think it is.

So what are we talking about; what does it mean to be friends with someone? It means that you enjoy, and want to, spend time with that person; you want to have shared experiences. You find him or her interesting, fun, trustworthy, or whatever criteria you use to choose your friends. This is slightly different from being friendly with someone; to be friendly with someone is to have him or her as an acquaintance. An acquaintance is someone you get along with well enough, but you aren’t sufficiently motivated to become full-blown friends with. This could be for any number of reasons – you don’t have the time or interest in developing another friendship, you just aren’t motivated enough by his or her personality, you aren’t on the same emotional/intellectual/cultural level, or whatever. True friends are those who you want to keep in touch with; people you are proactive about getting to know better. Friendships take time to grow; you don’t just go from being strangers with someone to being good friends. Friendships need to be fostered and maintained, or they’ll die. As you become better friends with someone you’ll get to know him or her better; there’ll be greater trust along with a deeper and more meaningful bond (those developments are reciprocal).

And what about lovers; what does it mean when you have (or want) an intimate interpersonal affiliation with someone? Clearly one of the requirements for this is physical attraction or, at the very least, the absence of repulsion. After all, if you're desperate for affection, or physical intimacy, you might settle for someone that you ain't really attracted to (but who still meets a minimum threshold of acceptability; the individual has to be able to turn you on). This is what’s needed to get an intimate affiliation started but, for it to last, chemistry is necessary. What I mean is that, were you to become involved with someone with whom there's a mutual attraction, it can still die if at least one party isn't satisfied. This isn't so much one person’s fault, I would say, but an incompatibility; that is, a lack of chemistry (call it a disparity between expectations, desires, needs, or whatever). Some kinds of affiliations require more than this attraction and chemistry. Let’s call the ones that don’t require anything else type-A relationships (e.g. one-night stands, flings, booty calls) and the ones that require more type-B (e.g. short-term relationships, long-term partnerships). The minimum additional thing for type-B relationships would seem to be a tolerance of the person's personality. But, ideally, you'd want a more substantial form of companionship.

Restricting our focus to only friends and type-B relationships, did you notice the difference between the two? The presences or absence of sexual intimacy. Lovers are simply friends-plus-sexuality. As noted friendship comes in degrees; but as does the emotional bond you have with your lover. The greater the friendship, the greater the bond. The same is true for lovers. More often than not, though, the bond you have with your lover is deeper (or of a special kind) than that with your friends. But, at its core, the kind of bond you have with a lover is of the same sort that you have with a friend. It's just because you tend to spend more time with a lover, and the way you spend that time is of a more intimate sort, that you develop a slightly different connection; but, fundamentally, the connection you have with a friend and a lover is the same. If you want to give that variant kind of connection you might develop with a lover but not a friend a name, it’d be love. But let's hold off on that until next time. So, in review, friendships are relationships without physical intimacy; type-A affiliations are sexually intimate relationships with people who aren't your friends; type-B affiliations are friendships with a romantic inclination.

You might think that I’m reducing all romantic affiliations to friends-with-benefits here, but that’s not really the case. I do think all romantic affiliations are friends-with-benefits, but I’m using “friends-with-benefits” in a more literal sense than how it’s colloquially used. I’ll clarify the colloquial sense of friends-with-benefits. But before I do that, it’s worth noting that the colloquial sense is a hard kind of relationship to describe; is it type-A or –B? I’d say it straddles the two types. The colloquial sense of friends-with-benefits is friends you’re intimate with but the connection you have is of a reserved sort. You aren’t committed to the development of that friendship beyond its current state. More often than not, the kind of person you’ll have as a friend-with-benefits is an acquaintance. The colloquial sense of friends-with-benefits refers to relationships where you want something more than a type-A affiliation, but not a type-B. Typically, when you start a type-A affiliation you don’t know the person (or at least not very well). When you start a friends-with-benefits relationship, in the colloquial sense, you do know the person beforehand. I could say more, but I think that’s enough for now. This is just my spur-of-the-moment thoughts on the subject. I could be wrong. After all, what do I know.

A “Relations” 3-part Series - Part 1: On Women

Prefatory note: I’ve decided to do a series of posts that share a theme; this one and the next two. I was a little reluctant to do this, partly because I’m concern that I’ll be misinterpreted (in what I say or even about why I’m saying it). But I think, or at least hope, that that won’t happen.

"Despite my thirty years of research into the feminine soul, I have not yet been able to answer the great question that has never been answered: What does a woman want?" (Sigmund Freud)

When I was in the 5th grade, Carla C. said she loved me. Ever since women have thrown me for a loop. I’ve tried figuring them out on my own; I’ve turned to other guys; I’ve turned to girls; I’ve even tried the media – everything from books like ‘Men are From Mars, Women are From Venus’ to shows like ‘Sex and the City’. But, despite my efforts, I’m still no closer to figuring women out or how I should to relate to them. Chicks do and say things that are sometimes just surprising; things that I wouldn’t have done were I “in her shoes”. Now I think I’m already walking a fine line here. I can already imagine some girls starting to say things like: “you can’t generalize like that! It’s not women, it’s just individual people! Oh, and don’t call us chicks!” Well, sure. Some of the most reasonable people I know are girls; not everyone’s going to fit the mold. But I think I can still justifiably make sweeping generalizations (of the kind I want to make). I’m not being sexist or misogynistic here; my intent is the farthest thing for that. What I’m not saying is that women are irrational or whatever; what I am saying is that we (i.e. men and women) are, in certain ways, unsure about each other. And so what I want to try to accomplish here is: provide an account for why there (still) exists today a disparity between men and women; why there’s heaps of literature like ‘Men are From Mars, Women are From Venus’ and why so much of comedy is grounded on the differences between us.

Having said that, I can only speculate as to how things were between men and women before feminism (e.g. romantically, socially, professionally). But I’d imagine things were less confusing; people must have been, generally, clear on what to expect. Back then there were pretty clearly defined gender roles. As far as I’m aware, before feminism, there were also generally accepted social conventions which governed most of the different ways men and women related to each other. These conventions were commonly understood and, at the time, accepted. While some of those conventions or norms were unfair or inappropriate, men and women at least knew what was what. Feminism changed everything. First-wave feminism (as in, bra burning plus equality for women) destroyed the majority of these expectations and conventions, to the benefit of women and society at large. But a lot of those gains were largely eroded by the effects of second-wave feminism (as in, consensual sex between a man and a women, where the woman wasn’t the initiator, promotes the subjection of women… oh, and so does failing to spell women ‘womyn’). And even though there has been progress since then, there largely remains a gulf between the sexes: neither men nor women are sure about what to expect from the other sex or what constitutes appropriate behavior. At the core, this is why I think men and women often struggle to understand and effectively related to one another.

So our current environment is one which lacks clear and commonly accepted (and deemed acceptable) ways for men and women to relate to each other. The olde-time values are often asserted, not exclusively by religion, while the benefits sought by our cultural changes in the late 20th century are ambiguously stressed. Yet those ideologies are constantly conflicting with each other in that which indoctrinates our thinking: the old are as they ever were (reflected in Barbie dolls and in how some colors identified as being gender specific) while the new are commercialized and bastardized (through things like Dove’s ‘Campaign for Real Beauty’). The result is that we’re left without an understanding of what are reasonable expectations and acceptable ways to behave; people are struggling to relate to everyone qua person, rather than qua man or qua woman. The problem is compounded by people who feel justified in being hyper-sensitive under the banner of political correctness. The challenge we face is where to go from here. This relational problem, I think, will persist until we figure that out. Of course not all possible solutions are worthwhile. For instance a universal socially androgynous world might sound perfect but it’s unrealistically overly ideal and, I believe, a sour apple; it looks good in principle, but would be disappointing were we to have it.

Take special note, though, that I’m not presenting or discussing what feminism is, what it sought to accomplish, or whatever. All I’m doing is pointing out one of its effects: a vacuum between the sexes; a foundation of confusion. Ultimately, what I’m saying here is that we presently lack a proper understanding of how we should act around one another. And without that men and women aren’t equipped to understand or know what to expect from each other. This current state of affairs is why, I believe, women throw me for a loop at every turn. I could say more, but I think that’s enough for now. This is just my spur-of-the-moment thoughts on the subject. I could be wrong. After all, what do I know.