Jealousy in the couple: understanding and managing it

Jealousy in the couple: understanding and managing it

What function does jealousy have in our relationship? Is it inevitable or can it be combated? The point on the question.
The first feelings of jealousy are manifested in childhood, when the little child realizes that his mother is not entirely devoted to him and that he must renounce a fusional and exclusive relationship. Then during the Oedipal phase, when the girl or the boy must give up the love with the parent of the opposite sex. The arrival of a little sister or a little brother is still grounds for jealousy for the elder who must share the love of his parents.
Jealousy, a useful feeling
Now, jealousy is a feeling that is useful for the development of the child. It must be expressed and welcomed by the parents so that they can overcome it better. It is at this price that the child can develop an emotional autonomy and renounce to "possess" to "love".

Namely: the couple, unwittingly awakening our first object of love, and therefore the relationship mother-child relationship, is an ideal breeding ground to revive latent jealousy.

Jealousy in the couple
"To love is to rejoice," said Aristotle. To rejoice in the presence of one's lover, to see him live and to bloom ... A definition that seems hardly compatible with jealousy in which the desire for possession and control of the other dominates.

A lack of self-confidence
However, jealousy actually betrays an emotional dependence and a lack of self-confidence: one is constantly afraid of being abandoned by one's lover because one does not feel worthy of one's love. "I went out for a year with a comedian who was starting to become a little known, remembers Eloise, 28. I could not believe he chose me while he rubbed all day long girls sublime. .. So, I did not stop "flipping" him during our whole relationship, I was sickly jealousy, which ultimately destroyed our relationship. "

Psychoanalysis also evokes "jealousy of projection": it seizes a man or a woman who projects on his partner his own desires for infidelity.

Master your jealousy
The absence of jealousy in the couple can not therefore reflect indifference, but a mark of trust for his partner.

Nevertheless, when jealousy is moderate and punctual, it can be a way to reaffirm one's love to one's spouse and to maintain seduction. But it often becomes invasive and, sometimes, takes pathological forms (paranoid personalities ...).

To recover an emotional autonomy
In everyday life, we will try to control her jealousy when she asks to speak. What goes through a personal work to find self-esteem and emotional autonomy.

The goal? Position yourself as an equal partner with your partner and fully enjoy your love. Also ensure that your personal development is not dependent on the love that is brought to you to always "rebound" if it escapes us.