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I used to be very jealous, and it had absolutely nothing to do with my husband's actions, and everything to do with my deep-down assumption that I was completely unlovable. Eventually, I reasoned (or "reasoned" - it happened at such a subconscious level), he would figure out that he had made a huge mistake and leave me for someone else. I was so convinced that I was unloveable that I rejected his love in so many ways - dismissing his assurances that I'm beautiful, picking arguments over insignificant things, etc. It was only after I took a "self development" course that taught me that I had made up that I'm unloveable, when I was very very young, in response to how my parents were, and that I was clinging to that "truth" because it was comfortable and I was more interested in being right about the way I interpreted my world and my place in it than in actually having a loving relationship. When I saw it that way, everything shifted. It was no longer "The Truth" that I was unloveable. It was just some story I made up when I was 3 because my dad ignored me. And I could choose to live inside that story, or not. Now, it's still a very deeply ingrained thought pattern and it comes back all the time and I have to keep choosing to isten to it or not. But that "I'm unloveable" story was at the root of my jealousy, and the jealousy has NEVER come back. So much so that in fact we are able to maintain a polyamorous marriage with relatively little stress. I know he loves me.
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"If ten million people believe a foolish thing, it is still a foolish thing."
- Anatole France
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