by Nome De Plume

Created on: June 12, 2008   Last Updated: October 13, 2010

Short form answer is, no, it shouldn't be. And often, isn't.

As I have found that jealousy, like boredom, is a selfish emotion, and doesn't
really improve anything...

If the goal is to get some sort of reaction from the cheated upon party, there
is no guarantee that the reaction will be the desired one...

For example, when my (now EX) wife spent the day of her 40th birthday in the bed of another man... (she was sloppy about hiding it) perhaps to serve some need in herself, to break a barrier down in our relationship, being jealous served no purpose. She was "already gone" long before she had made up her mind to go outside the marriage.

The closest we came to a reconciliation was when I continued to make improvements to our lives and household. She came to believe that we could work things out. But for one thing. I needed her to admit what she had done, that's all, to come clean, (my first girlfriend had lied about taking the pill for 8 months of our 9 month relationship) if she had, I would have had the chance to forgive her... as it was, it was a pall over the relationship. Most likely not the first brick in the wall of the communication breakdown, but certainly the largest, kind of like when an elephant comes to expire in your living room, something large and looming in the relationship that everyone is too embarrassed to speak of, yet there it lies. Polluting the air and cluttering up the normal flow, the bliss filled dance, that life together was before then.

Having once transgressed, I guess it just became easier for her, she once did
come partly clean about how long she had remained faithful, and how many
men she had cheated on me with. For her, a record, both the duration of the
faithfulness and the low number of men she had cheated on me with... for you
see, I was her third husband, and she had moved in with me, while only being
separated from her second...

So yes, I realize I'm no saint either. Having been the other man. But jealousy
never really entered into any of it, it was mostly a matter of a trust betrayed.

But even knowing that she had betrayed a trust before (she had her reasons)
did not diminish my trust in her, and it did get us through a lot of tough times
my faith in her. It's was just for her a matter of she had never been with one
man, faithfully for 7 years before me. I wish her well. I learned much, such as:
don't leave the video tapes of your sexual escapades where she can give them away to some unsuspecting church organization similar to "Good Will" along with 90% of all your other possessions... At least the loss of property, gave me something else to dwell on for like, one second, as my life did what I like to refer to as a spectacular spontaneous disassembly. Though that one second occurred in 1/100th slices over the next two years, as I missed my tools...

Yes, I missed her, cried myself to sleep with a minimum of one (OK, TWO)
tears a night for two years, spent wearing black, jealous, no, distraught
feeling that I could never trust again, yes.

But then, I met this woman, who I judge not harshly, who I can turn to in times of need, and doubt, and who I trust my back to, even if she has a sharp object in her hands, (much longer story about first girlfriend and an 18 inch butcher knife).

I found that I can love again, and still jealousy has no place, faith, trust, acceptance, loving adoration, these are what I put my energies into. Oh, and healthy amounts of passionate lust.

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