by Deborah Stewart

Created on: March 12, 2009   Last Updated: February 15, 2011

Is jealousy a sign of love or insecurity?

Why must it be one or the other? Why can it not be a blend of both? If we look at the physiological makeup of ourselves, we would see that we feel jealousy for one of two reasons:

Either we love someone and feel that love endangered because of the affections of a third party entering into the relationship, or-we are jealous of something that someone else has because we lack that symbol of success or happiness in our own lives. God programmed us to feel jealousy. GOD feels jealousy! He is a jealous God.

For example: let's take the emotion of "Frazlet Minor." Have you ever felt it? No, you have not. Nor have I.  I just created that name for an emotion which does not exist. If it existed, our brains would have been programmed to identify and feel that emotion, just like the other emotions of love in all it's many forms: hate, sadness, joy, sorrow, ecstasy, rage, loneliness, pain, frustration, courage and cowardice and jealousy-to name a few.

Is jealousy a sign of love or insecurity?

If we were to survey 1,000 people who were feeling jealousy at that particular moment, there may be enough evidence to determine an answer to the lead question of this article; but it would not be conclusive. No two of those 1,000 people would be feeling jealousy for the same reason at the same time with the same person. Each of our brains processes information differently. That is a documented fact.

We must learn to look beyond the emotion to the cause of the emotion, which is the truly important aspect. If we can identify and solve the cause, the negative effect is also solved. It is as easy as walking backwards in your mind.

Think about when you have felt jealousy. (Not if-but when.) Even children feel jealousy, but they cannot mask it as we learn to do as we get older. When you are jealous of someone, are you jealous of that person and their abilities over your own? Are you jealous of a loved one when they receive attention from another? In such cases, are you angry at the loved one, or the one who showed the attention?

For you see, jealousy is but the flip side of anger and lack. We all feel jealousy in love. We all feel jealousy when another is more accomplished or gets more attention than we do. Jealousy is an outward sign of inward insecurity-no matter how you slice it. But we cannot feel that jealousy without some form of love: either for another person-or a symbol of success and happiness in our lives.

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