Hey, Jealousy!

(Jesus, that title -- I'm so sorry for evoking the drab days of the early 90s for everybody, but of all the stupid jealousy-related titles I could think of, somehow this one seemed the jauntiest. Again -- please. I'm sorry.)

So, I recently found myself jealous.

I had absolutely, positively no reason to be. Trix is as solid as the earth and I know for a fact that she's crazy about me for some damn reason, even if I can't always quite fathom it (okay, okay -- it's the eyes). No, this jealousy was completely and utterly irrational, based entirely (or, well, mostly) on paranoia and fear. Seems I have some "trust issues." Seems they manifest themselves in the form of pure, unbridled jealousy.

Oh, I ain't talking about yr. normal jealousy, where you kind of pout a little until your girlfriend/boyfriend/fiancee/small furry creature from Alpha Centauri mollifies you and assures you everything's okay at which point you all go out for frosty chocolate milkshakes. Oh, no. This was the kind of jealousy where you're up for three days straight with no sleep whatsoever, smoking packs of Camels and drinking 40-ouncers to try to calm your jangled nerves because you are absolutely, positively sure that your relationship is about to come to a screaming end and there's nothing you can do about it.

Like I said: turns out I was imagining the whole thing. Which, if you know me, is typical of me (Allison Hill: NOT A WORD about the goddamn UFO's, okay? NOT A WORD!). But it, like other emotions (happy, sad, underwater), got me thinking about jealousy in general. Like: what's the fucking point?

Someone once told me that jealousy is essential to a relationship. Keeps it interesting, you see. Prevents people from taking each other for granted. If you're always on your toes and worried about whether the other person might up and leave at any minute, then yeah, I imagine it gets you working a little harder with the romance and the flowers and the hott sexx and the flaven, right?

I would like, if I may, to respectfully disagree with that notion, however, for two reasons.

1. It seems to me that jealousy has to do with trust. It seems to me that if the jealousy has gone out of your relationship it probably -- or at least possibly -- has to do with the fact that you implicitly trust the other person to such an extent that the very notion of them cheating on you or ditching you cold makes you chortle, mm HEY HEY. Conversely, it seems to me that if you're jealous of your SO, that might mean, y'know, that you don't completely trust them. Which could be totally unfounded 'cause you've got issues you gotta work through (in my case, trust issues, but I bet self esteem issues would work just as well), but it strikes me that trust is important. Isn't it?

and

2. Maybe jealousy keeps you on your toes, and maybe jealousy prevents you from taking the other person for granted, and maybe that makes your relationship exciting, but it's the wrong reason for those things. Its like having a baby to try to save a marriage -- bad idea jeans. That ain't real excitement, or real respect, or real non-granted-taking. All it means is that you're living in a constant state of paranoia and fear, and that's no fucking way to live, especially if it means not sleeping for days at a time and smoking too much, which, with me, it inevitably does.

I dunno -- that's not the way I wanna live, y'know? I wanna have a relationship based on trust and mutual respect and hot sex and friendship, not on jealousy. Maybe that's not exciting (y'know, the hot sex sure is!) but to me it sounds like heaven. 'Cause I have enough stress in my life day to day that I don't need the additional stress of having to worry about my relationship, which is hopefully, the one thing I can trust isn't going to go anywhere.

Which, in my case, it isn't. And for that I couldn't be happier.