A few years back I met this sexy guy online. The conversation flowed really well, he also appeared to be fit, handsome, conscious and he was really eager to meet (and so I was!). I wanted to make it happen soon. I projected the whole evening in my head: the chemistry would be amazing, we would have great sex and then we would become regular lovers. Of course it all made sense in my head!. We planned to meet that evening. Throughout the day we kept exchanging sexy messages, naughty pictures and reassuring the other how much we were looking forward to meet. Two hours before the meet, he announced that he could not make it. I remembered feeling annoyed but I played it all very cool, despite that I was so disappointed. He eventually disappeared and never heard from him again.
A month later, I was catching up with a regular lover. He was telling me what a great time he had during Pride with this guy that he met, they had become lovers since. He showed me a picture and it was the same man!. I remember a knot in my stomach building up. Again I tried to play it very cool. Of course I am very cool guy, being in open relationships for many years. Great communication with lovers and partners. I thought I was ‘grown up’ and very fluid with sex, but in fact I could sense that I was feeling jealous!. Jealousy I thought it was a thing from a very distant past…. Could it be coming back?.
First, what am I actually feeling?
I was so confused. I know it was jealousy what I was feeling, because the feeling was so familiar, but jealousy of what?: was I jealous because my lover had sex with this hot guy and I wanted him to myself?, or was I jealous because this hot guy was having sex with my lover and I worried he would snatch him from me?. At the same time a part of me could not accept that I was even jealous. I have done so much work over the years not to feel those kind of attachments. I am a tantra teacher. I thought I could flow in love and sex, why on earth I was getting stuck with something that I felt it was such a thing of the past?. I was trying to refuse the feeling, but the feeling was not leaving me alone.
So much shame came to me. We were just lovers with no strings attached, I had no problem having sex with whoever, but I could not deny that I was finding him having sex with this guy difficult. I could feel it in my body. A compression in my solar plexus, in the seat of my personal power.
This incident was not isolated, over the coming years, with the same lover, I started to have other occasions in which I really felt stuck, insecure, jealous of the fun that he was getting with others. I used to keep quiet about it. I felt I had no right to talk to him about this and I kept making myself wrong. It was just wrong to feel jealous, but was it really?.
What is the jealousy trying to tell me?
At some point I decided to take some therapy. I felt so incongruent. I could go through months in which the jealousy feeling could disappear, and then one day he would mention that he had some fun that weekend and the knot in the stomach would be back. The feeling was driving me mad, but I would keep a mask on, pretending that it was not happening. It was clearly not working.
I decided to change my approach. I became familiarised with a therapy model called ‘Internal family systems’ developed by psychotherapist Richard Swartz. He talks about how in your inner world you have all these parts, according to him in his book No bad parts these parts are little inner beings who are trying their best to keep you safe.
I was wondering how could the jealousy be trying to keep me safe?. I only could see it as a nuisance. I didn’t believe in it, but it was there, I couldn’t deny it. What Schwartz advocates is that the jealousy would not be a bad part, it is just another part, most likely what he calls ‘a protector’ who is trying to make sure that you are not being hurt.
Talk to your jealousy
The invitation from Schwartz was to have a chat with my jealousy, but not from a place of judgement, but from a place of total love and compassion. Being curious about what it needed to say, where it came from, why did it need to show up?, and more important, what did it actually need from me?.
I learnt that my jealousy was only one part of the many others that inhabit in me: there was also ‘the grown up who is sexually fluid’, ‘the trustworthy partner’, ‘the tantra educator’, ‘the control freak’, ‘the forever explorer’, ‘the sexually ashamed’ …. All of them with the same mission in life, to protect who I feel I am. To protect my ego.
The recipe was to talk to my jealousy as it was a little boy, with lots of care and an open heart. Most of those parts are just very young versions of us who may have been wounded at some point in life. They may live partly in a conscious and often very anchored in the unconscious.
My jealousy had some very interesting things to say: basically it said that I was in love with my lover, and jealousy had come to make sure that I did not have my heart broken. This was hard to swallow at the time. I already had an open relationship with my long term partner, did this mean I wanted another partner in reality?. Jealousy came to police my heart, but conflict started when my ‘jealousy part’ encountered another of my parts ‘my sexually fluid self’, the Tantra teacher who believes in the abundance of love and pleasure. Those two parts were clashing.
Jealousy became my teacher
Over the coming months, I made sure that jealousy had space to talk, that did not become bullied by my ‘grown up sexual self’. Jealosy said that it was worried that opening to more love may hurt me and hurt others. I asked jealousy what is that it needed to be pacified. Jealousy felt that in order to be pacified it wanted clarity, transparency, heart feeling conversations with my lover and my partner, to be clear with everybody about my feelings. To tell my lover that I was actually in love with him and that I was scared to lose him. All of that felt deeply scary, but I knew it was true.
In Being in Love, Osho, the spiritual father of Neotantra, says ‘love is not a learning but a growth. What is needed on your part is not to learn the ways of love but to unlearn the ways of unlove’.
I’m alone, never lonely
Osho also says that love allows freedom, it grows stronger in freedom. Also anything that destroys freedom is not love. Whenever you see that your love is going against your freedom, then you are doing something else in the name of love.
I made myself to remember that I always have been committed to support my partners in their happiness, in their freedom. This means that one has to be very comfortable in your aloness. Aloness means the feeling that you are complete. Nobody is needed, you are enough. And this happens in love, in true love. Lovers share each other, but not from a palace of need.
I believe that real love is not a search to combat loneliness. Real love is to transform loneliness into aloness, and the best that you can do for your partner is to help them to be alone. To help them to be so full out of their own being that we are not needed. Being happy alone, but never lonely.
I now know that jealousy came to me for a reason. Pushing it away did not work. I learnt I needed to give it love and not fear, to give it space and not to suppress it. Over time it has become more integrated in my being. It still shows from time to time, and I greet it with love and understanding, I have compassion and remind myself that love is freedom and that tantra is my life journey into BEING more and more love.
Tantric Freedom 