Jealousy

Today I took my little boy to the childminding service at the school which is organized before classes start.

By way of background, I am probably the most obsessed person in the known universe on the subject of the attitudes of adults towards my children (and in fact all children). I am infinitely sensitive to the frequent occasions when those adults project their own neuroses and unresolved emotions onto the kids. When I see or feel it, there is no room for compromise. I am also in love with my little boy. I rely on him for most of the spiritual enlightenment I am ever likely to obtain. He is amazingly charming, almost always happy and playful and he has a really tender side also. He’s three (nearly).

Despite being impossible to please, I am pretty happy with the school. It’s not perfect of course, but it could be a lot worse. We feel comfortable sending him there.

The lady in charge of the childminding service seems to love him particularly. Whenever he arrives, he is greeted with open arms and a warm heart. As I love him and care for his wellbeing, what more could I want?

So, where I stand on this is pretty clear.

To my surprise, though, this morning, how I feel about it apparently is not.

Now, I would have said that I don’t normally “do” jealousy – indeed, nothing “gets me off” more than the awareness of my partner as a sexual creature or makes me feel closer to her – so when I get an insight into what it actually is, it is of special value to me. And I tell this story because in it, the nature of jealousy is unmasked. A lot of people justify jealousy in relationships to themselves because they buy into the myth of monogamy which is widely sanctioned by society, and their jealousy is so linked at the same time to their own insecurities that it goes totally unquestioned: not once does it occur to them to reflect on it by looking inwards rather than out.

However, not a lot of people would consider it reasonable to be jealous of tenderness towards their children shown by people who have the responsibility to look after them. Not many people would consciously prefer that those stewards of childish innocence be mean. Although I am sure that many people, especially mothers, are in fact madly jealous of their children and would feel plenty of jealousy in such a situation, even these people would feel a lot less self-righteous about it, and perhaps even shades of guilt (as I said before, I am a big fan of guilt – seeking to resolve it always points us to something).

Thus uncovered, what sense can I make of my (very mild, I must admit) jealousy? There are two things I can see. Firstly, to see a small boy smothered in love makes me quite uncomfortable. This is because it was my own childhood experience, and such love I perceived as needy and oppressive. It made me squirm and I would do all I could to wriggle away from it, and eventually I did. The image I encountered this morning triggered in me an unconscious desire to protect my child from a presumably inexistent threat – one I faced in the past but face no longer, and one not present in the contemporary situation. I am not really protecting him. Really, I am still protecting me.

The second observation is simpler. Love, mixed with insecurity, and without consciousness, is always in danger of turning into a noxious cocktail of emotional dependence, as surely as any chemical reaction. Because I love him, the boy makes me feel more secure, and I want to hold on to that feeling. Here, I am only doing what my mother did to me. Separation increases anxiety. When I hand him over to someone who actually loves him, the risk exists that he will love her back, and so love me less. I mean, this risk exists in my mind. In the real world, it does not exist at all, or at least it would not provided that I do not act like a dumb mother hen and raise significantly the cost to him of loving me, by requiring that he love no-one else. Only by forcing him to make a choice, and making the choice for me so unattractive, is there any way at all that I can turn my feelings of insecurity into a self-fulfilling prophecy. This boy loves me to bits.

And that, my friends, is jealousy. Don’t hide behind social conventions which conveniently buttress your insecurity. Unmask it: you have a lot to learn and a lot to gain, because it is often only unconscious jealousy which may bring about the outcomes you fear – and nothing in the real world. And even when the outcome you fear may come to pass, you will be free, and you will see that there was nothing to fear in it really.

Now I have a little meditation for myself over the next few mornings. I will hand over my child to the childminder full of love, gratitude, and consciousness.