Facebook has been a wonderful invention; enabling you to add on ‘friends’ you’d never otherwise bother to have anything to do with again just to update the friend quota and reassure yourself that if you did die people may notice that you hadn’t updated your mood status from ‘sick’ in a while and therefore something might seriously be wrong. It’s a way to reconvene without meeting anyone face to face- and If you’ve recently lost your Secondary School puppy fat it’s the perfect opportunity to flaunt photos of yourself all over the web without looking like a vacuous vain waste of space. It gives the opportunity to get a good look at your boyfriends ex-girlfriend, a good thing most of the time unless of course you’ve built her up mentally as an oversized troll that resembles Britney in the later years and then discover she’s actually sort of cute, fairly intelligent looking and doesn’t appear to resemble someone who eats Heinz spaghetti in front of the TV of a Friday night. This is unfortunate.
We’ve all been bought up to believe that the green-eyed monster that is jealousy is perhaps the worst trait that someone can posses. We hear stories of it destroying friendships previously as solid as rock, relationships that were going somewhere until you were caught earnestly searching his hotmail account and “just playing tetras” on his mobile. It turns lovers into enemies and always leaves at least one of you bloated, bitter and feeling like a complete failure as you watch the others ascent to happiness and success whilst you get addicted to Jeremy Kyle.
I however am as proud as punch, and carry my jealousy as I would a Blue Peter badge. I have a feeling that if I was still seeing my psychotherapist she’d say this is the healthiest emotion I’ve ever had. I’m utterly torn apart by the idea that The Musician dated someone else before me, and their long, six year, healthy and respectful relationship laughs in my face every morning when he makes me tea, and I almost have a heart attack at the normality and perfection of it all. Apart from the fact that I fucking hate tea.
I can honestly say, despite often being surrounded by the beautiful and talented (most of my friends are stupidly good looking, clever and impressive in some way or another) jealousy has often eluded me. It’s not because I’m a warm and loving person who is happy for those who succeed or anything like that, it’s just that my ego is fairly masculine in size and weighs heavy on my vortex. I’ve also cheated on every single person I’ve ever dated- and so it never really occurs to the cheater that they too are being cheated on. Thus I have lived a happy 21 years without those types of issues and paraded around with my over large head floating in the clouds of ignorance. But how the mighty fall! It seems I may have to resort to wearing a muzzle; if her name is mentioned again in my presence, it may save souls.
Leaving aside anger blackouts and extreme violence, I’ve discovered there’s a few ways to deal with this. The best by far is my friend Mancini’s example- she and Mr Recruitment both check phone messages, texts and emails. Not every day, but every so often they just both decide to have a little check-up, like going to the STD clinic of relationships and weeding out any prospective diseases. It’s genius, but of course you need a boyfriend just as irrational as you to make that one work, which can be tricky.
Another friend of mine just confronts it head on, by actually asking her boyfriend if he’s currently playing in a different field- and whether it’s worth carrying the relationship on if he is. For this you have to be fairly brave, especially if you’re pretty sure the answers not going to be the one you want. You should also think up some ‘women time’ activities just in case you find yourself stuck for company for a while.
I have chosen neither of these things, both involving a certain degree of honesty and strength of character- I’m sure they’re not for me. I instead will seethe with resentment, provide compost for misery and just generally work myself into a complete and utter state until I explode with highly strung emotions that stab at him, cause him to run back into the safe and un-sliced arms (the Stanley knife may well have made an appearance for me by this point) of my predecessor. Only then will I be truly content- after all, I was right all along.
