Hello, my loves. Today we’re going to be talking all about feeling jealous.

This is a spicy topic; people hold such judgment around jealousy that it’s almost hard for anyone to admit they feel it. People want to act like you’re a fucking psycho if you ever end up feeling jealous in your relationships.

I have a different opinion. Let’s jump right into it.

Jealousy is Valid

I think that any emotion that we have is valid. Of course, some behavior can come out of feeling jealous that is not healthy, and that’s not okay. But to have the feeling of jealousy is like having a feeling of anger or grief or happiness or joy or pleasure.

Jealousy isn’t the bottom of the barrel. It’s just another human emotion. And it doesn’t help anything for you to shame yourself—or for others to shame you—for experiencing jealousy. It’s just this added layer of shame on top of what you’re already feeling.

There are a lot of reasons you might start feeling jealous. You may feel jealous that your partner is going to spend time with friends instead of you, or maybe you’re feeling jealous because he said another woman was attractive; like in a movie, for instance. Or you may feel jealous that he has a lot of female friends. But I don’t think it helps to then berate yourself for feeling jealous over those things.

If you’re feeling jealous and you have tried to shame yourself for it, you know that doesn’t make it go away.

That doesn’t make it any less present. That doesn’t make it any smaller. If anything, jealousy only gets more intense if you pretend it isn’t there, because your system knows you’re ignoring it. That happens with any emotion that we have. It’s our system trying to get our attention.

Jealousy, as with any emotion, is just trying to show you something. So rather than slapping yourself on the wrist and pretending you’re not feeling jealous at all, try by taking a closer look at where that feeling is stemming from.

Maybe there’s actually a boundary there for you. Maybe there’s a standard or an expectation in your relationship that’s not being met. Your emotions and your body’s sensations are your body’s way of communicating with you, but most of us don’t actually tune into that. We think our body and our emotional world is against us, so we choose to become reactive rather than landing in it and letting ourselves be curious about it. To start navigating jealousy in a positive way, we need to embrace curiosity.

Insecurity Central

Usually when we find ourselves feeling jealous, that jealousy is pointing to some sort of insecurity. We can think about feeling jealous in the context of romantic relationships, but we can also look at jealousy in friendships, or even in your perception of people that you see on Instagram. Usually, it’s highlighting your sense of lack.

When my partner and I first got together, I found myself feeling jealous over his friendships. I had to tackle a few insecurities that popped up for me that I wasn’t expecting. He has a lot of female friends, and that was new to me. I’ve never really been with someone who had a lot of female friends, if I’m totally honest, so it’s never been an issue. It’s still not an issue, but it brought a lot of insecurity up in me. I started worrying about whether his friends would like me, or if they were going to judge me.

These are also women who, in my eyes, are deeply embodied, very feminine women, and I pedestal that a little bit. So for me, the biggest insecurity that had me feeling jealous was me thinking that these other women had something that maybe I didn’t. I worried that if my partner spent so much time with them, he would find out that they’re way more feminine than me. That they’re softer and more gentle, and then he would want to be with them instead of me.

It was never a thing of telling him that I didn’t want him hanging out with them because I was feeling jealous. I never once said that, because that would have been controlling and toxic. But I did communicate that those feelings were coming up for me, because then we could work through that together.

That can be hard to do. It’s much easier to get stuck on that surface level of feeling jealous and telling your partner that you don’t want them to hang out with their friends anymore, which is a super fucking shadowy and extremely controlling behavior. That is totally not appropriate. Instead, you can be open with your partner and let them know what’s actually there for you. “I’m scared that you might find someone better” is a perfectly reasonable thing to tell your partner, because then they can offer you reassurance.

No One Can Be You

What I came to realize was that there’s nothing that another woman has that I don’t have. When you connect to the entirety of your feminine and your masculine, you know that no woman has anything that you don’t have.

If I’m seeing these women as being gentle and expressive and soft and all of these things, and I’m really pedestalling that, it’s because it’s within me. They can be a good example for us. They show me how I can actually lean in more to my gentleness, to my expression, to my softness, rather than being like, “Well, fuck her for having something that I actually want.” You can choose to be triggered by someone having something you’re jealous of, or you can choose to use that as inspiration and actually choose to be expanded by it.

When you start to connect to yourself, you realize that you already have everything, and no other woman can compete. I don’t mean that in an egotistical way. It’s just the truth.

No one can ever be Michelle Panning. Not you, not my mentor, not my best friend. Not fucking Oprah, not Rihanna, no one. Not a single person on this planet can ever be Michelle Panning. You could literally take every word on this blog or on my podcast, recreate them word for word, and it wouldn’t fucking land the same way that it lands when I say it.

And in the same way, no one can ever be you. Not me, not your mentor, not Oprah, not Rihanna. No one. If you wrote an Instagram post and I took those exact same words and I posted them, it wouldn’t land, because I don’t have your frequency. There’s nothing to be jealous of. It’s comparing apples to oranges.

You’re trying to compete with someone that could never compete with you. There actually is no competition ever. You have everything you could ever want to be inside you. Start taking it as an example, as an inspiration, rather than a challenge of your security in your relationship.

Moving Through Jealousy

Moving through jealousy ultimately requires communication. Communication firstly with yourself, to understand what’s coming up for you, whether that’s a wound or a new boundary you didn’t realize you needed or what have you. This requires you to regulate yourself, to manage your state, to come into a space where you can actually hear the truth of what’s happening for you.

It also requires communication with your partner. When I was feeling jealous in my relationship, I wasn’t projecting that onto him and making it his problem. Instead, I verbalized what was happening. I told him what was making me uncomfortable, but he didn’t have to do anything with that. I just wanted to voice it, and it allowed me to ask for the validation I needed to actually address the root of that insecurity, which was that I needed to know that he wanted to be in this relationship with me and not someone “more feminine” or otherwise.

Ultimately, you don’t have to shame yourself for your jealousy, but you do need to claim responsibility over it. Listen to what it’s trying to tell you, and communicate that with your partner.

CONNECT WITH MICHELLE:

Be sure to connect with me over on Instagram. I’d love to hear what you thought of this post and what your major takeaways were.

Or head over to my website to learn more about how we can work through your relationship journey together.

Are you ready to get off the hamster wheel of going on date after date that goes absolutely nowhere and learn how to date with confidence and clarity? Even though it’s already started, you can still sign up for Swipe Right, a six-week program for women who want to date like motherfucking queens: https://michellepanning.com/swipe-right