My jealousy is my friend. It takes care of me. This guide teaches you how.
When people find out I'm polyamorous, one of the first questions I get is: "How do you manage not to feel jealous?"
You're assuming I don't.
I have two partners. I've been doing this for years. I give workshops on this. And I still feel jealous. For a long time I thought that meant I was broken, toxic, the problem. I went to therapy to make it go away, and it never did. So I was cruel to myself, and I pushed myself into situations that hurt me, just to prove I could stop feeling it.
What finally changed wasn't that the jealousy disappeared. It was that I learned to listen to it.
The problem was never that you feel jealous. It's how you express it, and what you do with it.
This is a guided workbook, written from both my clinical practice and my own life. You'll read the real stories (the cousin's birthday party where I dragged my partner down the stairs, the weeks I stayed home crying while he dated someone new) and then work through the same process I used to get to the other side.
You'll practice how to:
Take "I feel jealous" apart into what's actually in there: anger, fear, rejection, sadness, loneliness, uncertainty
Find the need each emotion is pointing at, so you know what to ask for
Let the catastrophic story speak instead of shoving it away, and discover what you're really afraid of losing
Turn an accusation into a request your partner can say yes to
Respond when it's your partner who's jealous, without invalidating them or guessing at what they feel
Build agreements that open a conversation, instead of rules that close it
Along the way you'll find PolyKink Tips on compersion, why polyamory won't cure your jealousy, where the idea of being "too jealous" comes from, and why you feel like a failure when you can't manage it. Plus writing exercises in every section, so you leave with your own answers, not just mine.
For you if you've been told jealousy makes you toxic. If you're opening a relationship and scared of what you'll feel. If you're monogamous and tired of the same fight. If your partner is the jealous one and you want to build trust instead of defending yourself. And if you've ever thought "asking to be loved doesn't count," this guide is especially for you.
It doesn't matter whether you're monogamous or polyamorous. Jealousy shows up in both. What matters is what you do next.
Ruffus (Jaime Gama) is a psychologist, psychotherapist, and author specializing in ethical relationships across monogamy, polyamory, and kink. He's the creator of The PolyKink Therapist and Gotitas de Poliamor, and the author of Si te duele, ahí no es, published by Penguin Random House.
Nothing here is a test. Move at your own pace, write in the margins, and start small.
You can learn to hear your jealousy before it has to shout.
But do you want to?