Jealousy
November 30, 2008 
16 Comments
Client: What do you do about jealousy? Perhaps you like a girl and you see a guy going in to hit on her. Or you have an ex-girlfriend – just jealousy in general. It comes up so often.
David: Life is about free choices. Jealousy is something that you have at 19 – but by the time you’re in your thirties, it’s something you will outgrow.
You have jealousy now because you haven’t experienced enough emotional things to realize that there is the freedom of choice.
If a woman you are dating breaks up with you and then sleeps with your friend, you have to realize that there was nothing you could do to prevent it. So why give emotions like jealousy and guilt any power?
When you give those emotions power, you’re giving life to someone else’s choice – not to anything that you can actually control.
If a girl chooses a friend over you, you have to be able to say to yourself, well, they must have better chemistry together than we do. Good for him and good for her.
You feel jealous only because you don’t have abundance mentality. Jealousy is an emotion that springs from the lack of the abundance mentality in your life.
I have no jealousy anymore. I remember when I would lose money in my business ventures, I would be jealous of my friends. But then I realized that they had made different choices and followed different paths.
I started embracing my friends’ success, and this got rid of the jealousy – I realized that I was where I was only because of the choices I’d made in my life.
Once I realized that, the abundance returned to my life.
It just works like that.
How are you supposed to have an abudance mentality when night after night you watch two of your best friends get attention from every woman they interact with while those same women treat you like you’re just there for comic relief? I’m seriously asking because that’s the situation I’m in right now and I just don’t understand it. I’m not being a wallflower, I engage them, I talk with them, I make them laugh, and then they try and get with my friend whose most clever comment of the evening was to call me an asshole. How do you have an abundance mentality when you can’t even get one woman interested in you? How am I supposed to not be jealous of my friends?
I read a psychological study that once said something along the lines of “if a person chooses to blame outside forces for their troubles, they will live longer happier lives.”
Really? I heard that people who always blame others (or outside forces) for their troubles are the ones who are in therapy the longest because they can’t accept their own responsibility in the matter – that their own action or inaction may be the real cause of their problems. Another said that you can’t change what you don’t own (that one was Dr.Phil).
Dave – What are you putting out there? How are your friends acting by comparison? How do those women actually react to your interaction? Are you doing something to put them off? Acting jealous because your friends are getting the attention? Or are you the normal guy that your friends bring along so that the women think that your friends are good guys when they’re really not? Just curious.
Taras, I hope your pulling our extremity with that one, because if it were true, you would never be able to take credit for any of your accomplishments either.
What up DW ! I been in the dungeon since your visit to New York, we need to catch up.
Actually what Taras says has been proven. On the surface it sounds like blaming others for your problems and not accepting responsibility, but there is a lot more to it. A man named Martin Seligman pioneered this field and it’s called positive psychology. He has written a number of books on the subject, read the book “Learned Optimism” if you’re interested in understanding a bit more. It’s interesting if nothing else, and may well help you understand how to develop a fundamentally optimistic outlook on life.
Ah yes, the ego is a tricky bitch
Dave -
To answer your question, I will help you by giving my method of how I got over it. Success breeds success.
I didn’t have any immediate success so how did I get over it? Guaranteed myself that I will come across success – and it will be great. I decided that I was going to be so blinded by this future success that I wasn’t going to be held back from this success. And when I came across people, I came off like I was already there. Once that first success hits you, you pretty much made it. The momentum is powerful.
Sounds crazy but if you want to make the change, you have to believe in yourself and forget the doubt of everyone else – including yours.
Dave, when I was in my 20′s, I had your same frustration. Never the girl that got the guy. What I realized later on in life is that even though I was engaging guys, etc. the girls they took home were the one-night-stand chicks, and that is all the guys wanted. I was not one of those girls, so in retrospect, I’m glad they didn’t pick me. Do your “successful” friends maintain relationships with these girls? or are you perhaps “keeper” material and the right girl hasn’t crossed your path yet? Don’t give up; be an observer like DW says, it’s all a learning experience. Good luck to you.
If I notice I’m feeling jealous, I usually interpret it as “wow, I care about this more than I thought”. I rarely feel envious.
Btw, people often confuse jealousy and envy.
Envy is what you felt about your friends success, i.e. it is wishing to have the same thing that your friend has and resenting them for it. Jealousy is in the face of a rival or a perceived loss of something you already view as yours, something you’d jealously guard.
So, if women were possessions and you felt jealousy or envy . . . you’d feel envious of another man that has a hot girlfriend, and jealous when the man tried to pursue your hot girlfriend. But that’s part of the problem, we think about our partners as possessions rather than people.
Jealousy is an emotion we’ve been wired with to ensure mate fidelity, it’s an extended form of being territorial (so not just with property, but with people too!). It’s something that people have more or less of, and can rewire by noticing the feelings, and choosing to interpret them differently.
Dave, clearly, this is something important to you– it sounds like you feel less than when your friends are around, and them succeeding with the women you all meet is a confirmation bias that feeds on your perception. I wonder if they treat you like comic relief because you are acting like the comic relief rather than a main character in your life. Alternatively, you may want to try changing a number of variables– going out with different friends, behaving differently, going different kinds of places to meet women (ie not just different bars or clubs, but museums, gardens, hiking, dog park (if you have a dog)).
Thanks for the advice everybody.
K, I think you hit it on the head. It’s got to be something I’m putting out there, and I do have some self esteem issues. I’m a lot better than I used to be, but maybe I need to do some more work there.
Lexi, I’m not jealous of any one woman, it’s that I’m jealous of the ability or luck that my friends seem to have in this area. And as far as being comic relief is concerned, when I relax and stop caring about what others think (something I learned from reading this blog) I become a smart ass and I get people laughing. That’s just what comes naturally to me. I don’t know if that’s bad or not, but thats what happens.
Thanks again everybody.
They say that jealousy is a childish attitude. In the bible it is a venial sin. Some books considered this as a negative attitude. Jealousy is a negative feeling and to stop this kind of feeling you need to convert this feeling into a constructive attitude.
Dave . . . many people confuse jealousy and envy. It sounds like you are envious of your friends, not jealous.
Dave… it sounds like the guys you are hanging out with to meet women are very confident, perhaps simple and quite boisterous people. (boisterous meaning a bit loud, aggressive and masculine) I’m 21 and hang out with these sorts of people when I go out. So this is MY opinion on the matter, i’d love to hear any feedback you guys have.
I am assuming here that you are more clever and you are more respectful to people, ie not calling them derrogatory names for the hell of it. Perhaps they are coming across as more dominant because of this.
I think you need to deal with their put downs more appropriately. By them calling you an asshole they are showing a certain amount of confidence which women like. They are showing they are not afraid to offend you because they do not see you as a threat. Although at the same time they are showing a slight weakness – insecurity.
If your friend calls you an asshole for example, you don’t want to just accept his comment so as not to cause a stir in the group. As a dominant male you need to fight your corner, stir some shit. At the same time you don’t want to show your own insecurities by calling him something back, this will make you look even weaker than before. You need to show him that you are not phased by his comment, you don’t really care… but you’re going to make him look silly for doing it.
My favourites include “Did you come up with that insult all on your own?”, “Mate (“Dude” for americans), you need to get some fresh banter” and “(sarcastically) ah let’s not call each other names. you’ve really hurt me inside now. I was enjoying tonight until you said that”
By doing this you have taken the moral high-ground, outwitted them, showed them you are not phased and that you’re dominant.
If you are not comfortable confronting your friends like this… take up martial arts. It does wonders for your cockyness when you know you can handle yourself.
Hope this helps
Justin, thanks for the advice, but I must not have been very clear in my first post. Verbal sparring is how my friends and I play. When I said that they call me an asshole I meant that a lot of the time thats the best comeback they can think of to something I said. I probably burn (insult) them twice as much as they burn me.
That’s what gets me. I’m funnier than my friends, I dress better, I’m a better conversationalist, and I don’t feel the need to tell women how big my penis is (yes I have a friend who literally does that). Yet somehow I’m never the one women are attracted to and I can’t seem to figure out why. I’ve even seen a woman tell one of my friends that he comes across like he’s trying too hard, and then in the same night ask to be his booty call. That’s why I’m envious (thanks Lexi) of my friends. They don’t seem to have to try at all.
Hmm its hard, I often find myself in that situation too. Its frustrating when you just can’t understand why you’re not getting the girls, despite engaging them etc. I think we’re in the same boat. Can I assume that you’re referring to bar/club situations mainly?
My email is justin_rickard@hotmail.com – drop me an email and we’ll discuss it further.
Many thanks for the post. I liked it. You have a very nice blog.