Jealous Love

                A dear friend of mine told me not long ago that you only know you’re in love when you start to get Jealous for the sake of the one you love. When you want to have them all to yourself and not have to share them with others. There can be various opinions on this thought, some people may call it being insecure and immature while some may be able to relate to the idea and the thought it provokes. I must clarify that these were not his exact words and I may very well be misrepresenting his thoughts or what he really meant in that context. However, the point is not to find out what he might have actually meant or to dissect his thoughts and come to a judgement about him, but rather to take that thought and deal with its nuances. Let me start off by admitting that in some way, I could relate to what he told me as I have experienced it myself. I have been jealous when a close friend hangs out with someone else and I know that deep down, I am Jealous and I wish I was the one spending time with that friend and engaging in fun activities. Deep down, I have been jealous when someone I like romantically talks to another guy and they seem to have fun, even when the other person is a friend I cherish and love. Jealousy always seeps its way through my consciousness and somehow manages to make me anxious and fill me with insecurities. This thought made me wonder if the very nature of Love is Jealousy itself as one may argue that if you do not feel jealous for someone you love, you were probably never in love in the first place.

C.S Lewis once spoke about losing a dear friend. He wrote that when his friend died, the part of him that could only be brought out by that friend also died. This changed everything for me. In the context of friendship, I began to look at it through a different perspective as I realised that there is something very wrong with the idea of love that is jealous and in some sense, self-serving! The scripture (Bible) defines love in 1 Corinthians 13:4-8 where it is written:

4 Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant 5 or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful;[a] 6 it does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth. 7 Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. 8 Love never ends. As for prophecies, they will pass away; as for tongues, they will cease; as for knowledge, it will pass away.

(The Holy Bible, English Standard Version. ESV® Text Edition: 2016. Copyright © 2001 by Crossway Bibles, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers.)   

The scripture defines love as anything but selfish and self-serving. Envy and Love do not go together in the context of the love between two human beings, this may be applied in the context of any kind of interpersonal relationships like friendships, family and the relationship between two spouses. God is love and the kind of love we see in the scripture is the unconditional kind. Very demure, very pure but I would also argue that it’s humanly impossible too. 

Humans, as imperfect and full of flaws as we are, feel a lot of emotions and jealousy is one of them. One may argue that jealousy is something ‘natural’ that happens in the context of love and it is ‘natural’ to be jealous. In order to grow in this aspect, one must admit that indeed, jealousy is something that happens naturally and is one of the emotions that one feels which I would even argue makes us human or defines our humanity. However, it is important to realize and understand that not everything ‘natural’ is by default, good! Jealousy makes us human, it may also be productive in some cases where it gives us motivation to do better and excel in a particular task we have at hand. For instance, being jealous of someone doing better than us may motivate us to work harder and our envy may even act as a fuel that leads us to success. However, the biggest problem with this argument lies in the motive. A friend of mine has chosen “Motive Matters” as his bio on social media. Motive indeed matters and even if something results in good, motive still matters. One may do good things with an ulterior motive and even though some people may benefit from it, it does not remove the truth of somebody’s motive behind the ‘good act’. 

Now that we got that out of the way, let us come back to Jealous Love. C.S Lewis wrote that his friend’s death meant the death of a part of him that only that friend could bring out, this can be applied to our lives as well. When we are jealous and let us assume that we are successful in acting out our jealousy by achieving our goal of having someone to ourselves, we have no idea what we’re missing out on. Having that person to ourselves also means that we’re robbing ourselves of the parts of that person that only certain other people could bring out. What this may look like in today’s world could be how a particular person reacts to someone’s joke in a certain way. Their absence would mean that you are robbing yourself of that very reaction or the words they would say or the side of them that would only come alive in the presence of somebody else. This can be perfectly applied in the context of friendship. 

Does this mean that I am urging everyone to always share love and include other people regardless of the situation? Not at all! This is not meant to be taken out of context and there are situations where one must choose to not include other people in certain conversations or plans. Depending on the situation, one must have the discernment to make the right call while carefully considering the implications of their decisions and the choices they make. 

Jesus has shown us what Love is in its truest form, he chose us and accepted us just as we were. He is Love. What God did by sending His only begotten Son to die for our sins is Love. What God does everyday as he continues to work in our lives is Love. We may never be able to love anybody, even God, the same way that He loved us. However, it is important to remember that we love because He first loved us. We love others too because He first loved us. We can never be capable of perfectly loving someone unconditionally but that does not mean we should stop trying. We must love others and treat everyone lovingly because we were first loved. Hence, I would argue that in order to love, one must know what love is by being loved and experiencing love first by the one who is Love.