For those who don't know, I have been unsuccessfully using OK Cupid (the dating site) in an attempt to find another wife. As part of that, one has the opportunity to answer thousands of personality/match test questions. One of the earlier one is, "Is jealousy healthy in a relationship." Originally, which was over 2 years ago, I answered, "Yes," but after a short while I changed it, because I knew that my reason for doing so wouldn't be obvious, so I changed my answer to "No" and added the following explanation:
"This is a very interesting question. I could also answer this Yes. Soul-wrenching jealousy isn't healthy in a relationship. On the other hand, in general, jealousy is an excellent internal feedback system that warns one that some need is not being met -- or that a significant threat to the relationship may exist. If one is jealous because a partner is seeking something elsewhere that one is not willing to provide, then one's jealousy is simply selfish. If, however, one is jealous because a partner is seeking something elsewhere that one IS willing to provide, then one's jealousy is useful information that should be used as inspiration to either confront one's partner or consider the possibility that one's partner's behavior represents a deal-breaking betrayal. In addition, one always has to be very wary of being in relationship with anyone who would feel no jealousy if they contemplated their lover being someone else's lover, because that is likely an indication of a failure to sufficiently value one's partner. So, in that sense, jealousy is a highly healthy component in any relationship. As one who believes in the legitimacy of Biblical polygamy, I recognize that my partners and I will always struggle with jealousy, but I have seen that it is something that is manageable when everyone involved is committed to keeping jealousy in perspective. Relationships are always a matter of give and take. In a polygamous arrangement, one trades exclusivity for other advantages that wouldn't be available in other, exclusive relationships, including the opportunity to share someone who fits like a glove with more than one person."
Amen, amen about feelings being signals. They are not hard facts or thoughts, but they are useful information that let you know something isn't occurring the way you'd want it to be occurring, or, conversely (as in joy, or horniness), that something is occurring the way you'd want it to be occurring.
I also agree with you wholeheartedly, @cnystrom, about life simply not being fair -- and that it's not even supposed to be fair. It's certainly not fair that I don't ever get to give birth or sprout wings and fly, but there are things I can do that women and birds can't do -- and even if that weren't the case the whole issue of trying to make things fair is another example of falsely thinking one could do God's job better than He can.
@FollowingHim2, I sure could have used this post from you 25 years ago, because the insight imbedded in it is something I entirely failed to grasp at the time. I'll get to that in a minute.
First, I want to second your assertion that, while somewhat different, having multiple children is a good subject to bring up to explain how a man can love more than one woman. I think it was additionally brilliant for you to bring up about how her love for him won't change when the child arrives. However, I might put a little different spin on it, because from my psychotherapy experience I know it is not infrequently the case that, at least for a significant period of time, some women really do temporarily lose much of their love for their husband when their first child arrives. It would be 'spin' in those cases to state that the love has transformed into something more wonderful, because these women have instead relegated their husbands to a role in the back seat relative to the child. Again, this is typically a reflection of unresolved issues within the woman or between the couple that they either weren't aware of or put off addressing -- and I also agree that, more often, wives do love their husbands more after they have children together, just as most husbands love their wives more after they become parents.
Back to the imbedded insight: You wrote, "Pregnancy hormones do crazy things to a woman. It's not a great time to be going through a huge emotional upheaval. Everything will be bigger and take longer to deal with." At the time there was no escaping knowing that pregnancy was the excuse, but Kristin (my present wife; married 1987) and I started into a relationship with another woman named Claire (who had grown and almost-grown children) at the beginning of 1993, a relationship that was, in each person's understanding, intended to be permanent. We had plans to move out of our separate dwellings and all move in together into another, then-currently unoccupied home of Claire's. Everything was about as perfect as it could be. Part of what had cemented the relationship was that Kristin and I had previously split up for a bit, and Kristin had enlisted Claire's assistance in persuading me to refrain from following through on divorce.
Then Kristin got pregnant with our first child. At first this was just cause for celebration all the way around, but after some time Kristin came to me with an ultimatum: sever ties with Claire or sever ties with Kristin and the unborn child. I'd already been through a previous divorce that involved an unsuccessful custody battle, and I was determined to not go through that again or subject my child to it. I discussed it with Claire. She was, and I'm sure still is, a very gentle and loving soul, and her response was to say that she respected the upheaval Kristin was going through and that the two of us should just respect it, split up, and wait and see. She was confident Kristin would change her mind sometime after Felix was born.
Kristin did not change her mind. Not only did she not change her mind, despite having known my desire to be polygynous since before she asked me to marry her, she gravitated to a very antagonistic stance against not only us having a plural family but against it for anyone. At first, I thought, like Claire, that maybe this would dissipate, but it did not.
I believe, though, that within your post, @FollowingHim2, is the insight that, rather than forcing Kristin to just suck it up while she was pregnant OR giving up altogether, which is effectively what I did for at least 15 years, I should have waited until Felix was several months old and then reasserted the legitimacy of the relationship with Claire, who at that time was still very much waiting for things to return to our previous normal. I believe -- partially based on the fact that Kristin is now very sad that we turned Claire away -- that, had I exhibited the necessary leadership skills at that time in re-presenting the idea that getting back together with Claire was the right thing to do, Kristin would have recognized the error of her ways, and the two of us would have avoided a lot of the turmoil we went through 15-20 years later. Instead of asserting myself, all I was doing was just passively waiting for something else to change or for Kristin to independently change her mind, and that was just plain foolish. Eventually, Claire gave up on both of us. We have even made efforts to reach out to her, and she won't respond.
Of course, hindsight is always (or at least is sometimes) 20/20. I hadn't studied Scripture back then anywhere near to what I have in the interim, and I had next to no support group for what I was trying to do.
I thank you again, though, @FollowingHim2, for giving me even more perspective on all of it.
