JEALOUSY

  ( this will be in a column in a slightly altered version and you have the honor to see it first, your Brigita)

We set there in our company and gramps started speaking “...boy was my wife jealous, and she was always like that. I couldn’t cope with her. For every woman I worked with I had to convince her I wasn’t involved with them, if any woman called she would immediately question me on who she was, and worst of all was when a woman I was seeing showed up at our doors, actually it was worse when her husband came to our doors. I ran through the window... My wife is such a...” In fact, gramps isn’t that bad. I love listening to him. He and his wife are something else. How they tell their stories, it’s to hilarious. I can understand gramps, it’s not easy when your wife doesn’t allow you to have a girlfriend or your husband a boyfriend. He says, oh how she ran that one out of the house...and she adds....if I had only managed to catch her I would have pulled all of her hair out. And they hold hands and laugh about it together. 

This time we won’t be talking about jealousy in relationships, or that in puberty, or the one that is a serious problem and can be called and illness. This time we will be speaking about the jealousy when people are married, when they are living together, and we will try to figure out why it is said that women are more jealous then men. 

When a man publicly brags that his wife is jealous...I always know that he is making her such and is giving her reason for that. And almost always that is not “real” jealousy he wishes for. And when you look at such characters you’ll always ask yourself “Why is she jealous? Of him?” You will realize they are not cool, not charmers, not lovers, but just “nerds” who finally have a “girlfriend” and are trying to make themselves more important. And when a man tells you in private he has a jealous wife, you almost always know it is like that. 

And now, how it came to that that women are more jealous and are they really? The answer couldn’t be more logical. When you look at women’s and men’s lives throughout history it is perfectly clear that their roles in a relationship have always been different and always ones of superiority-inferiority, seldom of equality. Women have always been financially dependent first of their fathers, then on their husbands, they only changed from one dependent-inferior role to another one. And men have always been the ones with jobs and money. With that they also had the power. Women almost always couldn’t say and let alone do something without men and be supported in that by their families and surroundings. Even today if a woman changes partners or cheats on her husband you will hear people calling her a whore, and automatically someone will say “what will her children say tomorrow what kind of mother they had”. Those much older generations of men will say that having a jealous wife was their accomplishment. As if that was making them worth more. And almost all of them cheated on their wives and without even trying to hide that. And you ask yourself if that woman, who bore him children (not necessarily but generally it was like that) and who weren’t able to return to their original family (because that would be shameful to her father, and her children would be  called derogatory names), really jealous? A woman that was materially dependent on that husband and who would have, if she had left him, either lose her child (because she had no means of supporting him or her) or they would have both be subjected to public shame, in my opinion wasn’t likely to have been infatuated by his sexual organ and love making abilities and with concern that another woman would steal that from her. Men in those times were of course aware of things we are writing about, and especially of the position of women in society, and not just that no one was judging them for acting that way, but they were being praised and had a higher status in their society. Imagine that, he has a wife at home who might even be handsome and beautiful, and he is cheating on her with some filthy women in bars...that was success. No one felt bad for the wife. Even their mothers told them it had to be that way. Only, what has that to do with jealousy? Whenever someone is in a superior position in a relationship, and that power is always about money, then that person often misuses that position because it’s not enough for him that she loves him but now she needs to be screaming for him, chasing away his mistresses from their doors and trying to kill herself for him because imagine...she loved him soooooo much. She didn’t you idiot! Sorry for the expression but... She didn’t love you that much, and it isn’t that she didn’t want to replace you or that she hadn’t wished for that...but she could not. She had to fight to have a roof over her had, to have something to eat, that her child isn’t called a bastard (this expression makes me sick), she stayed and fought for her place in your life cause she had nothing else! It’s not that she didn’t wish for it...there were those better then you. And maybe she cheated on you but you never found out and you never will, remember she is a woman same as those you cheated on her with. But she new she had to stay in it, she new she had to fight like a lioness to chase away any other because she had no where else to go, that was her home... that is not jealousy my dear...that is a fight for survival and staying. That is not jealousy...that is not love...that is called surviving. You might have cheated and might have been successful in it, and you might have humiliated and made a fool of her...but that doesn’t make you a big man, nor does it make you cool. It doesn’t make you a good lover, nor a good father. And least of all does it make you a good husband. These things happen even today. Times have changed but not enough and not everywhere have the people changed fully. Even today you will hear coming form those more primitive families taht a father advises his son not to be whipped but that he has to have something on the side. Even today you will hear that men’s cheating is approved of and women are still only whores. But a good thing in it is that women no longer take heed to that. On the contrary, today they are “schooled” to be prostitutes, ... today you can see them on front pages flashing their breasts and defying times and primitivism, and at the same time bragging about how good mothers they are. Today women wait on tables without shame and know they have to be exposed and foulmouthed to get change but they don’t care any more. EVEN TODAY THEY WILL BE JUDGED WHN THEY LEAVE BUT THEY STILL LEAVE AND NO MATTER HOW THEY SURVIVE, THEY DO SURVIVE. Today the pillars of shame have been replaced by magazines that ridicule those who are primitive, those who are hypocrites and those who mistreat under any excuse. Today everything is allowed but we are moving forward to not allowing such mistreatment and abuse of even those persons who are financially or in any way in an oppressed position compared to others. Oh yes, there are still many false moralists around. Most of all there are women who call those in the old fashioned way for having the courage to change their lives, but that is just because they did have it. 

Today there are much, much more good men who are not ashamed to be what they are, who are not afraid to show it and are not afraid to stand up to primitive surroundings and such expectations for them. Today there are much more people who look at life differently. Those who know that you aquire good reputation and who appreciate what they have. Yes, there are many people today who sit in little groups and comment on where the world has gone?...I’m afraid it’s where you have led it if too much hypocrisy, too much inequality, too many bans and too much imposing. That is why today people confront anyone and anything.    

Still, let’s return to our topic... when next you hear someone bragging about his wife being jealous, and they aren’t an old couple sitting and laughing about it together, think twice about what type of inferiority compared to him she has found herself, material, emotional, physical. And you almost always know that is not real jealousy and they are not cool. Cool guys are those who live their lives by their rules and next to whom a woman walks full of pride, well groomed and styled, and with a smile on her face. If someone is cheating on someone they are irrelevant  to the surroundings. Cool guys are those men who most of all give their wives (and children) good lives...and the rest...that’s their business...