(From my upcoming book)
We were sitting with company that included an elderly couple and “grandpa” started to talk: “...was my wife jealous, she was always like that. I couldn’t handle her. For every woman I worked with I had to convince her I had nothing to do with that woman. If a woman called me my wife would immediately question me who that was. The worst thing was when a woman I was dating, showed up at our door, actually it was worse when one’s husband rang our doorbell. I ran out through the window! ...My wife is a living she-devil...”-he continued his story...
In fact, “grandpa” isn’t bad. I love listening to him. He and “grandma” are a living wonder. The way they are telling their stories is to pass out from laughing. And I can understand “grandpa”, it isn’t easy when your wife doesn’t allow you to have a girlfriend (and a husband a boyfriend)!
He says - Man, how she stormed that one out of the house...
And she says-If I had only caught her, I would have pulled her hair out!
And they hold hands and laugh about it together.
This time we won’t be talking about jealousy in relationships, or the one in puberty, or the one that is a serious problem and we call it an illness.
This time we’ll be talking about jealousy in marriage and that in a situation when spouses were (or are) in different financial positions compared to each other and we’ll try to figure out why people say that women in such marriages were (or are) more jealous then men.
When a man publicly brags about his wife being jealous...it almost always turns out that he is making her such and is giving her reason to be. And almost always that is not “real” jealousy that he would want it to be, but he is making it seem like that (because jealousy is SUPPOSED to be a sign of him being valuable and desirable not just to her, but to other women also).
And when you look at such characters, you will always wonder “why is she jealous of him?!”
You will understand they are not real men, are not charmers, are not lovers but plain men who “finally have a woman” and are making themselves seem important.
And now, why has it come to that that women are more jealous and are they really? The answer seems couldn’t be more logical.
When you look upon lives of women and lives of men throughout history it is very clear that their roles were always different and usually always of superiority-inferiority, seldom of equality.
WOMEN WERE ALWAYS FINANCIALLY DEPENDENT, FIRST TO THEIR FAHERS, THEN TO THEIR HUSBANDS, THEY JUST CHANGED ONE DEPENDENT-INFERIOR ROLE FOR ANOTHER. AND MEN ALWAYS HAD JOBS AND MONEY. AND WITH IT POWER.
Women could almost never even say let alone do something without men and have support for that from their families and surroundings. Men were those who were listened to and “taken seriously”.
Even today you will hear women that “change” partners or cheat on their husbands, being called whores and automatically being called out as a mother, with a rhetoric “what will her children say tomorrow what kind of mother they had?”
Perfection was always expected from women. In everything. Most of all in obedience, loyalty, fidelity and motherhood, of course.
Those much older generations of men will say that it was their success to have a jealous wife. As if that made them “more valuable”. And at the same time, many were cheating on their wives and without concealing it.
YOU CAN NOT BUT WONDER
- WAS THAT WOMAN WHO BORE HIM CHILDREN (not necessarily but that was the general rule)
AND BY THE WAY COULD NOT RETURN TO HER ORIGINAL FAMILY (because it would have been a disgrace to her parents, and children she would have brought from that marriage would have been called derogatory names and forever marked with shame),
REALLY JEALOUS (AND JUST SO MUCH)?
A woman that was materially dependent on that husband and one that would in the case of leaving him either lose her child (because how will she provide for that child, and even if she could have he was allowed to take the child with him after the divorce if he so chose) or they were both subjected to public shame, in my opinion was hardly “infatuated” with his sexual organ and love making abilities and a worry that some other woman DOESN’T STEAL PRECISELLY THAT. She was burdened by much greater concerns.
Men in those times were of course aware of what we are writing about, and especially of the position of women in society, and many were consciously taking advantage of that, and not just that they were not condemned for such behaviour but they were given praise and a higher status in their society because of that. “Imagine, having a faithful wife at home, even beautiful and handsome one, and cheating on her with some “filthy (or not) women in sleazy bars” (without meaning to offend anyone!) and she has to consciously suffer that and not say no...that was success!”
No one felt “sorry” for the woman. Even worse, because the goal isn’t pity but equality, no one gave her the right to leave and change her life, actually even she didn’t give that right to herself! Rare were those with support and understanding to make such a move. And support and understanding were crucial for that. Even their mothers told them that was the way it had to be (because they themselves were taught that and lived their lives the same).
Just, what has that to do with jealousy?!
When one is superior in a relationship, and that power often has to do with money, then that person often abuses that because in this case to “him” it is not enough that his wife loves him but it gives him satisfaction that she make jealous scenes, that she drives away his mistresses from their doors and tries to commit suicide if he leaves her because imagine... She loves him sooooo much and he is worth soooo much.
“-It’s not that she loved you so much and it’s not that she didn’t want to replace you and it’s not that she didn’t wish to leave you...but maybe she wasn’t able to.
She had to fight for the roof over her head, to have something to eat.
She fought that her child wouldn’t be called a bastard (that expression makes me sick) and for that child to have a mother and a father.
She stayed and fought for her place in your life because she didn’t have any other!
Not that she didn’t want to have it...there were better men then you!
And maybe she cheated on you but you would never, never have found that out and never will (remember she is as much a woman as are those you cheated on her with), but she knew she had to fight like a lioness to drive others away because where would she go if you replaced her, that was her home.
And you have consciously, in stead of giving her a sense of security and peace, fed her with insecurities and fear that something like that could happen. And how then is her fight and her fear jealousy (and even if it was wasn’t she right to doubt you?) or a reflection of her love for you?! How?!
THAT IS NOT JEALOUSY, THAT IS A FIGHT FOR SURVIVAL AND REMAINING.
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 her and made her look like a fool...but that doesn’t make you a great man, doesn’t make you a “big shot”.
You are not a good lover for it, and least of all are you a good husband!
And it is defeating, but she wasn’t fighting for you...unfortunately for you she wasn’t really fighting for you, she was fighting for herself. For herself and her home even at the cost of her reputation and you making her jealous and cheating on her.
That exists even today. Times have changed but not enough and not everywhere, that we might say that human point of view has changed completely for the better.
Even today you will hear from those “more primitively raised and arranged families” that a father is teaching his son not to be “whipped” and that he has to have “something on the side.”
Even today you will hear that men’s cheating is approved and women are still only whores when they do the same.
Even today you will hear that someone is on purpose using a better position in life compared to his partner so he can brag about her jealousy and in that hide that maybe “she has no choice but to be with him” (although choice exists but...)
However, a good thing in it all is that women no longer take notice of it. And they allow themselves into such positions, such humiliations and such manipulations, much less often. Actually, today they are rather “schooled” to be prostitutes then choosing to be wives in bad marriages.
Today they are waving their breasts and asses on cover pages and with it defying times and primitivism (I am talking exclusively of those who do it consciously and who stand behind that as their own choice, and not as a reflection of their low self-esteem and low self-awareness or a tool of manipulation, substitute for knowledge or something similar), and at the same time “bragging” of how good mothers they are.
Today women without shame wait on tables and they know that they again have to be (or don’t have to) undressed and filthy to get tips but they don’t care any more.
Today, above all else, female children are raised with different moral values in different social circumstances then once before. They are raised the same as men with an attitude that suffering bad is not good and it is not a desired form of behaviour, and that women also have the right to be financially and materially secured in every way and that they have the right to their jobs, careers and (good) earnings. They are raised knowing that being mothers is worthy of praise but is by no means a reason for being judged more strictly in marriage or for them to be expected to be perfect in all aspects of their lives. And children are in no way a reason for remaining with a bad marital partner (and/or the father of those children). And it isn’t necessary for a partner to be bad to end a marriage.
Today women can more and more remain or not with the one who cheats on them. Today women more and more have a choice to leave such a partner.
FINALLY, EVEN TODAY WOMEN WILL BE JUDGED BY MANY WHEN THEY LEAVE BAD HUSBANDS OR THEY STEP OUT OF BAD MARRIAGES, BUT THEY STILL LEAVE AND NO MATTER HOW THEY SURVIVE, THEY DO SURVIVE.
Today pillars of shame have been in extreme cases replaced by magazines that ridicule those who are primitive, those who are hypocrites and those who abuse under any excuse.
Today all sorts of things are allowed but we are moving toward just that not being allowed, abuse and mistreatment of anyone, even a person in a financially or in any other way inferior position in a romantic (marital) relationship.
Oooh yes, there are still many false moralists out there. Unfortunately, more often women who judge and call, how else but by the “classical derogatory word, aka whore” those who dared to leave bad relationships, most often precisely because they had the courage to change their lives unlike them.
Luckily, TODAY THERE ARE MORE AND MORE GOOD MEN WHO ARE NOT ASHAMED TO BE WHO THEY ARE, are not afraid to show that and are not afraid to confront primitive surroundings and primitive expectations of them. And in many cases those men are children of parents who were in such, bad marriages.
Today there are many people who look at life in a different way then their mothers, fathers, grandmothers and grandfathers, when it comes to suffering... Those who have, I will say it, a more correct moral ladder.
Yes, today there are also many of those unhappy with the new order of things, those who sit in groups and comment “where has the world gone?”... - I think there where you brought it with too much hypocrisy, too much inequality, too many bans and to many enforcements. To freedom.
But let’s get back to our topic... When next time you hear someone BRAGGING about his wife being jealous, and is not sitting with her like the grandpa form the beginning of our story (that is also a topic for discussion but on some other time), and are not laughing together HONESTLY at it, think again about what inferiority compared to him that woman he is talking about has found herself in. Material, emotional, physical? And almost always know that is not jealousy, they are not big shots.
Big shots are those cool characters that live their lives by their own rules and next to them their woman walks “full of herself”, happy, well dressed, with a smile on her face.
If someone is cheating on someone there is irrelevant for this whole story because the point is that they in their relationships and marriages give the best from themselves to their partners (as she is to him) and that marriage and joint life are a conscious choice with which they are making themselves and their partners happy and not just a fulfilment of social norm and security upon which they are building another life detrimental to the person they are with.
And not just that, this type of jealousy we were “talking” about isn’t really jealousy and even less a compliment to the one bragging about it. Simply - that is only and only using a better position one is in compared to his partner for mistreatment of the other. Nothing more and nothing less.
That isn’t a sign of how much someone is worth but of how bad his actions are for abusing someone’s weakness to raise their own value, unfortunately on a completely wrong thesis and theory.
*Jealousy in any relationship or marriage isn’t a reflection on the other partner’s high value, but a reflection of great insecurity in any form, of the partner who is jealous, in something in it’s life.*
Love and kiss each other! Your Brigita
