People usually don't see what harm jealousy is doing to their relaitonships. Jealousy is indeed so destructive and may even mean a premature end to a relatinship simply because people will look at the statements you make and will interpret them in different ways.
This passage will analyze how what you say can be misinterpreted by your better half or by people that you care about and how that makes you look because you need to accept that jealousy will always make you look bad. No matter how jealousy is worded, it's easy to recogonize and even easier to dismiss people who are jealous because their negativity isn't worth wasting time on. Childhood and teenage experience will be taken as material to analyze how jealousy affects our life. We're going to look at the other side of the coin and see how these phrases are construed by those who hear them.
Childhood experience
Child: I hate you. You are not my best friend any more.
This usually happens when trust has been or seems to have been betrayed. The fact is that jealousy got in the way of friendship. This may happen because the child's friend became friendly with other people. It may have happened because the child's friend isn't choosing that one particular friend as their exclusive friend. Most children who say things like this want their friendships to be exclusive. They consider friendships to be like toys. They own them. It's a very spoiled way of being, but unfortunately, the child has not yet learned that his friends have a right to be friends with other people. A parent who sees this kind of behavior displayed by a child could react two ways. One way is to explain to the child that things could happen to make friendships so the way that their friendship has, and the other would be to over compensate the child in order to try and make the child happy again. The problem with the second way is that the child still feels that his or her friend has let him or her down, and this is validated by the parent's actions. Thus, the child will go on through life thinking that he or she can go on expecting exclusive relationships, and mom or dad will help wipe up the mess when things go wrong.
Take this example for a child who is a little older. The child learns that his best friend has a brand new computer that he wanted for Christmas but didn't get. There are two ways of dealing with this. The child can congratulate his friend and tell him how neat that is, or he can become jealous.
I didn’t want one of those anyway.
That's just a jealous kid rebelling because he doesn’t want his friend to know that he didn't get one and is upset about it, but his friend will know straight away that there is a measure of jealousy in the issue. The child may also show jealousy by going home to mom and dad and saying:
Jenny has a new computer. Why can’t I have one?
Parents shouldn't fall into this trap, but they often do. They know that the child is showing jealousy but how they translate this is in the following manner:
How can we afford that? We already have a lot of expenses.
There is a way through which both the parents and the child can win in this situation, but it takes intelligent parents to do it. Many go under the pressure and actually borrow or use credit to provide the child with the computer he or she wants. The sensible way to deal with jealousy of this nature would have been to tell the child that the world isn't an easy place to live in, and sometimes,people have to wait for good things to happen. Telling the child about the family finances isn't that bad of an idea because it will show the child why the friend has the computer and he doesn’t, but you can get around this in a much better way, by cutting the jealousy out of the situation.
She has that computer, but it will be out of date in six months anyway. If you start to save, I will add to it, and you will be able to buy an even better one.
The pressure put on inexperienced parents these days is such that they are much more likely to cave in and give the child what he or she wants. However, this is setting up the new generation with the idea that jealousy actually achieves something and gets them what they want. They then take this into a relationship and expect the same trick to work. The problem is that it doesn’t work, and relationships cannot work on this basis. They have to work on a more reasonable set of rules. Thus, children need to understand how things work in relationships so that they don't go into relationships with this sense of having all of the answers. Children need to learn to interact in a positive way rather than expect everything to go their way when they want it to.
Teenage experience
Let’s take this a step further and show some typical statements made by insecure teens that are potentially harmful.
•Everyone else is allowed to drink. Why can’t I?
•Kirsty in my class has tattoos. I want them as well.
•Mike is asking me to go a step further with sex. Do you think I should?
•How far do you let a boy go with you?
•Do you do drugs? Do you think I should?
You may ask what these statements have to do with jealousy, and they actually have everything to do with it. They could be explained to the following statements, and you will see the connection straight away.
My friends drink but I am not allowed to - thus, she is jealous of her friends.
Kirsty has tattoos. The girl that says this is jealous of Kirsty and wants the same thing as her.
Mike is the jealous one in the next situation. He sees his friends making out with girls and wants his own girl to allow him to make out with her.
In the next case scenario, a young girl is asking what a friend thinks because she is being pressured to have sex by an overly possessive boyfriend. Jealousy comes into the picture because she thinks she wants to and is jealous of those who are more confident and would know what to do in these circumstances.
In the last statement, jealousy again lies with the knowledge. The kid asking about drugs is unsure and perhaps wants to be as sure and have as much self-confidence as other kids who want to take drugs.
Jealousy takes all kinds of forms, but if you want something that you have not gained through merit, then you can almost certainly guess there is some level of jealousy at play.
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