Jealousy and walk-ins

Three days ago, on Thursday, I woke up from a dream feeling jealous because in that dream my ex, א, was hanging out with someone else. While I knew it was just a dream and just my own creation, it didn't go away. I had to really fight it.

I've been thinking about it. Jealousy runs in my family... my dad, my mother, my granddad! Can I ever overcome this? That is one thought I had. On the other hand, I also saw how jealousy was my own creation... a delusion.

Of all the so called "negative" feelings like greed, hate, anger, etc, it appears to me that jealousy is the most easily justifiable and the most unreasonable.

It appears that this stems from the fact that we delude ourselves in to thinking that our favors are to be returned or that our feelings are to be reciprocated. (In this particular instance, I expect my ex to still want to be with me.) When we feel that this feeling is not reciprocated, we feel dejected or angry. But when this feeling we project, instead of being reciprocated, gets directed at someone else, we feel jealous. We expect to be the one at the receiving end. But this is our own demand that is simply unreasonable. We also find it easy to justify because as human beings we expect reciprocation. We always play a non-zero game and we don't want to give anything away for free. Especially when it comes to love, when not reciprocated and redirected, it feels a lot worse. We actually feel that we have the right to be at the receiving end. Otherwise, we feel used. Hence, it become easily justifiable.

Perhaps I find it even more justifiable, because of the many times I've been used and betrayed. So, when I'm not at the receiving end, I think I'm not just being used by that I'm being betrayed and stabbed in the back. My mom did it by using my trust to meet her lover and continue with her affair. She stabbed me right through my heart when she said that he meant more to her than me or my sister, her own kids! Add that to the fact that I was molested, sexual abused, and shamed in front of others by family members and strangers alike. I've got a monster in my head.... I think everyone is out there to use me.

I think that I walk in to those several times (self-blame, I notice as I write this). At the same time, I'm holding on to this idea/ideal that I've not let anyone close to me since my mom betrayed me, until I met א. So, I value my love for א much more than anything else. May be that is why it hurts more that she broke up with me. May be that is why I think breaking up with me would mean that she just used me... and I hate to feel that she too did me in. I don't want to think that my time with א was simply another one of my "walk-ins". It is weird logic and even I don't get it. But when is matters of heart ever rational!

May be none of this is a reason and I just want to hide behind these so I don't have to face the facts that I'm a loser.

PS: I was talking to א earlier today and she told me that she was, "just hanging out", today. Makes me place more value in my dream and hence I wrote this post.