Freedom From Jealousy and Envy

© Richard Bolstad

Betrayal

“One Sunday morning William burst into the living room and said, “Dad! Mom! I have some great news for you! I’m getting married to the most beautiful girl in town. She lives a block away and her name is Susan.” After dinner, William’s dad took him aside. “Son, I have to talk with you. Your mother and I have been married 30 years. She’s a wonderful wife, but has never offered much excitement in the bedroom, so I used to fool around with women a lot. Susan is actually your half-sister, and I’m afraid you can’t marry her.”

William was heartbroken. After eight months he eventually started dating again. A year later he came home and proudly announced, “Dianne said yes! We’re getting married in June.” Again, his father insisted on a private conversation and broke the sad news. “Dianne is your half-sister too, William. I’m awfully sorry about this.”

William was furious. He finally decided to go to his mother with the news. “Dad has done so much harm. I guess I’m never going to get married,” he complained. “Every time I fall in love, Dad tells me the girl is my half-sister.”

His mother just shook her head. “Don’t pay any attention to what he says, dear. He’s not really your father.””  Quoted by David Buss in Buss, 2000, p 9

This story demonstrates one method of dealing with jealousy: retribution. Are there others? In this article I will summarise the research on jealousy and envy, and present two NLP models for dealing with jealousy.

Strategies For Jealousy and Envy

It was 1977 before the first professional symposium on Jealousy and Envy was held (Salovey, 1991, xi). This is intriguing because Jealousy and Envy have been discussed as major problems by religious teachings for thousands of years (the tenth and final commandment of Moses in Exodus Chapter 20 forbids people to covet what is not theirs).Envy and jealousy, however, continue to be amongst the most popular topics that people seek answers for when they write to magazine advice columns. The level of confusion conveyed in these forums indicates that these are socially taboo topics. Much of this article provides clarification to help us think through, in NLP terms, what is going on here.

For a start, the term jealousy has come to include envy in modern English. Mostly, I will separate them out again here, because they have a very different cognitive structure (Parrott, 1991, p 3-30). Envy is the desire for what someone else has whereas jealousy originally referred to the discomfort created by actual or threatened loss of what one already has. Both are based on comparison of oneself with another, but there is a big difference in NLP terms. The strategy for envy tests the results of ones own comparison (“Do I think they have more than me?”). The strategy for jealousy is based on knowing or guessing the results of another person’s actions and testing ones estimate of that comparison (“Are they getting or likely to get what I have?”).

The comparison made in envy (“Do I think they have more than me?”) is very context specific. Research suggests that a wage worker does not feel as envious of a millionaire as they do of other workers who have mysteriously achieved more than they themselves. The success of a peer casts doubt on their own actions and abilities, whereas that of the millionaire can be dismissed as due to other factors. Envy is more likely, then, when ones own self esteem is threatened by the other’s success (Parrott, 1991, p 7). Curiously, envy is considered more acceptable in western cultures than in many African, Eastern and Middle Eastern cultures. Advertising in the United States advocates envy, encouraging people not just to want what others have, but to want to have more and better property than others have. As a contrast, in many African, Eastern and Middle Eastern cultures, people deliberately downplay their achievements in public. In these cultures, people value appearing to be similar to others more than they value appearing to be “better” than others (Salovey and Rothman, 1991, p 281-283).

Similarly, with jealousy, there are criteria which determine whether the strategy for jealousy (“Are they getting or likely to get what I have?”) is triggered. Firstly, to assess whether a situation with a loved one merits jealousy, a person needs to consider the likely behaviour of three people: a) themselves, b) the rival who may take what they have, and c) the loved one. If the rival is unlikely to act effectively, or the person whose attention may be won is unlikely to respond to the rival, then jealousy is less likely. If their own behaviour is likely to be overwhelmingly successful, then again, jealousy is unlikely (White, 1991, p 231-251). Jealousy is based on an estimate of the relative effectiveness of each person’s actions, as stored, in NLP terms, in submodality distinctions.

Secondly and more basically, the assessment of the need for jealousy is based on an evaluation (a value judgement) about the thing which may be lost. People become jealous when the thing they may lose is in a domain which is central to their self-image. In cultures where parental certainty is not important for self image, men do not become so jealous of their woman partner’s sexual “infidelity”. In the Toda culture of India, as studied in 1906, sexual jealousy was relatively unknown, but a man might become extremely jealous if his younger brother married before he did. Being able to find a wife was an important source of Toda self-esteem, but keeping one’s partner sexually faithful usually had no effect on social standing or other major outcomes. It might simply mean that one’s partner was not very desirable (Rivers, 1906). Where private property is minimalised in a culture, jealousy over property is lessened. In western nations, where private property is important to self esteem, jealousy is more frequently reported (Hupka, 1991, p 263).

Personality characteristics (metaprograms, in NLP terms) decide which type of response people will use in a situation once it has evoked jealousy or envy (Bryson, 1991, p 200). The ethical problems with jealousy and envy, which religions have cautioned about, come largely from what NLP would call away-from actions. Away-from actions are only one of the three possible responses to these two feelings. In the case of envy, the response to envy can be either to move towards (“I want what he/she has.”), to move away-from (“I want him/her not to have what she/he has.”) or to re-evaluate the criteria of the strategy (“What she/he has is probably not worth having”). In the case of jealousy, the response to jealousy can be either to move towards (“I will act to protect what I have or regain this.”), or to move away-from (“I will stop the other person being able to get this”) or to re-evaluate the criteria of the strategy (“This is probably not worth having any more.”).

The emotional components of envy or jealousy are not set. Jealousy and envy do not always feel the same. The feelings present depend largely on which of the three responses listed above is made. Related emotions may include sadness and distress, fear and anxiety, anger and resentment, despair and depression, or admiration and hopefulness (Parrott, 1991, p 13, p 18).

Like these emotional components jealousy or envy may be thought of as normal responses to certain challenging situations. They may also at times be considered pathological (particularly when the criteria used in the strategy are unusual). For example, if any mention of another person evokes intense jealousy in a marital conversation, most psychologists would consider the jealousy response to be part of a personality disorder, and would focus treatment on that (White, 1991, p 233).

Context Rules!

In running each of the strategies which create jealousy or envy, the perceived context is crucial. Some researchers have suggested that “envy” and “jealousy” are not, in fact, words for emotions per se, but labels for the cluster of emotional responses that may occur in specific social contexts. Furthermore, people do not usually report “I feel jealous.” in the way they might report “I feel sad.” This could be because jealousy and envy are socially disapproved of. However, it could be because describing someone’s response as jealous is an evaluation of its social meaning, rather than a description of how they feel. When others categorise my behaviour as envious, I am likely to say, if anything, that I feel resentful (of the unfairness of the situation, or the unfairness of the other person’s achievements or the unfairness of their way of acting). We have all observed people who seem to “acting out of jealousy” or even “acting vindictively” but who deny any such emotional responses. This need not mean that they are in denial. Envy and Jealousy act mainly as categorisations useful to others, rather than as internal labels for how a person feels (Parrott, 1991, p 5-6).

Jealousy seems to be easily identifiable in most 11 month old children, who exhibit distress when their parent pays attention to another person. Parents tend to respond to jealousy as if it were “endearing” (a demonstration of the child’s love for them) and so they are more tolerant of aggressive behaviours if they know that the context could have produced jealousy (Hart, 2002, p 395-402). This means that jealousy is positively reinforced. Social scientists have also observed ongoing positive effects of relationship jealousy in later life. Jealousy is seen to confirm the status of a relationship, to invite renegotiation of the terms of the relationship and to indicate commitment to the relationship. In surveys, many women in particular report deliberately acting so as to provoke jealousy in close relationships, in order to elicit demonstrations of affection and commitment, or in order to test a relationship (Buss, 2000). At one extreme, then, jealousy is seen as a positive force. At the other extreme, jealousy does sometimes lead to breaking off of relationships, or even to retribution which may harm the relationship or persons irretrievably (such as killing the partner; the legally accepted punishment for adultery in some countries even today). While some levels of jealousy may be socially useful, not all jealous behaviours give any obvious evolutionary advantage to the jealous person.

We mentioned above that personality characteristics determine what response people make to jealousy or envy. There are also some personality characteristics which predispose people to higher levels of jealousy. Low self esteem, low life satisfaction, an external locus of control (feeling like things just happen to me) being easily emotionally aroused, and being more dogmatic are all associated with higher levels of sexual jealousy (Bringle, 1991, p 114). However, gay men who have these personality characteristics still have much lower levels of jealousy than heterosexual men in general, indicating that social expectation and context are more powerful determinants of jealousy than personality (Bringle, 1991, p 124). While in the beginning, participants in open marriages (where extramarital sex is accepted) report jealousy just as frequently as those in closed marriages, after a few years their levels of jealousy tend to drop. They adjust to the new social context and to repeated experiences where sexual “infidelity” has had minimal harmful consequences (Buunk, 1991, p 160). As we might expect, then, levels of jealousy are related to current social context and seem unrelated to any specific individual childhood experiences. People from “broken” homes, or who were abandoned or adopted are no more likely to be jealous later in life (Clanton and Kosins, 1991, p 132)

There are some well researched gender differences in jealousy. In studies replicated in the United States, the Netherlands, Germany, Japan, Korea, and Zimbabwe, men are more likely to be jealous of sexual infidelity, and women are more likely to be jealous of emotional intimacy. Evolutionary reasons have been given for this (the survival of men’s genes is threatened by a wife’s sexual infidelity; the survival of women’s genes is threatened by abandonment). Recent research suggests that part of the reason for this difference is that men assume that sex means love, and women assume that love means sex. If this is so, then both sexes respond more fully to situations where they feel that the two factors are involved, and each sex responds with milder alarm when they think only one type of infidelity has occurred (Buss, 2000, p 2-3). Emotionally, men respond to infidelity more with both anger and self-criticism, while women respond more with sadness and grief. In reaction afterwards, women are more likely to either leave the relationship or act to re-establish the relationship by discussion of what has happened. Men are more likely to wait and see what happens, either remaining loyal or breaking off the relationship without discussion (Bryson, 1991, p 201-204).

However, interesting as these differences are, the differences between men and women are dwarfed by the differences between cultures such as, say, France and America. To simplify the research results, “It appears that, when jealous, the French get mad, the Dutch get sad, the Germans would rather not fight about it, the Italians don’t want to talk about it, and the Americans are concerned about what their friends think!” (Bryson, 1991, p 191).

Leslie Lebeau’s Approach

In the NLP field, Leslie Lebeau (under former name Cameron-Bandler) and Michael Lebeau (1986, p 182-183) suggest three factors which may generate jealousy:

• Low self esteem. This requires more generalised change work.
• Criteria for the partner’s behaviour which are too possessive. These criteria can be changed.
• An actual threat to the relationship where the partner is considering replacing the client. This suggests working on how to maximise the relationship the client has, and building her/his own resourcefulness to deal with a real life challenge.

Cameron-Bandler and Lebeau suggest using their generative chain model for moving beyond the feeling component of jealousy. Leslie’s videotaped work with a client who had jealousy problems in her relationship is an excellent example of this sequence (1985). The generative chain is run in five steps (Cameron-Bandler and Lebeau, 1986, p 217):

1. Recognise you are feeling jealous.
2. Appreciate that jealousy is a signal that you need to take care of your emotional well-being.
3. Evaluate whether your well-being is actually in danger. If not then shift to enjoying the fact that your loved one is also enjoying time with others. If it is then do step 4 and 5.
4. Recall resource times in the past when you have taken care of your emotional well-being.
5. Imagine future times when you will use this ability again (futurepace).

In the videotaped situation, Leslie’s client tells her she considers her jealousy excessive and fears it is harming her relationship. The client explains “If he just goes ‘I had a far out time today. I had this neat conversation’ or ah ‘So and so said this,’ It doesn’t have to be very embellished. ‘Oh, Lucille said’ and I go ‘Lucille!?’….I have never had a reason to be jealous with this man, and I just go ‘Be jealous’….Whenever I look at him in the pictures I just go, like I did in real life, like, it’s cool, he’s fine, I’m, you know, and then I go; I still….”

Leslie has her client access and anchor some powerful resource situations. “What I’d like you to do is I’d like you to go to memories that you have of times when you know that you made him happier than he could be with anyone else. You don’t have to talk about them. I just want you to go and; well I’d like you to go and get three…. And the feelings, all the feelings that you have knowing not only the feelings you had while you were giving him those experiences, but what it feels like to know that you have given them to him; that’s something that can’t ever be taken away; not ever, no matter what happens he will always have those in his personal history.”

Leslie then has the woman recall a jealousy evoking memory while Leslie fires this resource anchor. Her client explains “It changes the picture. It’s really funny. It really changes the picture. I mean it doesn’t change the picture but it changes how it looks to me…. I feel better so the picture doesn’t look so bad.” Now, when Leslie has her go back and re-run a memory like the one where her partner said “Lucille said….”, the client reports with amazement “Well it was more like I was interested…. Right, I was interested in what he was saying.” 

Leslie’s languaging is very impressive here. She has presupposed this successful result even in the framing of her original request to find resource experiences. Coming from a time before explicit submodality change was taught in NLP, the client’s description of the change is revealing indeed. “It doesn’t change the picture but it changes how it looks to me.” She says. The content is the same but the submodality distinctions are different.

In a follow-up interview nine months later, she reports that this change process has dramatically improved areas of her relationship that she did not even realise were being held back by her jealousy.

Using the RESOLVE Format

What I want to do next is to expand Leslie’s description and suggest a model for working with jealousy which incorporates what we know from the research listed above. I will use the RESOLVE format for NLP changework (Bolstad, 2002) to do so.

Resourceful State For The Practitioner:

Part of being confident about helping someone let go of jealousy is knowing the incredible subjectivity of this human experience, as described above. Realising that people respond in so many different ways protects me as a guide from buying into the one specific model of the world in which my client’s feelings are the inevitable response.

Establish Rapport:

At the same time, jealousy elicits the gamut of unpleasant feelings, from anxiety, sadness and fear to anger, guilt and depression. There are few situations which place a person at such risk of harming themselves or others, and your skill as an NLP Practitioner, creating an empathic rapport, is crucial to opening up the person’s model of the world and changing their response.

Specify Outcome:

Both the research and Cameron-Bandler’s work emphasise how complex the issue of clarifying outcomes is in the field of jealousy. Bearing in mind that jealousy is triggered only in domains central to self-image, we can see using Robert Dilts’ neurological levels (Dilts, 1990, p 1-8) that this is very much an identity level issue. The first step will be to clarify whether the relationship the person is jealous about is actually the core issue they are choosing to change their feelings about, or whether it will be more effective to focus on self-esteem, and on learning to be “at cause” in their life generally, so that they enjoy life more fully (see my article on “Being at Cause”, Bolstad, 2004). Changing this broader context deals with the personality traits associated with higher levels of jealousy. Getting clear on the person’s outcome at this time in our work together also shifts their thinking from “Away from” actions (like retribution) to “Towards” actions which may preserve and enhance either the relationship or their self esteem. If the person tells me an outcome that seems mostly away-from, I simply ask them “If you get that to happen fully and completely, what even more important outcome will you get through that?” and suggest we plan specific actions to achieve the higher positive intention of their original goal.

Open Up Client’s Model Of The World:

Jealousy is profoundly based on the perceptions and interpretations a person makes. From the research, we can see that opening up the person’s model of the world will involve having them make four separate re-evaluations:

1. The context: What are the social rules in this context, for each person involved, affecting the behaviours that you feel jealous about? What has been discussed so far between you and your loved one about these rules? It’s important for the person to notice that different social groups and different cultures have completely different expectations about what behaviours are OK, and thus that different people feel differently in the same situation. There is no “right” way to feel about your partner having a lunch date with an attractive ex-partner, and there is no universal rule about it that they “should know”.
2. The person themselves: Do you know that you are lovable? This evaluation is what Leslie dealt with in her session described above. I usually like to check that the person has this sense, not just from their relationship with their current loved one, but using other reference experiences as well. In a situation where jealousy is based on real life threats to the relationship, it is also important to check that the person has a sense that they have alternative choices. What would happen if this relationship ended and how can you know that you will survive? Paradoxically, the more they have alternative choices available, the less anxiety there is about getting this specific choice, and the better they will act to preserve this relationship.
3. The loved one: What specifically did you see and hear that led you to be jealous, and what was your mind-read, guess or imagination about events? The NLP meta-model gives us a way of elegantly checking what is imagined and what has actually been seen or heard of the loved one’s actual behaviours.
4. The “rival/s”: How do you perceive the other person? Is that perception useful? Level of anxiety is based on the submodality distinctions people make. If I code the other person as visually closer to my loved one than I am, then my anxiety is elevated. As Lucas Derks points out in his Social Panorama model (Derks, 1998), we relate to the images we have of others, and these images can be altered.

Leading:

Since jealousy involves an assessment of the interpersonal situation, changing it requires planning interpersonal action (ie coaching the client to respond differently in the relationship) as well as guiding them through intrapersonal action (personal changework).

1. Changing the internal feeling response. This can be done using anchoring (as in Leslie’s example) or submodality shifts.
2. Letting go of unpleasant past experiences using Time Line Therapy or Reimprinting on the Time Line. Here I am clearing experiences which have occurred in this relationship, as well as in other relationships. I tell the person’s unconscious mind to preserve the learnings from past events, in order to safeguard them, so they able to let go of the unpleasant remembered feeling.
3. Planning to discuss the current issues with the loved one. My aim here is to ensure that the person can describe their feelings and the specific events that they are responding to, without mind-reading and without judging their loved one’s behaviour. There is a world of difference between saying “I need to talk to you about the way you’ve been violating our relationship, flirting with every available woman. Treat me like I mean something to you!” … and saying “I felt hurt when we went to the party. I guess I saw you talking to other women and even though it was a social event, I wanted you to spend more time talking to me.” There’s also a difference in listening to the other person, between demanding “How can you be so insensitive!” … and checking “So you’re saying you didn’t realise it was upsetting me, and you want to be able to relax and talk when you’re at a party because that’s part of the fun.” The skills of negotiating in this situation are taught in my Transforming Communication training (Bolstad, 2004).
4. Enhancing the relationship. Leslie suggests using the Relationship Evaluator and Threshold Neutraliser from her book Solutions (Cameron-Bandler, 1985, p 201-213) to change the person’s responses within the relationship more generally.

In the Relationship Evaluator, she has the person identify the behaviour of their partner’s which they have been jealous about and:

• Imagine themselves doing that behaviour, and ask “What circumstances would cause me to behave in this way?” and “What understandable goal might I be trying to reach by doing this behaviour?”
  • Ask themselves “How could I behave differently towards my partner, knowing the possible circumstances or goals that might cause that behaviour?”
  • Ask themselves “In what way is this behaviour that I object to actually a manifestation of some quality that, at other times, I admire in my partner?”
  • Ask themselves “What are the qualities I most want from my partner in this relationship?” and then “How could I more fully live and express those qualities myself, in this situation where my partner behaves in this way that I object to?”

My article “Creating Lifelong Partnerships” discusses a number of other aspects I would add to this project. Family Therapist and NLP model Virginia Satir had a very beautiful way of assisting couples to re-anchor their positive response to each other. She would ask them in detail about how they first met and fell in love (Satir, 1967, p 118-121). As they described this experience, they stepped back into the state of being in love and being attracted to each other. Satir would then have them look at each other, anchoring this feeling to their present relationship. By asking these questions, Satir also elicited from the couple six very important “strategies” to use an NLP term. These strategies cover the three key areas of relationship identified by Robert Sternberg (1988): passion, intimacy, and commitment. Jealousy can be thought of as a temporary failure to run at least one of these strategies.

1. How do you get the feeling of loving someone?
2. How do you get the feeling of being loved by someone?
3. How do you get the feeling of being sexually attracted to someone?
4. How do you get the feeling that someone else is sexually attracted to you?
5. How do you get the feeling of being committed to a relationship?
6. How do you get the feeling that someone else is committed to their relationship with you?

Each of these feelings is an internal response, but it happens at specific times, as a result of something you see, hear, or touch physically, or a combination of these. If you think of a time when you felt loved by someone else, for example (strategy number two), the external event that let you know this might have been a certain look from that other person, or seeing some gift they gave you, or hearing them tell you they loved you in a certain tone of voice, or feeling the way they held you in their arms. People have different ways of getting this information and when they do not get it, they are more at risk of feeling “jealous”.

Verify The Change:

Ecological Exit:

Verifying the changes involves checking that the person feels different AND checking that the results in their life are satisfying. Leslie’s client describes nine months later that the good feeling that she got from her session has generated a change across her relationship.

Summarising

Jealousy refers to the range of emotions generated by situations where one may lose something from a domain central to one’s self image. Relationship jealousy involves an assessment of the possible actions of the loved one, the rival and oneself. The responses the jealous person has may be away-from (eg ending the relationship), towards (eg nourishing the relationship) or re-evaluative. As a result, feelings may range from grief to anger to anxiety to hopefulness. Jealousy occurs from early in life and is positively viewed by caregivers, but early life experiences seem to have minimal affects on later jealousy responses. What does affect them is the social context, and the person’s expectations about the situation, which vary from culture to culture, gender to gender, and social group to social group. The person’s self esteem and happiness also affect the response, but not as much as these social contexts.

This cognitive scenario of jealousy offers us many places to intervene using NLP. Leslie Lebeau has described an assessment of the causes of jealousy as relating to low self esteem, possessive relationship criteria or real threats. In her video Lasting Feelings she guides a client to reaccess resource experiences with the loved person, and anchor these to situations where she over=reacts jealously. Using my RESOLVE model, I suggested also:

Resourceful state: Realise that jealousy is generated by specific strategies, which can change.

Establish rapport: Respect the intensity of jealous feelings.

Specify outcome: Ensure a positive outcome so as to support towards responses. Choose to deal with this specific relationship or with larger issues of self-esteem.

Open up model of world: Explore the social context of rules and beliefs, the person’s own resources, and their internal representation of the rival. Check the sensory specific events which they have responded to.

Leading: I suggested four types of intervention:

1. Change the feeling response with anchoring or submodality shifts.
   1. Use Time Line based processes to clear previous experiences of jealousy.
   2. Plan to discuss the issue with the loved one using “I messages” and “reflective listening”.
   3. Enhance the relationship using processes such as Leslie Lebeau’s Relationship Evaluator, and eliciting each partner’s strategies for love, sexual attraction and commitment.

Verify the change and Ecological exit: Checking  emotional and real life changes.

Richard Bolstad is an NLP Trainer and the author of RESOLVE: A New Model of Therapy. He can be contacted at learn@transformations.org.nz

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