Friday, January 21, 2022

The Destructiveness Of Jealousy In Dating Or Marriage

There is no rational excuse for someone to ruin a friendship or romantic relationship because of personal insecurities about opposite gender friendships, flirtation, or sexual attraction to multiple people.  It is one thing to have subjective pain when a dating partner or spouse has opposite gender friends (which is still asinine unless it is not related to fallacious ideas about relationships) or flirts with others, and it is one thing to give a partner time to become intellectually and emotionally accepting of opposite gender friendships or extra-marital flirtation.  Having a distorted understanding of friendship, dating, and marriage, though, is philosophically erroneous and will forever prevent either romantic relationships or friendships from blossoming into the greatest forms they could have--or it will hinder them from having the same quality they had before.

A person who tosses aside or trivializes strong friendships built on mutual openness, emotional intimacy, and, most foundationally, rationalistic awareness and love of truth does not necessarily deserve to have the friendship continue.  Since mercy cannot be obligatory, it is up to the trivialized friend to decide if he or she wants to remain in a friendship with someone who has treated them in this way.  However, for the sake of what the friendship was and could be again, it is always possible that the hurt friend will still cherish the person they are close to and not turn aside from them.  All of this is true whether the friendship was jeopardized by a dating relationship or something else, as well as regardless of whether the friendship is between people of the opposite or same gender.

A person who is unwilling to celebrate their partner's friendships (given that the friendships are not shallow or exploitative) with men and women is undeserving of their romantic partner, especially if they are the kind of person who would flirt with someone who is separately dating--which is not sinful on its own by any means--and then object to their partner having a platonic friendship with someone of the opposite gender.  Hypocrisy such as this is a major indicator that someone thinks their relationships, romantic and non-romantic, are nothing more than a means to express an irrational selfishness, as if their feelings and desires dictate how others should live.  Of course, this is entirely contrary to reason and Biblical commands.

The fact that even now it is fairly normal for people to express jealousy and controlling impulses in their romantic lives shows that Western society has still not completely embraced the freedom of accepting opposite gender friendships as the life-giving and crucial part of sociality that they are.  Until no default objections to opposite gender friendships inside or outside of the church are present, people might think that there is something wrong with them for wanting non-romantic, nonsexual intimacy with the opposite gender or that it is somehow morally good to let jealousy poison strong platonic and romantic relationships.  Jealousy, by definition, is wanting what someone else is shown or given because one thinks it belongs to them, but affection is not a scarce resource that can only be given to a handful of people.  Loving a friend or romantic partner does not mean one cannot or should not love anyone else with the same sincerity and passion.

Neither friendships (with the same gender or the opposite gender) nor romantic relationships force someone to choose one over the other.  If someone cannot understand this on their own or at least with help from others, they do not deserve either the strong friendships they might disregard or the romantic partnership they falsely elevate over all other relationships, instead of treating them both as important but somewhat different.  Even inside of a romantic relationship, the irrationality behind letting most cases of jealousy become driving forces and objections to how one's partner lives (unless actual adultery is occurring) will lead to devastation or weakening of intimacy when openness between partners suffers.  Nothing rational, Biblically obligatory, or even pragmatically helpful comes from most kinds of jealousy.

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