Jealous Jealousy

Often jealousy in a dream is the result of your self image or self esteem being low. It is often seen in dreams where a young woman feels that another person is more attractive than she is, or that her partner will leave her. So the person who feels jealous feels she is not lovable.

Having something or something that someone else has can cause jealousy.

If you dream of a jealous person it can signify that you have unconscious problems in a relationship.

Emotional pain or fear of abandonment may push us into childish or even baby levels of reaction and can lead to jealousy and rage. The pain of losing a love one are frequent signs that our infant or child self is still wounded or malformed, and needs the healing of being allowed into consciousness and thereby integrated into the adult personality. This is not often managed though, as it is a painful process to feel childhood fears and pains as an adult. As many of us avoid pain as much as possible, using painkillers and social drugs to escape from it, the process of meeting who we are is not a common undertaking. See Beware of Love; Life’s Little Secrets

 While governments fight wars and spend billions on armaments, the main work of human beings is left undone. This work is the task of growing up, of dealing with our childhood, healing it and emerging as a new and mature person who is moving beyond the need for aggression, jealousy, possessiveness and dependency. We need to take the energies locked in our old animal behaviours and our childhood and release them into the possibility of growth and transformation.

 Example: I married again when I was 41. Up until then I had never been in love, although I had been previously married and fathered children. In fact I had not been capable of love in the usually described way of really connecting with my partner. But I had been using my dreams to work through my childhood miseries and had begun to undo something that had caused me to cut off all emotional ties with my mother when I was about five. This had caused me to lack any growth in my relationship with a woman. I remained at the age of five emotionally. So when I did fall in love I did so with the emotional maturity of a five year old.

Fortunately I had some insight into what was happening as I experienced all the drama of feelings a child feels in relationship with its mother. I met intense feelings that drove me to want to be near my wife all the time. I would follow her from room to room like a dog for fear of losing her – not only had I cut off from my mother, but she had sowed the seed of terror that she would abandon me. Also for the first time in my life I felt intense jealousy and would turn up unexpectedly at the house to see if my new wife was with another man. The tricks of survival I had learned in childhood also surfaced. The main one was to shut down emotionally and distance myself if there were any threat to the relationship. And so with all of these and other powerful feelings I had to learn to recognise them as childhood feelings that were not good to have in my adult relationship and encourage the growing part of me to move beyond them. Of course that meant moving into and through emotional adolescence. Believe me, none of it was easy on my wife. Our poor partner gets hit by all the miseries of childhood we meet in our growth.

Example: I felt that I was angry about the fact that in my relationships with women I had constantly tried to satisfy their needs. This was always complicated because my own needs were often opposed to theirs. Their sexual need in contrast with my sexual avoidance for instance. But usually the feelings were less specific, and generally under the realisation that it took me a very long time to reach the point in life where I was not a victim of their or my own dependence, struggle to be in control, desire to possess, jealousy, and so on. As indicated, this worked both ways. It leaves me feeling that I should not easily change the way I live at present. It is so valuable to be able to live by myself, and not need to constantly try to deal with another person’s needs.

Example: I just had this dream where I was going to church with my family and my boyfriend and while he and I were walking there, he stopped and sat down and I got sidetracked as well. I was talking to my sister who started to sell cookies and I looked over at my boyfriend who was talking to one of the girls who bought a cookie and I instantly got a feeling of betrayal and jealousy so I called him over and he heard me but didn’t follow me. So I walked up the stairs and he then took notice of how serious it may be and followed me. I was crying and I was so upset and I just sat on the floor until he came next to me and held me asking what was wrong. Then all of a sudden we were in my room and I was upset because he had told me that before him and I started dating, he had done sexual things with other people and this upset me because I had never done anything sexual before and I’m a virgin. I wanted him to be the same way because I wanted it to be special for the both of us. Which this makes no sense because in reality, he’s never done a thing before.

 You start off going to church, which suggests that you had adopted the morals of the religion you belonged to which may give you a viewpoint that leads to your problems. Maybe not accepted but influenced by. The cookie scene could be an allusion to sharing or offering sexual favours. Has your sister had sexual experience? But then you get an uprush of feelings which leads you to act out being a child trying to get attention; which you got from your dream boyfriend. After going through a big release of such feelings you change direction. The feeling of being free and joyful comes when you have dropped any expectations of what you previously felt was real love. Then he wasn’t with you, and that may be a warning of expecting too much from him.

 Example: I had been living with a woman who was visiting me in my own home, where I lived alone. It was apparent that when I showed any signs of friendship with another woman, she became very jealous. So I stopped any sexual relationships with her and told her it didn’t work, but that we could be good friends. In fact it has worked very well since then, and I see that sex is a very big cause of jealousy.

Example: The counselor who is chopping up something on a lap board with a razor blade looks up and says happily to her, “I like the way you handled that. How creative you are.” I am filled with jealousy because he is noticing her and ignoring me!

Useful Questions and Hints:

Have I felt fears of being abandoned or left for someone else?

Do I have any insights into what causes my jealousy?

What do I feel in the dream?
See Avoid Being Victims – Techniques for Working your Dreams – Conditioned Reflexes