I’m still not entirely clear how jealousy is a fuel for sex. Maybe I need to reread your piece. And I do think different people have different wiring, even within a similar culture. I’ve never been a particularly jealous person, and now 5 years into non-monogamy, I’m really not. But that’s maybe just kind of how I’m wired to start with.

I do think a lot of jealousy comes from socialization of living in a dominance hierarchy and that some of it comes from insecurity. Early visitors to the Americas were amazed a how cooperative and non-jealous the Indians they encountered were. They had no concept for this because their civilization was built on competition. If your society is built around sharing and taking care of all, “mine” doesn’t really factor in. If all children are raised by the tribe, who cares who the father is?

But what I do really see is that now that James and I have a truly non-role based relationship (wives should be like this and do that; it’s the husband’s job to X,Y, Z — and instead we are entirely co-creating all aspects of our relationship) that we are much more inclined to view each other as individuals in a consensual partnership rather than feeling entitled to each other’s time, attention, attraction, etc. Attachment and entitlement are two places that feed jealousy, I believe, but you aren’t wrong that most people would probably have to do some significant work to rewire their thought processes around this since current relationship narratives actual seem to kind of encourage something somewhat antithetical and we’ve all grown up swimming in the ocean of hierarchy as right and natural.

Anyway, very interesting conversation………