What is Justice Jealousy?

4 minute read

It’s an awesome summer night. You’re feelin’ that sweet wave of compersion, excited that your partner has met someone new and things are feeling stable in your non-monogamous adventure right now.  Then they surprised their new flame with a weekend getaway. Well, this isn’t out of our agreement bounds, I can handle it. You made plans to hang out with friends, go on a date, and enjoy time at your favorite park. This cool. No problem.

Two weeks later you spot a date to a museum on the calendar.

A week after that you hear your partner making arrangements for a quiet date in the park.

Your cool is officially gone. In fact, the flames are about to burst directly out of your head.

Where was this kind of initiative for planning dates when it was just the two of you? It’s infuriating, you asked and asked and eventually just gave up and accepted that they weren’t going to plan dates. But now they can? With someone else? WTF?

The memories flood back of all the times you pleaded for that kind of romantic gesture, only to be met with excuses or empty promises. The unfairness stings like a slap in the face. This is justice jealousy.

If you're considering opening up your monogamous relationship or have recently ventured into the worlds of non-monogamy or polyamory, you may encounter this complex emotional experience. 

Justice jealousy arises when you perceive your partner providing something to a new partner that they were unwilling or unable to give you in the past.

In Episode 151 of the Playing with Fire podcast, Joli and Ken Hamilton dive deep into the nuances of justice jealousy, offering a lifeline for those struggling to navigate its turbulent waters. They illuminate the crucial distinction between jealousy and envy and the roles resentment and the pursuit of fairness play in these emotionally charged situations.

Justice jealousy can show up in myriad ways within non-monogamous relationships. Perhaps your partner enthusiastically explores a specific kink or fetish with a new flame, despite shutting down or refusing to entertain those desires with you. Or maybe they exude levels of emotional attunement and care with someone new that felt sorely lacking in your connection. Even –maybe especially– mundane acts, like managing shared calendars or planning quality time, can trigger a maelstrom of injustice when you sense an imbalance of effort between existing and new relationships.

If you're navigating jealousy,  Episode 151 is a life-raft of insights and practical advice. It’s not easy to unpack this particular type of jealousy, if you’re struggling, understand that you’re not alone. We’re discussing sorting through the pain and co-creating a new path forward using powerful tools like Imago dialogues, Minimum Viable Agreements, Neuro-Somatic Intelligence, and the jealousy roadmap.

Episode 151 Transcript

This transcript was auto-generated, and may contain some errors.

Joli Hamilton 0:01
It's always a good time to talk about jealousy. Always.

Ken Hamilton 0:04
Usually when one lives with a jealousy researcher,

Joli Hamilton 0:08
right, so I want to talk about a specific type of jealousy. We've talked about jealousy before. And in my jealousy masterclass, I really dive into so many different types of jealousy. And I find it very helpful to break down the different types of jealousy. Or another way we can think about this is the the different kinds of situations that inspire jealousy in us. And then there's this one that was coined by Jessica Fern, when she wrote Polly secure as far as I know, that's when the term was coined, called justice, jealousy.

Ken Hamilton 0:39
I like that it really captures it to my mind. Well,

Joli Hamilton 0:44
it does. So let's talk about justice, jealousy, because I get questions all the time about okay, well, now that I know what it is, what do I do about it? So I want to talk about what it is when it comes up. And what I have seen people can do to move through it because we don't want to get stuck in any kind of, I don't want to get stuck in any emotional state. Honestly, I don't want to be stuck in it. I want to be able to move dynamically in my emotions.

Ken Hamilton 1:07
Okay, so what is it? Well, let's

Joli Hamilton 1:11
define jealousy first. Because I mean, I like I like to talk about jealousy from that basis. Okay, so jealousy is the complex emotion that arises when we detect a threat to our valued relationship. Jealousy can be differentiated from envy, because jealousy has this triangle jealousies about when I am worried in some way about a current relationship being interrupted by a perceived interrupter. Now, envy is the longing to be what the other is, or have what they have. So envy is about me feeling something toward one other person jealousy is about me getting caught in this triangular situation. And I think that the term justice jealousy might be a little bit of a misnomer, because, in fact, Justice jealousy may be a little bit closer to envy than to jealousy. Okay, but we can let we'll parse this out, we'll see where it goes. So I the reason I'm sorting out jealousy and envy, is because justice jealousy is when we are struggling with some frustration or irritation or sadness that a partner that we have, is able to and willing to provide something to a new partner that they weren't able or willing to provide for us in the past. Okay, so there is a triangle, because that we're seeing how, okay, there's there, I'm seeing this comparison between what my partner is able to provide for their new partner that they weren't able to provide for me or weren't willing to provide for me. On the other hand, often there's this envy, I wish I were having this, I wish I were getting this and envy and jealousy can show up together. In fact, they frequently do. And he's much more related to the comparison element that we often think of in jealousy when I compare myself usually negatively to this perceived interrupter. So to my mind, it's only important that we get these terms straightened out so that we are able to deal with them effectively. It's it's really not being pedantic in my perspective, this is about I want to be thoughtful in my approach to these experiences. And justice, jealousy can be absolutely overwhelming. So when I talk about jealousy, I talk about the archetypal level of jealousy when jealousy reaches a certain level, it touches into something so much bigger than the personal. And it can be like a tidal wave knocking us off our feet. And I find that Justice jealousy is one of the forms of jealousy that seems to bring us to that state, it can frequently be way more than just an irritation, it goes into full on rage, because we feel a sense of injustice,

Ken Hamilton 4:06
and injustice. And I can think of, I can think of two styles of this. Tell me well, so this is when I feel I see you providing for someone else, something that I haven't gotten from you. And I see two ways for that to have gone, like in the past that was like, which gives everything like that is in the past. You can't have given me something in the future. But so if I ask you for something, and you don't give it to me, and then you go and give it to somebody else, justice, jealousy, like hey, hey, why not me? If I don't ask you, but I want it and you don't give it to me. Give it to someone else also out so those are the two styles that I see in And I don't I don't know how much that like how different those two might be. But I feel like the moves from there, right?

Joli Hamilton 5:09
I think when we talk about working with it, sure, it's gonna make a huge difference. Because often what we're talking about when Justice jealousy comes up is really a retroactive pain. So it's bringing up it's often bringing to the surface, an unmet need for that may have existed for weeks or months, but often has existed for years or decades. So let's give some examples. Let's make this more real, right. So some things that you might have been asking a partner for, or have been wanting from a partner. And you didn't ask or you didn't know how to ask or you didn't even know it was possible until you saw it. Planning dates, managing calendars, feeling really seen, like a feeling someone's attention directed right at you, right, um, emotional, attunement, or initiating sex or initiating certain kinds of sex or participating in certain kinds of activities. Yeah. Things like that. Or having a child for that matter. I mean, we can make this one's

Ken Hamilton 6:11
like having sex with other people.

Joli Hamilton 6:14
Right, but anything that we have wanted some point and then we see provided to a new partner could elicit feelings of justice, jealousy. And the reason it gets so complex so fast is I think you're you're spot on. It has to do with one did we negotiated? We tried to get this. So we might actually feel really frustrated, because we've asked a negotiated and requested maybe gone to counseling and done all the things and asked for this kind of engagement. And the either the outright answer was no. But even more frequently, what happened was, we just didn't get it, the person may have even continually said, I'll work on it, but it just didn't happen. And so we feel the pain over that. Um, on the other hand, if I didn't know something was possible, or I had no way to, I didn't understand how to verbalize this, or if we just had a culture of not making requests in our relationship. And then I see you providing something that can elicit just as painful a situation, I don't think we should say one of these is worse than the other. They're just, they're different feelings. You have a pretty straightforward example of this, in your history feel like sharing just, that's

Ken Hamilton 7:32
why I kind of, that's why I brought it up. So my sexual relationship with my first in my first marriage wasn't what I wanted it to be. I wanted there to be more sex. And then she wanted to have sex with somebody else. So so she did. And there was this weird, it was consensual. Yeah, it was sent. It was consensual, we talked about it. And what we didn't talk about because I didn't bring it up was, Well, hey, wait a minute. But what but but I've been wanting to have more sex, and now you're going to go have sex with someone else. And so now, so am I, hey, what's going on here,

Joli Hamilton 8:17
but you didn't have the Hey, what's going on here? I'd have that conversation. I think that's a that's a pretty common experience. i One of the things that has come up for me is the calendar thing. It sounds small. But I, for years, managed our calendar, our shared calendar, because we were most of our life, you and I revolved around a business that we're running together and young children and homeschooling, and so I managed the calendar, you also had your own calendar, but I managed all of the conjoint calendar. And then that meant I also planned all of our dates, and put in efforts to making sure that we had together time. And when you started dating other people, especially new people, who you just met, and you weren't friends with already, all of a sudden you had the capacity to hold a calendar, and you knew how to call and arrange for hotel and you're like, and I knew you knew those things. So I am familiar with this from the inside. I'm familiar with it in me bringing up feelings of rage that seemed outsized to what was happening because all that was happening from my perspective was it seems so much smaller than what you're describing? I'm I was feeling like, wait, you know how your fucking Google calendar works? Awesome. Could you try planning dates for us? And it feels really small in comparison to you who I know for years went with a significantly subpar experience of having access to sex at all. Now feels like these feels like categorically different almost but they really aren't. Yeah,

Ken Hamilton 9:57
like what's your category though? I mean, I see what you mean. But well, then it comes down to the meaning we make out of them, right? It's not like if, if I didn't make if it didn't mean enough to me for me to have the conversation, then maybe it is in the same category or even a lower category than you who was like, But wait a minute, let's talk about this. Well, but we can assign the meaning from from multiple different directions.

Joli Hamilton 10:32
The reason I wanted to mention that is because retroactive pain, we often try to justify, we're trying to make it make sense, right? So we come up with all these reasons why I was like, I should have had that thing I should have gotten, I should have gotten it. And I I have seen you get really down on yourself and like get really self recrimination about how you didn't negotiate for what you wanted. And I've seen you take that on as, as, as something that you have been regretful about. But I didn't see you fully acknowledge how the like what this did in your life, what the Justice jealousy itself. So you're, when you experience this awareness of hey, now, now this other person is getting the contact, the sex, the the erotic overlap, and I'm not it damaged, your really, it didn't just damage your relationship with your partner, it damaged your relationship with this other person who you're also friends with. And I don't know, I think it's important to mention how this Yes, the meaning we make out of it matters, but also how intricate our lives can get and how. And then it can be hard to not blame the the new person for this lack that we're experiencing, or for this injustice that we're experiencing. And I've been the new person in that situation as well. So you poured tons of emotional attunement at me when we first started dating. And from my perspective, you were not providing the same level of emotional attunement to your established partner. Yeah. And I remember receiving a lot of or what I perceived as a lot of vitriol, like a lot of anger, it largely tamped down, like deeply suppressed, but like coming out sideways rage, because here I was getting the thing she wanted, but didn't know to ask for. And it damaged our friendship, like to the point of that friendship no longer exists. And I felt so disempowered, because it felt like the only thing I could do was say, Oh, don't emotionally attuned to I mean, I wouldn't know those words to say 15 years ago, but it felt like I was needing to just absent myself. And so in fact, I did. I frequently would, would push you to play on dates with her or push you to do other things I would I actually offered to leave multiple times leave the relationship like dozens of times, because I felt like I was interrupting. And you kept insisting that it wasn't me it wasn't my problem, and that I wasn't the one causing the problem. But I I still felt the impact. I mean, it was hard to like yeah, we I don't feel like I have any impact. I'm not empowered to do anything other than to leave the situation, because I can't give this person the thing that they're looking for. They're not looking for it from me. In fact, I tried to meet their emotional attunement needs myself. And it didn't I didn't do the same thing, right. I I'm using this example I it's it actually it's really intensely personal and it hurts because it just sucked so much. Yeah, it's, I think in every point of that particular snarl Perception is everything here. How we perceive this, I felt so the pain I felt, in this case where you were not planning dates. Honestly, I just felt irritation. I was pissy and I remember bringing it to you with a an attitude the first time I brought it to you I think I may have been pretty reasonable. But as soon as I'd mentioned it once, and it didn't get fixed immediately. I was pretty pissy about it. Are you kidding me? Are you kidding me? Um, but in the off in the other situations like a lack of feeling like we have a way to address this one. That's it.

Ken Hamilton 14:42
I mean, you were getting what you described as vitriol. You were getting blamed for something that you had no agency around. Those were my behaviors. But it it damages The other relationship, it damages the Metamora. Relation Lattimore relationship through. Through and Perception is everything through the wealth. I mean, this is why justice Jealousy is a good word. It's not just justice. Envy is because one, one very clear resolution is okay, you go away. Yeah. And now my relationship returns to what it was, or has the potential to be what I want it to be. I mean, there are there are several holes in that logic, but we're not always clearly illogical. We're

Joli Hamilton 15:36
not when jealousy shows up, we're usually not in our most rational prefrontal cortex regulated state, right? We are often in our hind brains were often super dysregulated. And in a survival mechanism state. And it calls us into question like how do we how do we deal with our relationships? Who's responsible for things because now I'm, I'm glad we talked about the difference between jealousy and envy at the beginning, because the thing that's coming up for me now is this is a very classic Hara jealousy situation. When if, if Hera had her needs as a Greek mythology, Hera and Zeus married, like She's the goddess of marriage, among other things, but she's married and she's married to someone who continually has other partners. And Hera is not happy about it. Harris super pissy. And Hera is violent over and over and over again. And she's not violent towards Zeus. She, she's right. Like, she's turning people into bowls, she's sending them a flame. She's disguising herself, and convincing an innocent young thing to convince Zeus to show his full form, which then burns her to smithereens. And she's constantly punishing. The third the interrupter, the perceived interrupter and never looking to her husband and saying, I'm wrong. I think we got to work on this. And in her case, quite literally, bro, I think we got to work on it. And her Radek, jealousy is so painful to me, because it misses the point, the only thing I can do is actually returned the relationship that I have the negotiated relationship I have and look to make the change there and the change may not be available. And at that point, I have to acknowledge the reality that this person is capable and even willing to perform this act. They just won't do it for me.

Ken Hamilton 17:44
And then and situations of justice, jealousy. Bring that home. Like I can't ignore the fact like, I've always thought maybe you could do this, but we the situation hasn't come up on now. I can see it. Yeah. And personally, I see. Sure. Yep. There's jealousy. There's envy. And then there's I don't know envies like weird little brother resentment. Yeah. Which is, and resentment can go in either direction. Really, you can resent the third or you can resent your partner or both. But definitely the when, when you came to me about the calendar, it was a lot of like that anger was resentment fueled anger, like, right, all these times that you didn't plan dates, every single one of

Joli Hamilton 18:41
those times ability for connection. Yeah. And,

Ken Hamilton 18:45
and it wasn't so firmly in that bucket of resentment until you saw me.

Joli Hamilton 18:51
Yeah, well, I used to think we were dope. I used to think you were incapable I legit was like, I don't know, like, I guess you just can't do this. And I had grown up in a household where yeah, my father never once did that. And then I was married. And that was not a thing that was done that was done. When I was 16. And we were first dating, there was some planning and some dating, then there was nothing at all. And so I had acclimated to the idea that cisgender men and heterosexual relationships barely have that capacity, if at all. And so I just shrugged and kept asking, but in this, like, in a way that didn't really bring home that this was a major point of contention, and then I expected you to step up, and that it was a bottom line requirement, in fact has now it is it is a bottom line requirement. I won't even date someone casually, if they won't plan at least 50% of our exchanges, because it's a bottom line requirement to be in relationship with me that you take responsibility for planning. But I didn't know to do that. So yeah, It wasn't firmly in the category of resentment. Because I didn't even know that I could resent it. I thought I was just accepting what was possible out of relationship with someone who was enculturated as a man. And that brings up the question of, so how do we how do we negotiate together? Because in those early days, you and I talked quite a lot about having negotiated relationships about really asking for what we want, and collaborating on getting what we want. But we talked about it, but then we still struggled, do it. And I think a lot of people find themselves in this spot where we're getting the idea intellectually, I understand I need to do this. But then there's, you know, I have to do it.

Ken Hamilton 20:53
That's hard. And

Joli Hamilton 20:54
I habits, change my language, deal

Ken Hamilton 20:56
with complexes that are getting in my way and doing these things, all of that. And so this is a slight diversion from what we're talking about. But this is how I feel our relationship is growth is right. So that is a reason to negotiate. For things that might not be easy. Because it would be if you and I sat down and we negotiated things, and I was like, No, I'm not sure how to do that. So no, I'm not going to commit to that. No, I can't I don't I just seem to do that. So I'm gonna say no, I'm not. I can't plan dates. But I didn't want that I actually want to be someone who does those things. I want to work through those things.

Joli Hamilton 21:49
And you certainly didn't want to be seen as someone who could be

Ken Hamilton 21:53
seen as that dope. That, that you

Joli Hamilton 21:57
incompetent and childlike, right? And

Ken Hamilton 22:01
so I have to grow out of that incompetent, childlike person, right? And back to the topic at hand. Sometimes that's easier to practice with somebody else. Yep. And so Okay, yep, I've okay, I can, I can see that I can do this too. Maybe now I can turn it around, and, and bring it back. Okay,

Joli Hamilton 22:25
so now let's talk about fairness, fairness, as entered the chat. Okay. Um, I think the number one thing that I talk to people about when we're talking about agreements that I want to unpack, so that they can actually move forward making agreements, is that fairness really isn't going to get you very far. Because most of life isn't fair. As my mama told me, your mama probably told you Life ain't fair. So we have to remember that we can be in deep resentment, we can be really frustrated, we can feel the injustice, but just stomping our feet and demanding fairness, generally speaking, doesn't it just doesn't work. I have rarely seen someone change what they're doing in their relationships, because somebody's stomping up and down saying it's not fair. It puts us down both into this place of feeling wronged. And now because someone feels blame, someone else feels like they don't have a fair agreement. So I'm bringing the word up just because the word itself just saying this isn't fair, might be a trigger point. And we might actually need to take that word and kind of tuck it away and say, what are some other ways we can talk about this? So the word fair doesn't just keep triggering us both as we're trying to have a conversation? Because what I want to move to instead is well, are is everyone involved in this situation? Because we could be talking about a particular dyad a couple of people, we could be talking about more, but who here is up for addressing what's going on? Who is up for that? And I mean, like in the situation you're talking about if you had went to your your first spouse and you had said, hey, I want to talk about my sexual needs. I would like to talk about that with you. Are you available to address this with me? That's a very different questions very different and also let's lets her lean in and decide whether she wants to be part of that. Have been willing to receive a no is a big deal. Sometimes the only answer we're going to get is unknown. And sometimes we just have to accept that because I think about having gone to you and asked you for you know more planning more thoughtful time to get Other and you said yes. But you didn't really mean it. You didn't, you didn't mean you were going to expend the energy to make a change. You were up for by your by your statements, you were up for addressing the problem, but you didn't. You didn't know what to do, right. And so you would just say that you would pay lip service to it. This is why I think a lot of people wind up in my office saying like, we need help, we need somebody else to navigate this because we just keep having this conversation. And we can't even get to the point where we're both on the same page that there's something to be addressed. And that's because we get defensive, we get freaked out about resentment. Sometimes we want to rush to forgiveness, like, we want to like oh, like I can't be in the wrong here. So I need my partner to just forgive me and move on. There's usually repair to be done.

Ken Hamilton 25:53
Yeah, definitely. Well, so in the situation we're talking about, we have had conversation or conversations previously, about what? And we'll just use the example. So we had conversations about what you want it. And I didn't give it to you. Now, that all by itself since I had agreed to and then I didn't that all by itself requires repair. Right? That's not that's

Joli Hamilton 26:30
there's repair needs, just from the the over promising and under delivering,

Ken Hamilton 26:34
right. But then in then you take it a step further, and you watch me do it elsewhere. And now. It's it's not just Hey, you didn't do what you said you would do it, you did it. You expended that energy, but but not in this direction. So there's a whole other level of repair that

Joli Hamilton 26:54
well, yeah. And at the same time, you said yes, sometimes it feels possible to play out a new pattern with someone new, and it still doesn't feel possible in the original relationship that I was talking about? Um, what if there is no repair that can happen? What if we actually need to just decide? Yeah, this is something that we just can't quite get on the same page about, I just want to make space for the fact that that sounds sometimes there is no repair, sometimes sometimes we have to decide that what our partner is able to give us and is willing to show up and give us even if they're paying lip service to it. Like know what they're just not. And to continually come back and say, Well, you can do it over there. So I insist you do it here. I see. You actually they don't have to. And now it's up to do I want to say this is a deal breaker for this relationship. So we need to renegotiate the whole relationship. Because that is an edge for me, that's a boundary and I'm going to say, I I'm I see that you have this capacity, I see that you're unwilling to expend this capacity here for me. And I need that I need that in my relationships. So what do we do? So not all relationships are going to continue?

Ken Hamilton 28:14
And and the thing is that that mismatch could go anywhere from from a full on deal breaker to oh, well, I guess it just doesn't matter. And I'm not going to worry about it. But there's a lot of different kinds of negotiations that can happen in between those two, two extremes, right.

Joli Hamilton 28:30
So I want to there's another example that comes up. And it comes up for us personally. But it also I see it all the time. And that's about initiating sex. who initiates sex? Yeah, the the ongoing conundrum of like, who's putting in the energy to create an erotic scenario? is another place where Yep, maybe I maybe I want to renegotiate. But sometimes and I have noticed this around my my own stuff. I also just get really angry, I have a complex around. When partners won't initiate sex with me, I can't really like I get complex, I get caught in the grips of my own shifts around what that means. And so even though I, I feel the well, if you go out on a date, I know that you initiate sex with your dates, you have told me you do you're you're you're very clear that that is how that happens. And you're able to and if you don't initiate sex with me, it's not that you never do. It's that it feels like there's this bottomless pit in me that wants more and more and more. And that's not really about my relationship with you. That's about years and years decades of feeling unwanted will on unlovable unsexy, whatever. And I want you to somehow fill that I want you to heal that complex for me, by initiating sex, I've decided in my head, that initiating sex will heal that. And so I'm expecting and asking you to take care of that.

It feels, then, like the injustice that I'm experiencing, because you're initiating sex with anyone, like, I also feel like I hold the bar so high, that you can never really jump over it like, Oh, my God, it's, I feel myself holding the bar so high, like now, if you don't always initiate sex, or you don't initiate it in a specific way, or whatever, I can still be disappointed. And I'm bringing this up, because I feel like it's a, it's obvious to me that that's my complex, that's my psychological junk to work on. But the line is fuzzy, because you also have this habit of needing to have sex initiated for you, you don't like to initiate it, you know, like that, that has also been a habit. So it can be two things at once. It can be that I want my partner to do something more, while also I am I'm having an outsized reaction to this lag. And I think this is why it gets so complicated to sort out. Justice, jealousy and how to move forward, because it's often there's a murky area of it's not that they never do this thing. It's that they don't do it enough. Or I'm not receiving this feeling enough. Because you weren't having no sex with your partner. In the description you gave earlier. You weren't having no sex. You just weren't having as much sex as you wanted. I? Yeah, there's no normal amount of sex to have. Right. So how, how was she supposed to know? And so

Ken Hamilton 31:55
and that is the first of the two are actually the second of the two styles of justice jealousy that I mentioned, where, you know, we never talked about it. So how would you know, so you got

Joli Hamilton 32:07
to be resentful about something which leaves you in a pretty well defended position. Right, I want to add in another piece now, it also leaves you feeling there can be this smugness, this self righteousness of now yeah, this one up position in Terry wheels, framework, the which is real convenient for your sexual shame. So your complex of sexual shame then can be like, awesome. Now, my need for feeling shame around sex can be met by this other person withholding sex from me. And I'm not mentioning it. And she's not mentioning it. And now, oh, because you're not simple. You aren't simple. We're all so complicated that sometimes we have needs that are truly horrendous. I mean, I have a need to fight and push that I don't like I don't think that's a good thing about me, my desire, my my visceral need to fight so hard. I don't applaud that in myself. But there it is. And so I have to work with it. I have to work with it pretty gently, because I can easily project that on to you. And make it seem like you're letting me down so that I can fight. And this is where I think Justice Chelsea gives us this opportunity to dive into like, wow, how am I showing up in my relationship? How am I co creating this situation? CO creating

Ken Hamilton 33:43
the situation? Yeah. And, you know, it strikes me the way you just described it, that sure there's, I mean, we, we all participate in the relationships we're in. We're not like, we're never in a relationship alone. There's always somebody else and they bring their things in. And the when I think about justice versus fairness or equity versus fairness, I think about that cartoon of the three different height people at the fence. And when they all have the same size box, it does the short person no good. And the person who could already see over the fence is now standing on a box like that can that's fair. That's what I think of as fair everybody gets a box. That's not good enough. Now,

Joli Hamilton 34:32
it doesn't actually address

Ken Hamilton 34:34
it doesn't address the issue. So you're taking the box away from the person who can already see over the fence, give it to the short person now everybody sees over the fence. This person got two boxes that person got no boxes, is that fair? And this is why fair doesn't mean anything. What's What are we looking for? We're looking for a sense of justice and equity and ultimately, in these relationships, we're looking for relationality so it

Joli Hamilton 34:59
So you and I have talked about needing to have meet our various needs. And we have different trauma histories. Yeah. So we we have very different needs. Same thing. We have very different needs. We also have different desires, different ones.

Ken Hamilton 35:17
And not just different trauma histories, different psychological development histories, like my, my sexual shame doesn't come from any any trauma. It's just came out of the way I was, like, the beginning part of my life. And there it is, but there it is, because this is

Joli Hamilton 35:34
because I have all kinds of sexual trauma and very little sexual shame, right? Yeah, I like so yeah, it would be silly for us to be super gentle around my sexual shame. And not yours. Just because I am the person with violent sexual trauma history. That doesn't, because I because that's just not how it manifested. And I had to go to several therapists to prove to myself that that was true, because I kept thinking, No, I must be all fucked up this way. No, no, actually, for whatever reason, I've been able to make some pretty decent sense out of it. And so it's not causing me. Yeah, so causing me trouble. But you who had this gentle experience of your upbringing in comparison, yeah, manifested a whole bunch of sexual shame that I mean, at 57 years old, I think we still talk about your sexual shame outside of the podcast, because obviously, it comes up here. But in our day to day life, three or four times a week, it might come up on a week where you're feeling down, and rarely would we go a month without it. Yeah, peeking its head over them.

Ken Hamilton 36:37
And I bring this up because in in these situations of justice, jealousy and the situation that you described about dating and whatnot. So you talked about raising the bar about, you know, maybe, maybe you do something with it that that you don't need to do. Okay, yeah. So you come to this situation with a set of things that you want to work through as well as a desire. And so do I. So we can get caught up in the justice of it. And we can definitely talk about repair, but the repair is going to come from? Well, I will come to you. And I will work with you on repair for what your experience was of it, not the meaning I make of your experience of it. It's really not relevant it. I want to know what your experience was, and I want to work from there. And then I'd like you to do the same.

Joli Hamilton 37:39
Can you say that again? Cuz I think it's really important. Yeah.

Ken Hamilton 37:42
So when, when we have had a conflict of any kind, let's, let's stick to this justice DeLacy. Can I arrange dates for us situation? When it comes to a head, and you're like, Hey, I saw you planning dates for this other person, but you don't plan them for me. I can get all caught up in whatever of my stuff I want to or and this is my third move. I can find out as much as possible all your experience of this is, yeah. And just work to repair it. Work to talk with you work to understand it.

Joli Hamilton 38:28
So you can believe me that it hurts me? Yes.

Ken Hamilton 38:33
You're trying to manipulate me into going on the dates that we both want to go on? This isn't a manipulation. And I think this is something that people get caught up on. And the reason I say that is because I can I have felt it in myself. Like, oh, you're coming and you're like mad at me. And you're trying to get me to do something, trying to get money you're trying to manipulate you're trying to control me? No, actually, you're trying to communicate to me what one of your wants, and how you could get it. And we have already talked about how we would like to work together to make this happen. That isn't a manipulation. But there are parts of me that are like, Oh, we're being controlled, put up the walls. Yeah. Instead, forget about all that. Deal with it later. And in this moment, okay, tell me start dealing with whatever repairs necessary in this moment, whatever understanding. Yeah, and

Joli Hamilton 39:32
for me that might look like needing to be heard, for what's happening. And I would be looking for you to stay in a non defensive position for a long time for for, for probably several conversations of keep though, keep that defensiveness down and just hear what is what I'm experiencing. And

Ken Hamilton 39:56
during that time, keeping my defenses down. requires me to trust that you will hear me when that you are not ignoring my experience that you're not steamrolling it, you just have a need to express and you would like to be heard. So

Joli Hamilton 40:17
the format of the imago dialogue works really well for this. And we've used it both formally and informally. And I find that when, when we're talking about issues of justice, jealousy, the formal use of the imago dialogue is really helpful. So we can link back I think that's Episode 128, or 29. We can link back to that, because participating in an Imago dialogue is it's creating space to hear the impact of the situation for your partner, and then you flip it, so there is time for the other person to be heard and seen. And here's where we can get really creative. It's possible that you would have said to me something along the lines of Yeah, I have no idea how to fix this for us, because for whatever reason, I don't want to play on dates for us. I don't even know why exactly. It doesn't make any sense. It doesn't align with my values. But I don't seem to want to that's a hard place to be but,

Ken Hamilton 41:19
but that, but that would then allow us honest, honest, and would allow us to have conversations about that, that might allow us to grow.

Joli Hamilton 41:29
So when I shift that into the conversation around initiating sex, I mean, we went for years where I just committed to Yeah, okay, I'm gonna initiate sex because, one, it's easier for me. And two, I, I don't want to get caught up in working through your sexual shame every time we tried to have sex, because every time you tried to initiate sex, then you would get triggered into your sexual shame place. I'm like, You know what, instead, even though it's imbalanced, even though this feels unjust, I'm gonna decide to prioritize my my own needs in this and say, You know what, I don't want to have to move into the role of either therapist or taking space from you. So they don't have to be in that space. So instead, I'm going to do what I do to initiate sex. And we did that for years before your the work you were doing on your shame had taken hold deeply enough for you to be able to pretty smoothly initiate sex. And it's still not all the time, like you go through ups and downs. And that's part of acknowledging the fact that we were just very different people. And when you are connecting with other other partners, I've noticed and I've noticed this when, when we're playing all together in a space especially, there's just different aspects of you that come forward. There are these aspects of you that I know they're performative, you're performing a role, you're actually ICU, this I'm going to make. This is my my assessment of them. I don't know whether it's true. I see performing masculinity like this is what a man does, they initiate sex, and they do this and you don't perform your masculinity for me, which I'm glad it means I actually know you at a much deeper level. And more than that, I've created a space where you your, your gentle self can feel held and home. And you don't do that. So I don't when I when I'm able to really look holistically at the situation and see like, oh, well, I don't want you performing your masculinity for me. So I will accept this imbalance. And at the same time, I have asked you to continue doing your own work to see what can be unpacked, so that you can initiate from a place that's authentic to you not performative.

Ken Hamilton 43:44
So this that was pretty cool. What you just did, they're

Joli Hamilton 43:51
talking about our sex life. Complexity. Yep.

Ken Hamilton 43:54
Well, that's all I mean, I would love that. But okay, so justice, jealousy. It's now looking to me like it's this superficial response, that if you use it, I mean, this is how you train people to work with jealousy. If you use it as the marker that, hey, there's something to work on here. And then you dive into it, and you do that repair. And then you have the following the follow up discussions of what's really going on, there's going to be a lot of material in there, if what you want is to grow together,

Joli Hamilton 44:34
right? So jealousy in my framework is an opportunity for deeper intimacy with yourself and others

Ken Hamilton 44:40
now, and just like, I mean, it is jealousy. So it is also true that if it's an abusive situation, if this justice Jealousy is a manifestation of abuse of any kind, obviously, it's not what it is. It's not going to grow on it's something to To, but

Joli Hamilton 45:00
it would still be an invitation to intimacy with yourself to deepen, like, wait, what's going on because I am being triggered into this alertness I don't, this is why I don't want jealousy to be cured. I want it to act as the alert system and is for oh, something's wrong here. But if for instance, you bring this to a partner, and their response is to behave in violent ways, or to reverse the attack on you right to pull a classic Darboe move of reverse the the their defenses and attack the person who's sharing their feelings with them. Yeah, obviously, we are going to need to actually turn to our own therapeutic methods and gut like and deal with, Hey, I think I'm actually in a in an abusive or manipulative or coercive relationship. I gotta figure out what I'm going to do here. Before we wrap up, though, I wanted to talk about the role of forgiveness in all of this.

Ken Hamilton 46:01
Okay, tell me about that. Because I, I know, I know a little bit about your, your relationship with

Joli Hamilton 46:09
forgiveness, you mean that? I don't like it that

Ken Hamilton 46:11
it is that it is a suspicious thing? Yeah. So that's

Joli Hamilton 46:15
it. It's suspicious, I actually do, I think I've grown quite a lot in my approach to forgiveness. And I have, I can appreciate it in a way that I didn't, I wasn't able to a younger version of me,

Ken Hamilton 46:27
I've learned a lot and have a different relationship to it than I used to as well. So

Joli Hamilton 46:32
when I was growing up, I was taught to forgive was, was tied all together too closely with forgetting and, and then I have no data storage, right? If I'm going to forget that a harm happened that I felt this this, that I felt something come up that was so intense that now I have experienced upheaval rupture. And now, we've maybe we've done some repair, maybe we've done an apology and accountability ladder, whatever we've done. But to insist that forgiveness has to happen. To my mind is an injury in itself. That is an injury. And it's because I need to, I need to allow forgiveness to come at its own pace, but also forgiveness, I need to disentangle it from the idea of forgetting because the better definitely, go ahead. All

Ken Hamilton 47:31
right. So that is an injury to your, your pattern recognition and your self protection.

Joli Hamilton 47:38
Right. So the actual definition that psychologists usually used for forgiveness is the releasing of vengeful and resentful feelings toward a person or group who has harmed you, but the releasing of those feelings, the feelings of vengefulness the feelings of, of fierce ferocity, right, the releasing of those feelings is not the same as condoning the action that happened, or or forgetting. And I think it was because I was brought up with a forgive and forget. And I will totally lean into forgiveness, as long as people stop asking me to forget, because in fact, I need those data points, I need to understand what has happened. And now I need it because I am I am researching and looking at relationships across a longitudinal scale. And I want to keep that, that memory to allow me to see what patterns can help me understand about the future. But also because that's my experience. And it feels very humiliating to a part of me to say like, now you have to forget, which would be like an act of, well, I'm gonna have to actually like, do something because I don't forget easily. I like I have a strong memory and I don't forget very easily. But forgiveness can play a role here. Because when I think back to the situations that we talked about earlier, moving forward and collaborating on how we meet our actual needs, like okay, I want you to initiate sex more. And you also want to be part of you want to feel more comfortable initiating sex, okay, learn allowing myself to move into a place of letting go releasing those, those feelings of anger and resentment is what lets me move into the space of collaborating with you again, rather than holding this this acrimony that I think you mentioned earlier that that either or like you're wrong, I'm right. If we stay in that adversarial Sariel position, we can't really collaborate. So forgiveness does. It does ring true to me as part of the process of dealing with justice, jealousy. What we do Don't rush it. I think if we you know, if we rush into forgiveness, that's usually placating and fawning behavior,

Ken Hamilton 50:08
right. And that which this is how my relationship to forgiveness has changed is that's what I would do. Like, I just wanted to move. Well, yeah, I wanted to move back to the connection we had. You always wanted to move forward to the connection we'll have next after we've resolved this situation. Yeah.

Joli Hamilton 50:29
Which is so funny because I get so focused on institutional memory of our relationship. And you focus on a forward moving relationship. Yeah. But the the moves we have taken around forgiveness are very much opposite. Yeah. So I hope this conversation on justice, jealousy has landed with people. This is a really complicated topic. If you're looking for more information on it, I would encourage anyone to join us for one of our monthly ask me any things Ken and I are hosting ask me any things for the playing with fire community. And it's a great way to have actual interactions. Let's talk about what's coming up for you. I'd love to see you in there. Thanks for having this conversation. Ken. Thank you