BE CAREFUL WHEN SOMEONE TELLS YOU S/HE LOVES YOU WHEN S/HE DOESN’T EVEN LOVE HIM/HERSELF. THERE’S AN AFRICAN SAYING THAT GOES: NEVER ACCEPT A SHIRT OFFERED BY A NAKED MAN. THERE ARE PEOPLE ON THIS EARTH WHO SUCCUMB TO HATRED AND JEALOUSY WHEN THEY DO NOT ACHIEVE WHAT THEY WANT AND WHO THEY WANT. THEY ARE ONE OF THE MOST TERRIFYING BEINGS THAT EXIST. MY REFLECTIONS ON THE DEFINITIONS OF JEALOUSY WILL PROVE IT. “Jealousy is nothing more than a fear of abandonment.” When you fear being abandoned by someone you THINK you love, you do everything to hold him/her back, even to the point of killing so that s/he will not go to someone else. “In jealousy there is more of self-love than love.” As Joseph Pieper has said, LOVE IS NOT AN ACT OF HAVING. You can never possess a person. If you do so, you are not loving the person but loving YOURSELF because it is for your own happiness that you want to HAVE or to keep the person, and not his/hers. “A competent and self-confident person is incapable of jealousy in anything. Jealousy is invariably a symptom of neurotic insecurity.” When someone is so possessive with his/her beloved, restraining him/her and preventing him/her in reaching his/her full potential, s/he is not really loving the person. Possessiveness is A SIGN OF LACK OF CONFIDENCE in yourself because you fear that your beloved will find someone better than you. It is also a SIGN OF NEUROTIC INSECURITY because your mind gets preoccupied with ill thoughts about the beloved. “Jealousy is that pain which a man feels from the apprehension that he is not equally beloved by the person whom he entirely loves.” Jealousy is borne out of distrust on the other. It is a form of self-flagellation because it is not the other who causes your distrust but you yourself create your misery. “Jealousy is a disease, love is a healthy condition. The immature mind often mistakes one for the other, or assumes that the greater the love, the greater the jealousy — in fact, they’re almost incompatible; one emotion hardly leaves room for the other. Both at once can produce unbearable turmoil…” It is a disease because it eats up your whole person. You cannot think clearly. You do things to harm the other and even yourself. Love, on the other hand, only wishes the happiness of the other even if his/her happiness is NOT WITH YOU. “The jealous are troublesome to others, but a torment to themselves.” When someone is jealous, it is difficult for the person to keep the pain inside. S/he ends up creating trouble so that others may partake in his/her misery. In the end, s/he adds to his/her burden by creating trouble. As the golden rule says: DON’T DO UNTO OTHERS WHAT YOU DON’T WANT OTHERS TO DO UNTO YOU. “Jealousy would be far less torturous if we understood that love is a passion entirely unrelated to our merits.” When does a person become jealous? WHEN S/HE THINKS THAT HIS/HER LOVE IS NOT RECIPROCATED BY THE OTHER. That is not real love, because real love does not expect to get anything from the other. The act of loving itself brings happiness. Being loved in return will bring more happiness BUT IT IS NOT REQUIRED THAT LOVE BE RECIPROCATED FOR IT TO BE TRUE. “Jealousy is the greatest of all evils, and the one which arouses the least pity in the person who causes it.” I will never pity someone who tells me he loves me but hurts me because he thinks I had hurt him. How can you pity someone who makes your life hell? How can you pity someone who blames everything on you even if EVERYONE KNOWS FOR A FACT that you cannot pass your responsibility to others BECAUSE YOU ARE GIFTED WITH REASON and your actions are not mere instincts? You decide how you act and YOU ALONE, are responsible for your action. “Like hatred, jealousy is forbidden by the laws of life because it is essentially destructive.” Because jealousy is an act of EXTREME self-love, it is always DESTRUCTIVE. Too much of anything is bad. And of course…As Johann Christoph Friedrich von Schiller said in 1783, Jealousy is the great exaggerator. ~ AS FOR ME, I WAS NEVER JEALOUS (AND WILL NEVER BE). I AM PROTECTIVE OF THE ONES I LOVE BUT I NEVER FELT "THE STING." IT’S BECAUSE, I BELIEVE IN HIM NO MATTER WHAT OTHERS MAY SAY OR HAVE SAID. I TRUST IN HIM BECAUSE I LOVE HIM, AND THERE IS NO LOVE WHEN THERE IS DOUBT.