I saw her in every woman, everywhere I went. For every well-rounded female ass I saw on the subway, I thought about him stroking it. I felt his erection growing at the sight of the girl on the corner, the woman in the deli, the bitch in the bar. I felt his lips on hers, and the swoon that followed rippled through me as if my lips had translated into his, but this vicarious sensation had nothing to do with pleasure. Maybe that’s her—the blonde with the premature lines on her face from too much talk. No, that petite Asian is more his type—gone, descended into the C train. Maybe she’s on her way to meet him. Or maybe she’s on her way home from his apartment, fresh-faced in the dew of his cum. What about her? Or her? Or her? Could he possibly be attracted to that? She’s rather frumpy, but who knows, maybe she has an I.Q. to die for and a gleam in her drooping eyes.
For several weeks, every woman I passed between the ages of 25 and 35 became a template for his desire; I couldn’t help imagining him fucking each and every one. It was torture to go outside because no ripe female escaped this compulsion of mine. I didn’t even know what she looked like, but I saw her everywhere. All I knew was her name.
Why did this invisible woman eat away at me like that? I’ve always prided myself on being a non-jealous person. “I never get jealous,” I used to boast. My boyfriends’ titillations with other women confirmed their desirability while justifying my shamelessly flirtatious behavior. Usually, if another person shows interest in someone I’m dating, I feel proud, not in a possessive sense, but as if my lover is a work of art. If he hangs alone in my private gallery, he may lose his appeal; the more admiration my lover inspires in others, the more value he has with me. Beyond the relativity of attractiveness, the idea of my lover being with someone else is often a turn-on, as the image places him in a new and distant light. This is especially effective in a long-term relationship suffering from the loss of novelty: distance, whether real or fabricated, re-opens the door to seduction.
However, that invisible woman slammed the door for me. She whisked away my boyfriend while we were wobbling in a gray area and even though I had diverted my attention to another man, I still wanted Mr. Incompatible to be around as an option, because I wasn’t sure … maybe one day, our incompatibilities would miraculously disappear and we would live happily ever after. I, Little Miss “I never get jealous,” was not immune to the sting of indifference. It was not the fact that he was seeing someone else that bothered me so much as how her presence in his life changed his attitude toward me. I crumbled when his head swerved to avoid my kisses and quaked at the closures of his emails—what was once a deeply personal “love” became a painfully generic “take care.” But I was not a happy person then. The green monster attacked me because I was already weak within myself, and without human weakness, jealousy is powerless.
Many people believe that jealousy is a necessary component of love. “If you’re not jealous, you’re not in love,” they say. It’s natural to be a little jealous here and there, but when it consumes and cripples it becomes a catalyst for destruction. Despite the possible negative consequences (sabotaged relationships, self-destructive behavior), a jealous episode has the potential to turn into a positive opportunity for self-awareness. When I examined my extreme jealousy as an objective witness, I realized that it was my own inner turmoil that lured the green monster into my reality.
Even so, a stranger feels more threatening than someone you know. It was so clear when I finally saw Miss Invisible. About a month after the break-up with my boyfriend, I was at a party with a fuck buddy. We were getting ready to go back to his place for sex when she walked in with another guy. (I knew it was she because someone said her name.) I had no idea if she was still dating my ex, but when I saw her I felt nothing. Was it the materialization of her physical self that trumped my resentment toward her? Would I have felt differently if I weren’t about to get laid? The point is that jealousy is rooted in context, and that context is related to perception. And most of us know that in matters of lust and love, perception is the cousin of distortion. How even more apparent was this distortion when, over a year later, when I was once again entrenched in a relationship with this boyfriend, I saw her at another party and I actually felt a strange affinity for her, not to mention a mild attraction! I was so amused by the coincidence that (for the benefit of my boyfriend) I had my friend take a photo of me with the woman whose mere name once was poison in my heart. What is jealousy but a mirror of your self-worth? When you’re happy and in love with yourself, there’s no room for hating someone, even if that someone is invisible.
