Why 2025 is the Year to Let Go of Jealousy, Ep. 92

Are you tired of jealousy hijacking your relationships? Imagine stepping into 2025 with the power to transform those uncomfortable feelings into opportunities for growth and deeper connection. In this episode, I'm sharing three powerful tools to help you navigate jealousy in non-monogamous relationships with confidence and grace.

What You'll Discover:

• How to identify jealousy in your body before it spirals in your mind
• The art of uncovering hidden triggers that fuel jealous thoughts
• A game-changing approach to reframing jealousy as a helpful signal

Key Insights:

• Why suppressing jealousy only makes it stronger
• The surprising connection between curiosity and relationship growth
• Real-life examples of transforming jealousy into deeper intimacy

Whether you're new to non-monogamy or an old pro, this episode offers practical strategies to help you create lighter, more loving relationships. Learn how to turn jealousy from your enemy into your ally on the path to personal growth.

As a relationship coach with over a decade of experience in non-monogamy, I bring both personal insights and professional expertise to help you navigate the complexities of open relationships. My approach combines practical tools with deep emotional work to foster genuine connection and personal growth.

Ready to make 2025 the year you finally break free from jealousy's grip? Tune in now and take the first step towards more fulfilling, confident non-monogamous relationships.

Get on the waitlist for Beyond Jealousy today. www.elleciapaine.com/jealousy

https://elleciapaine.com/call

Chapters

• 0:00 Transforming Jealousy Into Growth and Connection
• 12:55 2025

Transcript

Ellecia: 0:00

Have you ever felt jealousy creep in at the most inconvenient moment? You're scrolling your phone and there's a picture you weren't expecting to see, or your partner mentions a name that you've never heard before, and suddenly your mind is racing. Let's be honest jealousy can hit you like a ton of bricks, but here's the thing it doesn't have to stay that way. What if 2025 could be the year that you let go of jealousy for good, not by ignoring it or pretending that it doesn't exist, but by transforming it into something that works for you instead of against you? Stick with me, because that's exactly what we're talking about today. I'm Ellecia, your non-monogamous relationship coach.

Ellecia: 0:37

Welcome back to Nope, We're Not Monogamous where we explore love and connection and growth in this beautifully complex world of non-monogamy. We explore love and connection and growth in this beautifully complex world of non-monogamy, and today we're tackling a really big one jealousy. Now, let's be real. Jealousy gets a really bad rap. It's often seen as this, like ugly, shameful thing, and that we're supposed to suppress it. We're supposed to pretend it doesn't exist or just not experience it at all. Right, but here's the good news it doesn't have to be that way. In fact, jealousy can actually become a tool for growth and deeper connection when we know how to work with it. So by the end of this episode, you'll have three powerful tools to help you name, understand and reframe jealousy in a way that leaves you feeling lighter and freer and much more confident in your relationships. So grab a cup of coffee and settle in and let's get started.

Ellecia: 1:30

So here's the thing about jealousy. It's sneaky. Sometimes it's loud and obvious, like a knot in your stomach or a sudden argument with your partner, but other times it's very, very subtle and it shows up as this quiet sense of unease or a passing comment that leaves you feeling off or wrong. Have you ever had one of those moments? Maybe you felt jealousy, but you didn't know how to name it, or, worse, you felt guilty. You felt guilty for even feeling jealous in the first place. You felt guilty for even feeling jealous in the first place. You're not alone. I've been there and so many of my clients have, so many of our listeners have. But the truth is that ignoring jealousy doesn't make it go away. It just makes it a lot harder to deal with and it actually sticks around a lot longer. So that's why we're not going to just talk about why jealousy happens. We're going to explore why. Nope, we're going to explore how to move through it and how to grow from it. Right, I have loads and loads of experience with jealousy. I've been non-monogamous for over 10 years and then, prior to that, an entire lifetime of being someone who identified as very jealous and very possessive. So, trust me, I got you your first tool. Okay, name the feeling, acknowledge it.

Ellecia: 2:58

When jealousy hits, our natural instinct is to react. Right, we go straight into these spiraling thoughts, these stories. What are they doing? Am I not enough? What if I lose them? What if they're better than me?

Ellecia: 3:12

But jealousy actually lives in your body. You have a physical reaction in your body before it ever becomes a story in your mind, before it becomes all those thoughts, right? So the next time that you're feeling a spike of jealousy, pause, take a couple of deep breaths and ask yourself what's happening in my body right now. What am I feeling physically in my body right now? Maybe your chest feels tight, maybe your stomach's churning. Maybe your hands are shaking. Maybe your stomach's churning, maybe your hands are shaking. For me, my might get a little tunnel vision. The edges of my vision actually go darker. So name the sensations, and this will pull you out of your head and back into the present moment. It's a really small shift, but it's actually really powerful, and so, by naming the feeling, you take the first step towards breaking the cycle of overwhelm. You take the first step towards breaking this momentum that builds up that then leads to catastrophe down the road.

Ellecia: 4:16

If you're someone who experiences jealousy, you know what I'm talking about. You look back after you're feeling better, you've gotten the reassurance, you had the conversations, you've slept, you've eaten, you maybe had sex right, you've taken care of all the needs that you have. And you look back and you're like gosh, wow, I really overreacted there. Or, man, I sure wish I hadn't just like flipped out and gone into all of that. We didn't need all of that to get to this connection that we finally found on the other side of it, right? So this is the first step Take a deep breath and acknowledge what you're feeling, become aware of it, give it a name, okay.

Ellecia: 4:57

So your second tool once you're grounded, dig a little bit deeper and find the trigger. Ask yourself what just happened that made me feel that way, what just happened that activated this feeling of jealousy? And also what happened one step before that. What happened right before that? Sometimes the trigger is really, really clear, like your partner mentioned someone new, or you see something unexpected on social media. But other times it might take a bit of reflection and digging. Maybe it's not about the person or the situation at all. Maybe the real trigger is fear, like fear of being left out, fear of losing your connection, fear of not being enough Right. So so, like literally journal it out. Okay, here's, here's what I want you to ask, here's what I want you to journal out when jealousy shows up, what is the story that I'm telling myself? And then is that story true? Often, just getting those thoughts out of your head and onto paper will help you see the situation more clearly.

Ellecia: 6:06

When jealousy shows up, what story am I telling myself? And is that story true? I don't know about you, but I will go into all sorts of details about how, um, that person that I've never slept with is obviously a better lover than me, right? I don't know that that's true. Uh, or you know the, the, the, the ways that my brain will contort and spin and try to like protect the story that it's created in order to protect me. Right, it's trying to do a job of protecting us, but it starts to create these stories to justify the actions that it wants you to take. And you got to ask yourself is that real? Is that person really prettier than me? Does my partner really like them more than me? That's all shit, I'm telling myself. I have no way of knowing that, unless my partner told me that, and then that's a whole other relationship problem. If my partner is telling me I like them more than you, well then my jealousy is pretty valid and we should probably be talking about you know something other than like reassurance. Ok, but the basic, the basic tool here holds true, right? Because if the answer is no, that's not true, it's something I just created or guessed or I'm assuming then you know what your next step is, right. So tool number three this is where the real magic's at Reframe the message.

Ellecia: 7:45

Jealousy isn't just an annoying emotion, it's a signal, it's a signpost, it's your brain's way of saying hey, look at me, something needs attention, something needs your attention, don't ignore it. And you know what happens when you ignore it it gets bigger and louder and more uncomfortable and worse, right. So what would happen if, instead of fighting your jealousy, you asked it hey, what are you trying to tell me? Maybe it's saying I need reassurance. Or maybe it's saying I feel disconnected and I need quality time with my partner. Or maybe it's saying, hey, your partner's being a real asshole right now, you need to do something. Or maybe it's saying, hey, your partner's being a real asshole right now, you need to do something. Okay, so if you reframe jealousy as a guide, as a tool your brain has rather than an enemy, it changes everything. It helps you approach your relationships with curiosity instead of fear, and that curiosity, that's where real connection and growth start to happen. Getting curious in your relationships leads to vulnerability, it leads to intimacy, it leads to deeper connection.

Ellecia: 8:57

I'll never forget the first time I really put this into practice. My partner had mentioned a new connection and even though I thought I was fine it should have been fine Jealousy hit me like a truck. My first instinct was to react, jump into action, to ask a million questions and to spiral into self-doubt. But instead I paused, took a few deep breaths and I named the feeling. It was tightness in my chest, a pit in my stomach. I got really hot. I found the trigger. It wasn't the new connection itself, but a fear that I wasn't bringing enough to the table.

Ellecia: 9:38

And when I reframed the message I realized a couple of things. So this fear that I wasn't bringing enough to the table was like have I been showing up as my best self? Am I giving my partner a reason to like be excited about me, or am I growing stagnant? Am I growing complacent? And, of course, if there's someone new in the picture, that person, showing up for a new relationship, is putting their best foot forward. Most of us do that right. So it was a pretty valid fear of like I know I haven't been showing up as my best self. And here is someone who is fun and exciting and engaged and curious about my partner, which makes my partner feel really excited and you know, somebody's into them. Have I wins the last time I was curious about my partner, right. So it told me that I needed to step up, not just for my partner but for myself, because when I am showing up as my best self, when I'm putting my best foot forward, I feel better, I feel sexier, I feel funner, I feel happier right. And also then my partner is excited about me.

Ellecia: 10:51

But the other thing that I needed was a little bit of reassurance that, like, life could happen and things can get better, muddy right, like, like things outside of our relationship were happening in my life that we're making it hard to to be an awesome partner, because I was dealing with all these other things, and so I also needed a little bit of reassurance of like, hey, that's okay. I know that there are ebbs and flows in relationships in life and, like, I still love you, I still care about you, I love you in this, in this season, in this moment of our life, and like I still love you, I still care about you, I love you in this, in this season, in this moment of our life, and I love it when you show up in a way that is exciting and when you're curious about me, and when you're feeling sexy and what you know, like all of those things. So it gave me a lot of information. So that moment of reflection didn't just save me from, like, having an argument. It genuinely deepened our connection and that's why I'm passionate about sharing these kinds of tools with you, with my clients, with my listeners. Like, you deserve to have exciting, connected, loving, sexy relationships Monogamous, non-monogamous, doesn't matter, but you deserve to have good relationships, and these are the things that we put into place to have those.

Ellecia: 12:10

So how about you? When was the last time jealousy showed up for you and what do you think it was trying to tell you? If you're comfortable, dm me, let me know, or leave a comment. Ah, leave a comment. That would be amazing. There's even a little text us thing in the show notes. Send a text, let us know. I would love to hear your story because, trust me, you're not alone in this, and it it's so helpful to hear other people's stories, to see what is happening for other people. So you can shoot me a message, you can leave a comment, you can join my Facebook group Nope, we're not monogamous and interact with other people who are going through the same things that you are, or you can get coaching with me and join a community that is really doing the same work.

Ellecia: 12:55

So let's bring it back to the big question what would it feel like to start 2025 free from the weight of jealousy? Feel like to start 2025 free from the weight of jealousy. Imagine stepping into the new year with clarity, with confidence, with the tools to handle whatever comes your way. That's what we're doing in Beyond Jealousy. That's a program I have that's designed to help you get clarity, confidence tools, become less jealous, be more, have juicier, non-monogamous relationships right. So, if you're ready to make 2025 the year of emotional transformation, you can click the link in the show notes. You can join us. You deserve relationships that feel light and loving and free, and I want to help you create them. So thanks for listening today. Remember that jealousy doesn't have to define your story. It doesn't have to define your relationships. You have the power to rewrite it, and I'll see you next time. Bye.