Recently on the Erotic Awakening Podcast (www.eroticawakening.com), Dan and I talked about jealousy vs. envy.

For me, I expressed how jealousy has always been a negative emotion for me. Not only do I want what my partner has, I don’t want them to have it. (partner or meta or whomever) My emotions usually feel out of control which tells me it’s a trigger of some sort. Jealousy for me has always been a feeling, not something that is logical. It takes my logical self to reframe how I’m feeling to pull me out of the emotion.

Envy on the other hand is a feeling as well, but different. I’ve never felt it to be a negative emotion. Sometimes it’s neutral, sometimes it’s even feeling joy for the other person that gets to experience whatever is going on.

For example, my partner is going on a cruise with another partner. If it’s negative and my feeling is ‘what about me?”….or anything along those lines, to me, that’s jealousy. …..but if my emotion is ‘damn, I’d really like to do that’….and it’s not a negative reaction, to me, that’s envy. No reframing needed. Instead, I make sure that at some point I figure out a way to make it happen for me. ….or not….depending on what it is I’m envious over.

After the podcast, a few listeners wrote us and said they see jealousy and envy differently.

I googled a couple of definitions, but still am comfortable with the way I define it for me.

How do you define it for you?

~dawn