Jealous Much?
A podcast with Samia Mounts, one of my favorite humans and a complete sentence. In this case: Samia mounts jealousy.
Samia & I at my 40th (the New York edition) / Bogart House // Bushwick /// Brooklyn, NY //// 10.26.22
By Constance xoxo
Dear Ones,
If you aren’t already familiar with her supernova-level brilliance, allow me to introduce you to one of my favorite humans on the planet: Samia Mounts.
Samia is an absolute dynamo— wickedly charismatic, vivacious, warm, loving, hilarious, unconditionally supportive, caring, emotionally-available and effervescent. She is a party and a pain-reliever. She is queer, pansexual, polyamorous, nonbinary, and badass.
Samia is an actress, singer, writer, voice-over artist, podcaster & performer of all kinds. She is the voice of many things you have probably heard before, including video game characters!
Samia! by Cameron Radicé Photography/ Los Angeles, California // 2023
She was a guest on two episodes of horizontal with lila: 59. i’m gonna fuck him forEVER & 60. consexual experiences. She was a member of my ‘Mod Squad’ for the interactive social audio version of my show Positively Sex! (which premiered on Clubhouse as part of their Creator First program). And she is largely responsible for the fact that I’m currently on the West Coast (erm, don’t @ her?).
She has a new podcast forthcoming, full of anonymous interviews with people who are closeted in all different kinds of ways. I helped name it! Be sure to follow her on the ‘gram so you’ll be apprised of her release date.
Honestly. She’s just the bees knees. The cat’s pajamas. The dog’s tuxedo.
And as I texted her just the other day: she is one of my top 3 people in the world to talk through decisions with.
I am sorry that not everyone can have the great good fortune of Samia’s platinum-record friendship. The cackling, the adventures, the cheerleading, the showing-up-ness, the front row seats to each other’s risk-taking, the generosity-as-an-extreme-sport, and the hard conversations, too. In lieu of that, I offer you this recording we made you.
It’s about jealousy, envy, romance, friendship, insecurities and revelations.
Samia’s life-force-philosophy absolutely lights me up.
May it do the same for you.
Big Love,
Lila
At the recording studio, post-jealousy (convo) / Los Angeles, California // 12.8.22
LILA: [00:00:00] I feel like jealousy is the one emotion that it's simply not socially acceptable to feel... It's okay to feel anger, right? You can have your road rage and you can be mad at people, and people understand that that is a thing that moves through you and passes and you get, you get over it and it can even be useful.
It can be useful for your boxing, and it can be useful for leaving a shitty relationship, and it can be useful for galvanizing your art, and it can be useful in all kinds of ways. People understand that sadness is necessary and that grief is a part of life.
SAMIA: Mm-hmm.
LILA: But jealousy, now.
SAMIA: Well, it's funny 'cause I think in certain bubbles that's true. I think in the, in the worlds that we frequent with people who are constantly working on themselves and, and trying to be better in their relationships, jealousy gets a bad rap in a lot of ways. But I see jealousy being celebrated a lot in the more mainstream society.
LILA: [00:01:00] Oh, like, my man really cares about me because he's so jealous when I talk to that guy at the gym.
SAMIA: Yeah. People see it as a sign of real love when someone feels jealousy, you know, towards attention that they're getting. And they also, I've seen it be celebrated when it's the person who's feeling the jealousy, like, you know, like an empowering thing almost, like, how dare he do this, or how dare she do this? And the blame gets put on the other person. But the jealousy is used as like a, I'm not gonna tolerate that, you know?
LILA: Ohh, interesting. That's the empowerment piece that you're, talking about.
SAMIA: Yeah.
LILA: As I'm thinking about it, I must admit that I have enjoyed a partner being jealous.
Both laugh.
SAMIA: Right, because it can feel good. It can make you fee l desirable; it can make you feel like you have the power and the upper hand in the relationship.
LILA: Which is maybe what's underneath, huh?
SAMIA: [00:02:00] It's a balm for insecurity, a little bit.
LILA: Sure.
SAMIA: If you, if you know that someone else's jealous because of attention you're getting.
LILA: And if your wound, like mine is, if your core wound is, I don't feel enough enough, I am not worthy enough, I'm not good enough, I'm not pretty enough. I'm not whatever enough. Not enough enough. Then, jealousy can feel like a medicine for that.
SAMIA: Right. Yeah. It, it absolutely can. Because if I can—
LILA: And maybe sometimes it is, I don't don't know.
SAMIA: Maybe it is. So, so yeah, I don't know that in the mainstream society, if jealousy is necessarily something that people are like, oh, I must not feel that, that makes me bad. I do think that's a thing though in a lot of polyamorous circles and ethically non-monogamous circles and just circles where people are really concerned about, you know, going to therapy and being better in their relationships. There, for sure, it gets a bad rap.
[00:03:00] But I kind of think both ways of approaching jealousy are, are a little bit flawed, a little bit indulgent, 'cause we're using it as a way to avoid these core insecurities, these core wounds. And sometimes we're using it as a way to control partners or a way to divert blame.
LILA: Yeah, maybe it is, in a way celebrated— in several ways, celebrated in a more mainstream culture or a wider culture.
SAMIA: Think of the pop songs.
LILA: I do think it's also something that you want to make, go away. Even, even in that—
SAMIA: When you're feeling it.
LILA: Yeah. It's like, I need to, I need to fix this. Or you, it's usually you, right? You need to fix this.
SAMIA: That's exactly what I meant by diverting blame. When you have a bad feeling, it's just so tempting, it's so easy to make the cause of that bad feeling another person. And with jealousy, it's just so, it's, it's tempting; It's seductive to feel this terrible feeling and be like, no, that's your fault. Either your partner's fault for, you know, doing whatever it is they did. Or the person who's inspired the jealousy, like the, the third person in the equation, the person your partner maybe looked at or, that you thought they were flirting with. Or if you're in an open relationship, the person that your partner is seeing besides you, or people. Making it their fault or making it your partner's fault is a really easy way of getting out of doing the work of seeing what's actually triggering the jealousy.
LILA: I think a lot of times these, these instances, these flare-ups of jealousy come when there is an implicit agreement, a non-explicit agreement, that is broken, in a relationship. And... There is also this, oh, what is, what is it, this? It's not just— it's indignance. It's like, how dare you [00:05:00] break this rule that we never even said that we had!
SAMIA: Oh, yeah.
LILA: You know, because, because one of the difficulties that I see, in surveying the landscape of relationship styles is that... Much of the time, monogamous people will not make explicit their boundaries and agreements. And so... this is exceptionally incendiary because for one person it might be completely out of bounds for you to flirt with the checkout girl at the grocery store in front of me. And for the other person, it might be totally fine for you to do that, but completely unacceptable for you to look at porn on your computer in your off time. Right off time. Off, quote unquote off time from the relationship, when you're not with me, is what I mean. Right. When you're not with me.
[00:06:00] And these boundaries often do not get stated. "What is cheating," I think is a really, really important question. What's cheating to you? What's outside of the bounds of this relationship to you? And these things, I have never heard of them being spoken about in the context of monogamous relationships.
SAMIA: Right. Because in the context of most monogamous relationships; they're monogamous by default. And everybody has stories in their head of what that means. And those stories are informed by all sorts of things: your culture that you come from, your family relationships, what was modeled for you growing up, the movies you watched, the songs you listen to, what your friends' experiences are, and your personal experiences. So you come up with this story of what a relationship is supposed to look like and how a person is supposed to act in one. And everybody's story is a little bit different.
LILA: Different! And we're saying the same word, and we think that we mean the same thing, and we do not—
SAMIA: We most often do not.
LILA: [00:07:00] So one of my favorite questions, one of my favorite relational questions about almost anything is: What does that mean to you?
SAMIA: Hmm.
LILA: If we're talking about baseball, that's gonna, because I don't give a shit, right? That's gonna mean something very, very different to me than it does to my lover, who has season tickets to the Yankees and for whom it is a family tradition and that he is carrying on and and bequeathing to the next generation and the box seats and that, you know, there's a whole story around that.
SAMIA: Yes.
LILA: With him. And I always think of Milan Kundera's The Book of Laughter and Forgetting. And in that book there is a chapter called "A Short Lexicon of Misunderstood Words."
SAMIA: Ooh.
LILA: The one that I remember always and the one that I, the example I always give is parade. So, parade means something entirely different to the two people in this couple.
[00:08:00] To one of them, it means: on daddy's shoulders and balloons and color and festivity and happiness and joy and a weekend. And to the other, it means fascism.
SAMIA: I have heard this example and that's such a great one 'cause it, you know, it takes it out of the uncomfortable place of talking about jealousy and lets you see exactly how starkly different, two people's stories around one concept can be— something that seems innocuous, like a parade.
LILA: Right. So a really important question then, is: What does monogamy mean to you?
SAMIA: Mm-hmm. Right.
LILA: Because without discussing those things, there's probably gonna be a whole lot of infractions that we don't know—
SAMIA: And we can't anticipate…
LILA: And then the, the landmines, it's like you're, you're stepping into a field with unknown landmines, landmines in unknown locations, right? And You're just like, well, I'm just gonna walk through this field here. Pffffooo!
SAMIA: [00:09:00] And the truth is, there's really no way to have any kind of comprehensive conversation about those different stories and what your different boundaries might be that could anticipate every situation that might come up. There's no way to do it—
LILA: Of course not.
SAMIA: Even if you've really done your, your work and you've had a lot of conversations and set some explicit boundaries and agreements, there's still gonna be situations that you couldn't have anticipated that could erupt some of these landmines. And so I think the, the skill that can help us in those moments is stretching out the time between the stimulus, whatever makes you feel the jealousy… and your response, so that you can have a response and not just an automatic reaction. 'Cause your automatic reaction to stepping on a landmine is maybe not gonna be the most productive.
LILA: Right.
SAMIA: [00:10:00] That's not to say that there's anything wrong with you if you have a reaction that's not productive, we're, we're human and we're going to have those moments where we don't have as much control of ourselves as we'd like to, perhaps. But the better we can get at clocking the feeling that is bad, hnyahhh!, and and just stopping ourselves from reacting right away and giving ourselves a break and a moment and some time to process the feeling. That I think is the way you avoid these landmines turning up in, into catastrophic blowups in partnerships, at least when dealing with jealousy or anything really, any bad emotion. But jealousy is such a big one, and it's such a big one because everyone has different definitions. And we can't anticipate every situation that will inflame it.
LILA: And the feeling itself, what it means to me, has evolved. Because it used to be— I used to consider myself a jealous person. I'd say, “I'm a jealous person.”
SAMIA: [00:11:00] And you hear that a lot.
LILA: As though my being my, my entire being is jealous and I've made, I'm made of jealous and I'm made of this emotion. I am not made of jealous.
SAMIA: No.
In the booth, just before this recording / Los Angeles, California // 12.8.22
LILA: If it is an emotion, that means it's, it's, it's moving, it's passing and it shifts and it can shift. And it will, it will shift… So I, I, I was like, I'm a jealous person. I'm bad for being a jealous person, 'cause nobody likes a jealous person. Who likes a jealous person? I mean, we, we spoke about them, some people who might, who might enjoy a jealous person. But the way that I felt was: people are gonna, not gonna like this about me. This is something to reject. I'm bad for this. And then I started to examine jealousy. When I first came in, when I first moved in to Hacienda Villa, Kenneth's partner, Jennifer, said to me, "Oh, I like jealousy!" I'm like, "What?" She's like, "I think of jealousy as an arrow.
[00:12:00] And the arrow points to something that I'm not getting."
SAMIA: Mm-hmm. I love that.
LILA: And so then I started thinking, oh, jealousy is a marker. Jealousy is... a direction. Jealousy is information.
SAMIA: Yes. That's how I like to frame it.
LILA: So I went from jealousy is bad person… to jealousy is emotion… to jealousy is information.
SAMIA: So we've taken the judgment out of it, the self-judgment. And also if your inclination, instead of wanting to blame yourself, I'm a bad person 'cause I feel jealousy. If your inclination, like many people's is, is to blame others—
LILA: The other person.
SAMIA: —this is equally effective.
LILA: Or other people, because not just your partner— often, often the person will be more mad at the other human. Right? Because it's it cost, it's more costly to be mad at your partner. But this other, this other person, this. Fuck them. I mean.
[00:13:00] Fuck them for flirting with your partner!
SAMIA: Correct!
LILA: How fucking dare, how fucking dare they be in bed with your partner.
SAMIA: Those slutty sluts. Yeah. It's very, it's very tempting. But if you, if you instead frame it as, as you said, as information... then you can get curious. Then you can, you're taking the judgment out of it for yourself. You're taking the judgment out of it for the other people involved. The people who were the catalysts for, for the jealousy you're feeling, or the triggers, and, you can look at the information you're getting. And usually, when you're able to do that, typically you'll find that the jealousy is coming from some kind of an insecurity that you have. And I think this can get tied back up in that self-judgment thing. You know, 'cause, you know, people who do dislike jealous people often are associating jealousy with being insecure.
LILA: Mm-hmm.
SAMIA: I think we just have to be gentler with ourselves because being insecure is a feature of being human.
LILA: [00:14:00] It's a human condition.
SAMIA: Yes. No one feels 100% secure—
LILA: About all the things!
SAMIA: 100% of the time. About everything in life.
LILA: And I don't think—
SAMIA: How could you, in the world we live in and the nature of our, our lives and how short they are and how fragile they are?
LILA: And the fact that there's no safety. And safety is an illusion.
SAMIA: Right! I mean, I think it's really telling that like in, in my relationships, big life changes or big things happening in the world that cause a lot of fear have also strangely had the effect of causing more jealousy in the relationship.
LILA: Mmmm.
SAMIA: So I think we can let go of judging ourselves for having insecurities, 'cause that's very, very normal. And it's actually the thing that, you know, makes us lovable and relatable. 'Cause perfection's boring and we're not robots. So normally you'll find out that the jealousy is pointing you towards an insecurity. And maybe that's something that you need to pay some attention to and maybe build yourself up in that place.
LILA: That's a part of yourself that needs to be loved, right.
SAMIA: That needs to be loved.
LILA: [00:15:00] You and I met because I was your yoga teacher, and I used to say all the time that: a big shift for me happened when I stopped thinking of my tighter side as my bad side.
SAMIA: Mmmm.
LILA: Stopped calling it my bad side because how is it gonna respond to me with all of that negative conditioning, oh, you're my bad side, Oh, I'm gonna do my bad side now.
SAMIA: Right!
LILA: And so I started thinking of it as the side of me that needs more love.
SAMIA: Mmph!
LILA: And if jealousy is an arrow, then it probably points to something that needs more love.
SAMIA: That's beautiful. Yes. So normally, I mean, I, I would say probably in most cases it's, it's gonna be that. But there are other things that your jealousy can be pointing you towards.
LILA: Sure!
SAMIA: It can be pointing you towards needs that aren't being fulfilled in your relationship or relationships. It can point you towards—
LILA: Boundaries that are being stepped on.
SAMIA: Boundaries that are being stepped on. It can point you towards actual mistreatment, and that's a very different thing and requires a very different response than if it's an insecurity within yourself. So getting to the bottom of that first, that first mystery—
LILA: [00:16:00] How do you unbraid that?
A Samia in her natural habitat. P.S. She brought that glass jar from home. / Los Angeles, California // 12.8.22
SAMIA: Well, so….. The first time I really had to put this into action was in my first fully polyamorous central relationship, nesting relationship. This was with a wonderful non-binary human named Dylan, and we had actually just come out of nine months of temporary monogamy because Dylan had never… really had a fully open relationship before and was struggling with it, early on. So we, we closed the relationship for a while and talked a lot for about nine months and then we reopened it. And when we reopened it, he was ready! And he got out there into the world and all the girls he was dating were like 10 years younger than me and like a thousand pounds lighter than me.
[00:17:00] They were these tiny little perfect, cute, perky, little bird-like things. And I just felt like this aging monster!
LILA: Oh Jesus!
SAMIA: I know!
LILA: You were probably like 30 years old.
SAMIA: And, and, and yeah, I was, I was, I was like maybe 31 or 32. Um, And yeah, it really, it really inflamed this jealousy in me that I, I didn't think I had anymore! I, I, I didn't anticipate it. And I, I know there was one night where he came home late and I yelled at him 'cause he was out with these two girls and I knew who they were and I was just like, really mad about him coming home late in a way that I wouldn't normally have been. We had one, one sort of like irrational fight. But then the next day I sat down with myself and I was like, this isn't how I wanna show up in the world. Like, I have these values around how I show up in relationships. I wanted this open relationship. Why am I having this freak out moment?
LILA: [00:18:00] Mnn.
SAMIA: So I looked at what might be triggering the jealousy. And it wasn't a, it wasn't a very long time of thought and introspection to get to, oh, well, it’s 'cause I'm afraid that I'm getting too old to like, have a career. And I've always had body image issues and always felt like I needed to be thinner. Which is not something that my value system supports, but my social programming certainly keeps that alive in me. And it's very, very hard to get rid of that, that stuff in yourself.
So once I knew that it was, it was my insecurities about my body size and my age that were getting inflamed. Then it was easy to be like, okay, this isn't Dylan's fault, and it's not those girls' fault. So I should not keep fantasizing about breaking them like twigs over my knee. I should, I should be kinder to them in m’thoughts.
LILA: Well, a really important question I think would be:
[00:19:00] Who is saying that? Who's saying break them over your knee, like whose voice is that?
SAMIA: That's just the voice in me that wanted to blame somebody else for my feelings.. I, it, it was, it, it's easier to, to. To degrade and demean these women in my mind to think, oh, he only wants 'em 'cause they're little and young, like, there's no substance there. You know?
LILA: Who's the voice who says your body isn't good enough?
SAMIA: Right.
LILA: Is that your mother?
SAMIA: Well, you know, I don't, I, I don't wanna put it all on my mother. She was just a much a victim of all of that programming as, as I was.
LILA: But the voice usually comes through somebody like that. I'm not saying it's her fault. I'm saying the voice that we hear is usually characterized by somebody that we are close to, that we've been hurt by, that—
SAMIA: In my case, my whole family and my whole upbringing. I mean, I think every, every young woman who came of age in the nineties, and many other decades, but the nineties I think were especially brutal for body image and how thin you needed to be to be acceptable.
LILA: [00:20:00] The models of the time.
SAMIA: Oh God. Yeah. I mean, that was the Ally McBeale era, you know, the thinness was extreme. So, so yeah. So lots of voices in my head from the culture, from my family, from friends. Telling me that I needed to be thinner. It's not these girls' fault. So right, right there, it's like, okay, I can take responsibility for having those insecurities. That's not their fault; that's not Dylan's fault. But then I had to take an extra step 'cause I still felt the same way. I I just wasn't—
LILA: You just understood it! Understanding it doesn't necessarily change your visceral experience of the emotion.
SAMIA: Correct! It, it rarely does. Or at least it takes a very long time for that rational understanding to sink into your viscera. So I had to take it an extra step. I managed to ask myself, well, why would Dylan go for these women who are so different from me?
[00:21:00] You know, I'm his partner. I'm the one he's like, chosen to spend most of his time with. Like, why, why would he choose people who are so different? And then I, I had to admit in our relationship, I was older than him. By five years. But at that age it feels like a lot. ‘Cause he was maybe 26 and I was 31, something like that. And in our relationship, I was the one who was older, wiser, had their shit together, was more financially stable, was more, just savvy in life. And he was constantly following my lead, looking up to me, feeling like the less together one.
LILA: Mmph.
SAMIA: But these girls who were younger and, and, and less wise and less experienced than Dylan… gave them the feeling of being the more together one, of being the older, wiser, one, of being the one that gets to be looked up to, that gets to give advice.
[00:22:00] And Dylan didn't get that in, in their relationship with me. And once I hooked onto that, it was like, oh, they're going for these, these younger women, not as a way to like, get away from me or, or because I'm lacking something, but because they might sometimes wanna feel like they're the one who's got a foot ahead in the game. And I can understand that.
LILA: Well, you're extremely understanding because there's plenty of people who would feel… that they don't want their partner to have the thing that they're not getting within this dyad somewhere else!
SAMIA: Right. And, and, and that's a big deal. I have a— I have the benefit of knowing for myself what it feels like to be in a relationship with somebody that I very much love and am attracted to and happy with, and also have desires to be with other people for different reasons.
[00:23:00] Usually because those people are so different from my partner.
LILA: And that don't alter your feelings or your desire for your partner
SAMIA: Right.
LILA: I think there's just a tremendous amount of fear around that. I feel that fear. Absolutely. Deep in my tissues. That the person will give that partner something that I cannot provide and therefore that's better, and then they will go over to that.
SAMIA: So it's the therefore that's better and therefore they will leave me that is not necessarily true, and we have to, we have to be able to get honest with ourselves about that. Like that's the fear, but it's not necessarily going to happen. However, that fear could come true in any kind of relationship!
LILA: And does, since we have an incredibly high divorce rate, since Ashley Madison is a thing, with people looking for extramarital secret affairs, all the time.
SAMIA: [00:24:00] So monogamy doesn't protect you from somebody that you love, leaving you for somebody else. Monogamy doesn't protect you from, from any of the things that people are scared of in non-monogamous relationships. And exerting control doesn't protect you from that stuff either.
So if you follow this logical line to, well, if me exerting control and, and insisting that my partner behave in these ways that make me feel more secure, still isn't gonna protect me from them potentially leaving me for somebody else at any point down the line, then maybe I need a different strategy. Rather than exerting my control, maybe, instead, I could work on living with the uncertainty that I might lose something or someone.
[00:25:00] And when I go down that path, then it goes to, well, actually, there is some certainty in life. It is certain you'll lose everything that you have. You will lose every person you love, every thing that you love, every home that you have, the body that you have, the life that you have, all of it, you're gonna lose. For sure.
LILA: Yeah.
SAMIA: It's one of the only certain things in life. So then it, for me becomes, well, okay, I'm gonna lose everything eventually. How do I wanna show up right now? … What do my values say is the way that I would like to be: in this relationship, in this world, in my life.
Samia & I at my 40th (the Bali edition) / The Castle // Uluwatu /// Bali, Indonesia //// 10.16.22
LILA: And is that how you transmuted the emotion that you still felt after you understood where the jealousy was coming from?
SAMIA: It's how I took the claws off of that emotion. 'Cause the emotion is still— you're always going to experience some kind of jealousy in your life, some times than others.
LILA: Or envy.
SAMIA: Or envy.
LILA: [00:26:00] Right. It's cousin or it's sibling.
SAMIA: Right. I know Brené Brown has a way of distinguishing between jealousy and envy. Do you remember what the, that is?
LILA: It might come from her. The way that I do it is: jealousy is about a person, and envy is about things, status, prestige, awards, jobs.
SAMIA: I think the, the one I was thinking of is like—
LILA: What you have.
SAMIA: Yeah. Like something is like, somebody has what I—
LILA: Envy is I want what you have.
SAMIA: Yeah. I want what you have, yeah. And jealousy is: I wanna be you.
LILA: I don't you to have what!
SAMIA: Or, or I don't, I don't know, maybe, yeah.
LILA: I still think of that as envy. I wanna be you I still think of as envy. I think of jealousy exclusively in the realm of relationships. I don't want you to have the attention that you are getting, from this person, or I don't want you to turn your attention away from me. And I, and I was looking at my notes earlier and I found this note where I wrote: jealousy is the lousy feeling you get when attention you crave is not directed at you!
SAMIA: [00:27:00] Yeaaaah. That's a great way of putting it. Yeah. So, so yeah—
LILA: And then can, it can also be, it's not just romantic and sexual—
SAMIA: It can be about career stuff.
LILA: Friends.
SAMIA: Mm-hmm. Friends, absolutely.
LILA: It’s definitely familial, right? It's like—
SAMIA: Mm-hmm.
LILA: That's the favorite child. I'm not the favorite. Well, I'm uncle's favorite.
SAMIA: Oh, yeah. The whole sibling rivalry thing. What is that? Other than like active jealousy causing competition and sometimes sabotage. Yeah. It, it's everywhere.
LILA: I don't know about that one from personal experience, but I hear tell.
SAMIA: I do, I do. Oh my gosh. Whole stories about me and my little sister.
LILA: Mm. But back to the transmuting—
SAMIA: But back to the transmuting. So for me, the transmuting really happens because I have decided for myself, that I want to be the kind of person that is happy for others when they get what they want, even if it's something that I wanted and didn't get.
LILA: [00:28:00] Mmmmmmmmm. Whoa, hold on. I need you to say that again. For the cheap seats. Pfffshhhh!
Samia! at my 40th (the Bali edition) / The Castle // Uluwatu /// Bali, Indonesia //// 10.16.22
SAMIA: For me personally, in my personal value system, I have decided that I want to be the kind of person who is truly, genuinely happy when other people get the things in life that they want, even if it's something I wanted and didn't get. For me, this is part of being sane in this world.
I'm an actor and a singer, so I work in a very competitive industry where there are not enough jobs for all of the amazingly talented people out there. Therefore, I know that there's no reality where I get every single thing I want. And if I walked through my life constantly letting myself feel like I'm not enough or I'm failing because somebody else got something I wanted, I would just be miserable and I'd be bitter and I would be hateful.
[00:29:00] And it's very easy to fall into that way of thinking. I've done it and it's not fun. And it makes you a less fun person to be with just as yourself. Like it makes you less fun to be, it makes you less fun to be for other people to be with. And it also cuts you off with the knees in many ways. It can limit your creativity. It can limit your ability to go out there and attract others. 'Cause I think people are very much attracted to warmth and openness. And encouragement.
LILA: Well, some people.
SAMIA: Well.
LILA: Depending on your wounding.
SAMIA: It depends, yeah.
LILA: You might be attracted to people who remind you of what you mistook for love when you were a child. Or what got in place of that.
SAMIA: I do think that that that kind of attraction tends to happen in our, in our central attachment relationships.
[00:30:00] More so than when you're going out into the world, like as a, as a creative, as an artist. And, and, so I'm talking more about attracting, attracting people in creative spaces, attracting the interest of others in a way that can help you make the things that you wanna make. That kind of attraction definitely has helped by being a person who is without fear. Nobody's completely without fear, but at least in the way you approach others. And if you're living in—
LILA: Well, I mean you, might still have the fear, and you just choose. You choose to engage.
SAMIA: You choose to show up, yeah. You choose to show up in—
LILA: Because it's the more beautiful choice and what kind of life do you wanna have And how much time do you think you've got?
SAMIA: Right. And now not everybody feels this way, ‘cause I've said this to some people and had them be like, “No I don't, I don't care about that. Fuck those people! Fuck those people who made me feel jealous I hate them! And I want to hate them and I don't care what happens to them. In fact, I wish harm!”
[00:31:00] You know, and, and that can be pretty entertaining and comedic, but, but if you really get down to: How do you want people to treat you? How do you wanna treat people? Like how, what's gonna be, what's gonna be the most productive for you actually experiencing happiness and joy in this world?
For me the answer is let me be the kind of person who's happy for others. So, then it becomes a practice. It doesn't stop there 'cause you can't, like you said, you can't just decide something rationally and expect it to sink into the core of you. Your feelings have a mind of their own. Your id is a whole thing.
LILA: Hannah said yesterday that she doesn't even think that feelings are yours.
SAMIA: Oh, interesting!
LILA: That they're just visitors.
SAMIA: Yeah…
LILA: They're just actually passing on through—
SAMIA: —like entities.
LILA: And then we, we claim them. like, I’m an angry person!
SAMIA: Right. I am angry rather than I feel anger, and, which, I think you can use language to help distinguish yourself from your emotions.I love that. That's a really great, that's a really great concept.
[00:32:00] Uh, Yeah. So for me, the final step in this, the transmutation, is making it a practice. I am not without jealous voices in my brain, about all sorts of things. I get jealous all the time of people who I think have better bodies than me or sing better than me, or have better style or more friends or higher in their career. Or in, in romantic and sexual relationships, you know, like more experienced or hotter or whatever. More desirable. I still have all of the thoughts, but when I have those thoughts, my practice is that I see the thought and I think. Oh, that's not how I wanna show up in the world. And I replace the thought. And actively, I go, mmm, okay. I'm feeling jealous of that person 'cause they're singing this song that I know that I can't sing that well, as well as them. And instead of indulging in that, that thought of like, let me be jealous of them. Let me be mad at them. Let me feel bad about myself now.
[00:33:00] I'm gonna go, wow, that person has a beautiful voice. They sing the shit outta that song. I bet if I worked at it, I could get somewhere with that song that I'd be happy with. This person did it. Why can't I?
And so I'll actively replace the thoughts and I will throw my heart behind the new thought that I wanna cultivate. The more you do that, the more the new thought becomes the thing that your mind goes to, uh, faster. Sometimes right away. The less you have to do the constant, like, identify the thought that doesn't align with my values, replace it with the thought that does. Because it starts to become habit, it starts to become automatic. So like I use the example of looking at people singing because singing, my singing voice has become just like this massive insecurity for me since the pandemic and not singing all the time. And my chops are not as refined as they've always been.
[00:34:00] So that's like the thing that I've been struggling with recently, but it's the same process with anything. I want other people to have pleasure. I want other people to have joy. I want other people to have sex and, and success and, and things that they want in their lives, whether they're my partners or my friends or just strangers. So I'm gonna choose to be happy for them when they get that. Even if my automatic emotional reaction isn't aligned with that choice, I can choose my actions in the world. I can't choose my thoughts and feelings that come up automatically. I can change my thoughts and I can choose my actions. So that's how I do it.
And if you keep this practice up over time, it's, it starts to get real easy. Like I don't, I, it's been years since I really felt jealous in a, in a romantic or sexual relationship. Because it's just an automatic thought now to be like, Ooh, of course you want that hot little thing, why not? You know? Like if I was in your position, I would too! Enjoy my love. You know, that's, that's my automatic response now.
Samia by Robert Michael Evans @robertmichaelevans
LILA: [00:35:00] Rachel Rogers in her book, We Should All Be Millionaires says, look to your jealousy. Your jealousy will tell you, 'cause it comes from the word zealous.
SAMIA: Mmmm.
LILA: It will tell you what you care about.
SAMIA: Mmmmm. Mm-hmm.
LILA: And something that I care about very, very, very much, is turn-on. So I had a massive transformation, a massive transformation, when I realized how my jealousy was entwined with my turn-on and has been since the inception of my other-focused sexuality.
15 years old. I have a best friend and there's this cute little sonic the hedgehog haired boy at school that's our friend and… we invite ourselves over. We don't know what we're doing really. She had sexual experience. I didn't, we invite ourselves over to his house and decide that we're gonna seduce him together. And then, I don't, like, fast forward, cause I don't remember what, you know what I mean? It's like, zzzzt! I don't remember what happened, but he's suddenly with his pants off. He has a huge cock. He's erect and she's, she's giving him a blowjob. She's very intent on it and very focused. He's getting a lot of pleasure and I feel this roiling maelstrom of emotions, this mixture of jealousy that, that she's… getting the attention or giving the pleasure and, and, and then left-outness and then insecurity and I don't have the experience.
[00:37:00] And, and I don't know how to do that. And disgust, disgust comes up really strongly! And I run from the room. And they stop, because it was intended to be a threesome and watching is participating. But I, you know, I'm 15. We're, we're around 15 years old.
SAMIA: You don't know.
LILA: And, and also when one person runs from the room during a threesome, best stop! And see what's going on with that person!
SAMIA: Good behavior, 15 year olds. Good job.
LILA: The other thing I didn't mention was that it was jealousy and insecurity and resentment and excitement and turn-on. I was incredibly turned-on. When I rewound the tape of my sexual life to that point — I'd forgotten that that happened. When I was able to rewind to that point, I could see how then going forward, 95% of my fantasy life involved a threesome with two women and one man, and usually, because, as I learned from the book Arousal, the secret logic of sexual fantasies many, many, many years later: our fantasies are a mechanism that makes it safe for us to feel aroused. So I was making it safe for me. I had the jealousy, but I transmuted it by making this the hottest thing, the pinnacle of hotness, my cornerstone fantasy. And then, I started to do it in another ingenious way, which was, it was either my partner and their ex, or a previous partner, or it was my partner and a friend of ours.
[00:39:00] Or it was a couple, the man I desired. And in all of those instances, I placed myself in the seat of power and I was dominating the threesome. I was controlling the relationship. I was controlling what he did. I was controlling what she did with him and with me. Sometimes I refused her. She couldn't do anything. She just had to watch and masturbate. Sometimes she could only interact with me. And not him. Right. So, psychologically I manipulated this to something that gave me a tremendous amount of turn on and was my major cornerstone fantasy for my entire life up until now, including now! And this is how I made it psychologically safe for me to feel aroused.
SAMIA: Yeah.
LILA: And this is maybe something also that kinked me as a 15 year old, right? ‘Cause there's, there's a bit of kink in there. There's a bit of perversion in there, and that started to get me really excited.
[00:40:00] So when I was able to rewind, it was like the movie montage, you know when it goes back and you're like, huuuuhhhhh! When you discover that, that, she done it with the crowbar, then you can see all the things in the kitchen. Then you can see all the things leading up to that. You're like, oh, she did touch the crowbar when she came into the house, lovingly. You know?
SAMIA: Yeah. That, yes. That is another way to transmute jealousy by seeing jealousy as an aphrodisiac, which it can be in and it often is.
LILA: It has historically been!
SAMIA: Yeah!
LILA: It has historically been the most used aphrodisiac of humankind! Right! And Esther Perel says, When is your partner the hottest? Your partner is the hottest when they're across the room from you, doing what they're doing, appreciated and desired by others.
SAMIA: Yep. Yep. Lord knows I have gotten somebody that I had been pining over for a long time who was rejecting me to suddenly have interest by dating one of his friends. I was with that guy for two years after dating the friend for three weeks! Ha-HAH!
LILA: [00:41:00] Jealousy is an age-old aphrodisiac.
SAMIA: Absolutely.
LILA: So I started to see it. So first it was I'm bad person. Then it was like bad emotion. Then it was information, and THEN, it was a turn on. I was able to, instead embrace. I had always rejected jealousy! Even when it was information, I still was like, fuck you! Fuck you information!
Both laugh.
But then, when I saw it as my turn-on, I was able to turn to my jealousy, almost address it like a person?
SAMIA: Mm-hmm.
LILA: And say, thank you for all that hotness. Thank you. Thank you for making sex so fucking hot. Thank you for making my fantasy life so hot. Thank you for all of the juice that regenerated around a partner that I was with over a period of time, because I got to witness them with other people and feel that jealousy.
[00:42:00] The reason I had that rewind moment, was because I went to a Cuddle Party with my partner at the time. Who was one of the very, very few people I've dated who's younger than me. He was 10 years younger than me. And I got together with him because we had a magical meet-cute, a magical first encounter at something called the Love Immersive, where—
SAMIA: Ohh, wow!
LILA: Hello, you know?
SAMIA: Wow.
LILA: You know? And the thing was, I did love him instantly, but we weren't meant to be together. And I wish I had waited. I wish I had put the pause between the stimulus and the response, because the stimulus of being attracted, drawn to someone doesn't mean that you need to fuck them. Doesn't mean you need to be in a romantic relationship with them. As Shaun Galanos of The Love Drive says, maybe you need to start a taco truck together! You know, you don't know! And the thing is, we assume that we know because when we're drawn to something, we call that sexual attraction.
[00:43:00] And we look to, because of amatonormativity, because of placing the, the romantic relationship at the top of the pyramid—
SAMIA: The romantic-sexual relationship.
LILA: The hierarchy.
SAMIA: Specifically the monogamous, exclusive, lifelong, committed, romantic-sexual relationship.
LILA: Then we look to this attraction and we go, okay, that means I want you in this way. I want you in this way. And that's what happened. We could have been great friends. We could, he could have been like a little brother to me, you know? But I spoiled that by insisting that this— insisting, I mean, we both agreed to do it. I didn't push him, but by assuming that this is what it was, and then going for it as though it was about the romantic and the sexual. It turned out to be actually very sweet and romantic, but not sexual for me. And so I was not wanting to really engage with him very much sexually. And so then I experienced much less jealousy than I might have otherwise, right?
[00:44:00] But we went to this, cuddle party, and he cuddled with a friend of mine who I'd been in a play with maybe six years prior or something. And I felt that same, almost exact same maelstrom of emotions where I was jealous, I was resentful, I was turned on. I wanted to cuddle with her! I I and I, and, and I was like, bllllahhh! turn-on.
And then I, I held it. I examined it. I was actually editing a podcast episode at the party, watching this, and I, I just sat with it for a good, like 30 minutes, and then I, I left the room, and as I sat with it, I was teasing out the parts of it. And there were many, many parts.
One part was: I actually was happy for him receiving sensual attention from somebody else, because I didn't… feel that, and I, I made an assumption that, that she did. And so he was receiving sexual attention that felt good to him. I wanted him to have that actually.
[00:45:00] Then there was the part of me that felt jealous I was like, nyooo! You, you don't get that! But I was actually more jealous because I wanted her attention. I wanted her attention more than I wanted his. Then I started to think, I'd never thought of her sexually, I'd never thought of her, and then I started to think of, I started to fantasize about, having a threesome, and I was much more excited about having a threesome with her than I was with him, right. I started to, but I started to think of her sexually. So I then I was also turned-on watching it. And then it was further complicated by the fact that she and I had drifted and I felt very hurt by that, and this was one of the first times that we had come back together!
SAMIA: Oh, that's so much!
LILA: So there—!
SAMIA: All at once!
LILA: So when I say maelstrom, I mean a, a tempest of emotions. And then the most beautiful thing was that, he and I went on a hike up to Cold Spring the next day and we un braided all of those strands, together, so that we could examine it and we could look at it.
[00:46:00] As it turned out, she wasn't really attracted to him and she valued connecting with me much more and didn't want to continue connecting with him because there was stuff around it.
SAMIA: How often our assumptions are wrong and out of alignment with reality. How often. And that's another great reason to treat your jealousy as information 'cause you do not know that the stuff that you are wanting to believe about what other people might be thinking, feeling, or motivated by—
LILA: Or wanting, right?
SAMIA: Yeah. Or yeah, you don't know that your assumptions are true. So if you don't get curious and investigate before you lash out you know, and, and gnash your teeth and, and, and tear everybody to shreds, then you'll never know that maybe actually, oh, you could have exactly what you wanted.
LILA: [00:47:00] I came to her afterwards and I said, “Do you want this? Because if you do, I know he does and I want you to have it.” But I was only so magnanimous and I was only so compersious because I wasn't really sexually attracted to him myself. I've never, had that kind of magnanimity when I was sexually attracted to somebody. But I, I've also never been in a relationship in which I was fulfilled sexually and with my quality time. And physical touch and quality time are my, my top love languages.
SAMIA: You never had both at the same time from the same partner?
LILA: I've never been fulfilled in them in a relationship. I suspect I could be much more generous if I felt my cup was full!
SAMIA: I think that there's something to that for sure, because I, I, I, I think, I feel, for most of my relationships the same way.
[00:48:00] Which is, you know, one of the arrow, one of the places that, that jealousy arrow can point to is like a need that's not getting met. And you also you brought up something for me with that, that story. So I think our jealousy gets activated most intensely when our attachment system is activated for a person. And if, for people listening, if you don't know much about attachment theory: it's basically a, a theory in, in psychology about how we are wired to be attached to people when we're very young children. It has to do with our relationships with our parents at very early ages. We're talking infancy.
LILA: Or any caregiver.
SAMIA: Toddlerhood. Yeah, any caregiver. And also your, closest relationships as a small child and growing up can all wire you to be attracted to certain types of people. We typically wanna have deep core relationships with people who remind us of some kind of family relationship that was very formative for us.
[00:49:00] And if that relationship in your particular childhood was an abusive one, a traumatic one, an unhealthy one, you will be drawn to people who replicate that. And, even if you are completely healthy, you know, and completely stable and well adjusted, which I would argue it, maybe just under half of people are are! Are like relatively healthy.
LILA: Oh, that’s generous!
SAMIA: It's very generous. But your attachment mechanism, I mean, it's a thing that can make you feel in your soul that you will be abandoned and no one will ever love you if your partner flirts with that coffee checkout person one more time. You know, it's a thing that can make you so fearful, like a survival threat, because it is hitting your survival mechanism. That deep attachment. The way we attach as babies is for our ability to survive. And the emotional residue of that as adults, it feels just like we're being threatened, our existence is being threatened.
[00:50:00] So there's a book that talks about this in the context of polyamorous relationships that I think—
LILA: Polysecure.
SAMIA: Yes. I think is a must read for anybody who wants to understand themselves and how they operate in relationships better, especially if jealousy is something that you feel is really making your life harder and, and, and, and hurting the quality of your life and the quality of your relationships.
LILA: I love that Polysecure is not just for polyamorous people.
SAMIA: Yeah. It's really good for everybody. So Jessica Fern's book, Polysecure combines everything we know about attachment theory within the context of having open relationships. But even if you're in, in a monogamous relationship, it can help you get to a place where you feel more secure, where your jealousy doesn't run the show. And so I think it's a great read. Highly recommend.
LILA: Right. Don't let jealousy be the commander-in-chief.
SAMIA: Make jealousy your sub!
Both laugh.
LILA: That I like!
SAMIA: [00:51:00] All right. Great.
LILA: Make jealousy your sub!
SAMIA: Yeah. I think we covered a lot of ground with how to, how to handle jealousy. Treat it as information.
LILA: Any last, last looks, less words.
SAMIA: Hmm. I have a lot of thoughts on how correct it is to try to exert control over a partner.
LILA: I know. I know where to go.
SAMIA: Yeah, you got it? Go.
LILA: Yeah. Everything has a corollary. So what's the opposite of jealousy?
SAMIA: Oh, I love you. Compersion, darling.
LILA: So I used to hate that word because I thought it sounded like a, a Persian cat, like lots of long white hairs in your mouth? But I've, I've come round to appreciating, because I appreciate the concept so much. So I'm, I've gotten over my slight ick at the, the word itself.
SAMIA: Oh, I love it so much. If you haven't heard the term compersion it's often framed as the opposite of jealousy.
[00:52:00] I would say it deserves its own definition, and the definition commonly accepted, is a feeling of joy or happiness at knowing or seeing your partner is getting sexual and or romantic pleasure from someone other than you.
LILA: And I use it much broader than this. I, I now use it as simply feeling joy for someone else's joy, because we don't have a word for that.
SAMIA: Yeah.
LILA: And So I, I, I, and when I I used to say, oh, I don't feel compersion. That is absolutely false. I feel compersion all the time! Just not often in a sexual context. Although! I totally felt it recently when I had a, an unexpected threesome at a play party.
SAMIA: Hey!
LILA: I definitely felt it as I witnessed the woman that I, that I was engaging with, receiving pleasure from the man that I was engaging with, because, it all felt so generous between the three of us and I had already came. It was wonderful!
SAMIA: [00:53:00] Isn't it funny that it's easy to feel compersion when it's people that you don't have super tight ties to?
LILA: Mm-hmm.
SAMIA: But it's so hard when it's somebody that you're deeply in love with and partnered with.
LILA: Oh, yes!
SAMIA: And I think that's something to investigate. Like, why is it easier for me to be happy for total strangers or casual acquaintances than for the love of my life?
LILA: What's up with that?
SAMIA: What's up with that? And that's, that, I mean, that's a big, you know, shining, flashing light that like, Hey, there's something else going on here! 'Cause of course you're gonna, you wanna be happy for your partner, if you love this person so much that you wanna spend the bulk of your time with them! What's stopping you from being happy for them? You know, and again, it, it, it usually goes into your attachment style and what's getting triggered in you from whatever traumas you've endured in your life. Um, but—
LILA: Wow, and if you actually don't want them to be truly happy, what are you doing with them?
SAMIA: [00:54:00] Right. I don't think anybody wants to show up in the world as a person who knowingly wants their partner to not be happy. So, you know, my values aside, I think, you know, probably something that's pretty universal is like, Hey, if you love somebody, you probably want them to be happy. And if you're actions, if your, the way you're showing up is running counter to that, it's really important to look at.
LILA: I think— I think where it often lives, subconsciously, is: I want you to be happy if it's with me.
SAMIA: Mmmmmmm. Only if.
LILA: Only if it's with me. And if it's with somebody else, be miserable.
SAMIA: Wish I was there.
LILA: And that, that is something to examine.
SAMIA: It is something to examine. Compersion.
[00:55:00] The New York Times introduced a very strange hybrid German word for feeling joy at other people's joy. The more general definition that you're applying to conversion, and the word is… Freudenfreude.
LILA: No! No! Nooo!
SAMIA: Every German speaker on Earth was in the comments of this Instagram post making fun of The New York Times being like, this is not a thing. Shh! It's the opposite of schadenfreude: freudenfreude.
LILA: Oh my God, it sounds so bad.
SAMIA: It’s worse than compersion! … Compersion, yes. That is a great place to end: fostering conversion.
LILA: Yes.
SAMIA: And I would argue it's a practice. It's a practice. It's the practice I laid out earlier of deciding what your values are. Identifying the thoughts and emotions that aren't lining up with your values. And not shaming yourself! And not beating yourself up and telling yourself what a shitty person you are! And piling shame on shame. No, just like, oh, those are my thoughts and I can't control them. But I can control my actions. And I choose compersion.
[00:56:00] I'm gonna choose to be generous and magnanimous about my partner's pleasure, about other people's joy, and success, because I want other people to be happy for me.
