It’s hard enough for two people to find common ground in this world.Invite the villain in green underpants into your bedroom, and it’s bound to drive you up the wall. Romantic jealousy isn’t a common occurrence in the alchemy of emotions I’m used to experiencing on a regular basis. So, when dizzying passion set my skin aflame, the discovery of a third-party threat to that skin-scorching relationship brought me face to face with the Green Monster. Suddenly, I was caught in a not so titillating threesome. There was ‘us’ and there was ‘him’ – that giant slob of an uneasy feeling.

Evolution tells me that men are jealous of women when it comes to sexual infidelity and women are jealous of men over emotional infidelity. Being queer, I can safely assume that jealousy, in my case, will swing both ways. In the insect world, male lovebugs venture out in swarms in search of a chance to mate with a female. When one succeeds in finding a suitable hump, the couple maintains a continuous copulatory embrace for as long as three days, to guard the union against outside intruders. They’ll do it anywhere– in the garden, on your wooden floor, in a parking lot, even on the windshield of your car –-anywhere. They’ll even die, connected end-to-end, doing the deed, right in front of you while you’re trying to keep your eyes on the road. The point is they’ll guard that connection like no other. And the reason I bring up this fornicating bug, is because I find myself being protective of a relationship that I have come to believe is worth protecting. Now, there was no continuous copulation involved in our case (get that out of your head) but that sudden jolt of anxiety that manifested was enough to make me exercise my desire to control.

I’ve read that reactive jealousy is either intrinsic to love or simply an anticipatory response to a threat to fidelity. Conjugal paranoia as they call it. In the cultural context, we are ingrained with this notion that if you really like someone (in a romantic way),  you’re likely to be jealous of anyone who seems like a threat to that bond. We’re taught to measure love by measuring the extent of jealousy. This quantitative view of love, somehow doesn’t sit well with me. I’d like to think that jealousy concerns the loss of what one has -this notion of what you deeply like belongs to you and not to anyone else- rather than a true measure of love.  It’s like a recognition of sorts, that the stakes are higher and losing isn’t an option. Not in that competitive ‘I always win’ approach, but in a “this is precious and I’m not letting go” resolve.

I’d like to believe that as queers, we’re less stressed about sexual infidelity than straight people, since the threat of reproduction and offspring is relatively low. (Not counting select orgies where both sexes are present and you wake up the next morning wondering who put what inside you, or where you went and put yours the previous night.) We’re most likely designed to choose out of many, court a few and keep a mate and then protect and nurture that bond over time. And somewhere between courting a few and keeping one, we begin to filter based on how emotionally attached we get, how harmonious we feel and how much fun we’re having. At about this point, jealousy seems to show up as a defense mechanism. The presence of the villain in green underpants, I’d like to think, is an indication that the perceived value of the relationship at hand is higher than most others. He’s meant to inspire this need to turn territorial, because you’ve realized you’ve got something that’s good for you and you’re not ready to let go, in the hope that greater things will follow. Whether those greater things include discovering love or the insane need to turn violently suspicious and morph into a delusional stalker, only time will tell. Maybe, a threesome isn’t such a bad idea after all.