Jealousy

Passages

Every passage tagged with this emotion in the Vela corpus. Search the body text, narrow by source or register, click through to a book’s profile to see how the passage sits with the rest of the work.

Page 19 of 47 · 20 per page

• From Saint Thomas Aquinas Collection (22 Books) (2016)

  CHRYSOSTOM. But we ought not to pursue through every particular the circumstances of a parable, but enter into its general scope, and seek nothing further. This then is not introduced in order to represent some as moved with envy, but to exhibit the honour that shall be given us as so great as that it might stir the jealousy of others. GREGORY. (ubi sup.) Or because the old fathers down to the Lord’s coming, notwithstanding their righteous lives, were not brought to the kingdom, this murmur is theirs. But we who have come at the eleventh hour, do not murmur after our labours, forasmuch as having come into this world after the coming of the Mediator, we are brought to the kingdom as soon as ever we depart out of the body. JEROME. Or, all that were called of old envy the Gentiles, and are pained at the grace of the Gospel. HILARY. And this murmur of the labourers corresponds with the frowardness of this nation, which even in the time of Moses were stiff-necked. REMIGIUS. By this one to whom his answer is given, may be understood all the believing Jews, whom he calls friends because of their faith. PSEUDO-CHRYSOSTOM. Their complaint was not that they were defrauded of their rightful recompense, but that the others had received more than they deserved. For the envious have as much pain at others’ success as at their own loss. From which it is clear, that envy flows from vain glory. A man is grieved to be second, because he wishes to be first. He removes this feeling of envy by saying, Didst thou not agree with me for a denarius? JEROME. A denarius bears the figure of the king. You have therefore received the reward which I promised you, that is, my image and likeness; what desirest thou more? And yet it is not that thou shouldest have more, but that another should have less that thou seekest. Take that is thine, and go thy way. REMIGIUS. That is, take thy reward, and enter into glory. I will give to this last, that is, to the gentile people, according to their deserts, as to thee. ORIGEN. Perhaps it is to Adam He says, Friend, I do thee no wrong; didst thou not agree with me for a denarius? Take that thine is, and go thy way. Salvation is thine, that is, the denarius. I will give unto this last also as unto thee. A person might not improbably suppose, that this last was the Apostle Paul, who wrought but one hour, and was made equal with all who had been before him.

• From This Boy's Life: A Memoir (1989)

  I began to see myself from the stands and became sentimentally aroused by the consciousness of my own nobility and grit in seeing this game through. I had wrenched my knee slightly in a fall, and I parlayed this annoyance into a limp sufficiently pronounced to draw sympathy without forcing the referee to end the game. I hobbled gamely up and down the floor and the other team slowed down too, as if to refuse any further advantage over us. They won by a mile. When the buzzer went off, their coach ran onto the court and had them give us three cheers. NORMA AND BOBBY were late picking me up. The parking lot was almost empty when they pulled in. “Who won?” Norma asked. She pushed the door open for me and leaned forward as I squeezed past her into the backseat. “They did.” “Next time,” Bobby said. Norma closed the door and slid back over next to Bobby. They looked at each other. He put the car in gear and drove slowly out of the lot. It was warm inside the car, cloying. Norma stretched, fiddled with the radio, teased the hair on Bobby’s neck. She called him Bobo, her pet name for him, and said something that made him laugh. Her voice was low, her movements languorous. I watched them. As we drove on I kept watching them. I was nervously alert, suspicious without knowing what I was suspicious of. And then I knew. The knowledge did not come to me as a thought but as a sudden physical oppression. I had never understood before, not really, what they did when they were off alone together. I knew they fooled around but I thought they were mainly friends. I never thought she would do this to me. In the darkness of the backseat I sat rigid and mute, punching her, slapping her, calling her names. I took away the blue convertible I was going to give her, the furs and filmy clothes. I threw her out of the mansion. Then I let her back in. There was no choice. And later, whenever I heard Ray Charles sing “I Can’t Stop Lovin’ You,” I just had to stop and get sad for a while. When my mother joined the rifle club she recruited several other wives, and more couples signed up as time went on. It had been a loose society of beery guys who liked to plink at cans, but that changed. Some of the new members were serious shooters, and after the club got smeared by a couple of other clubs the old members either got serious themselves or dropped out. My mother did well at matches. She loved to win. Winning made her jaunty and bright. Her shooting jacket was covered with badges and ribbons, but Dwight’s jacket had none, because he always lost. He claimed that the Remington target rifle he’d bought was imperfectly balanced.

• From Cleanness (2020)

  In Bulgaria he was studying at the National Sports Academy, though that wasn’t the kind of therapy he wanted to do; he wanted to help people, he said, real people with real problems, not athletes with sore muscles. But today at least there had been a change of routine, he told me as we waited for our food; instead of practicing the techniques on each other, members of one of the teams had come in, they stripped to their briefs and laid themselves out on the tables. My guy was so beautiful, R. said, he wasn’t too big like some of the others, and I got to spend half an hour just touching him. I had to be careful, he went on, lowering his voice enough that I had to lean forward to hear him, I didn’t want anyone to see how much I liked him. I was so scared I would touch him wrong, I’m sure it was an awful massage. And he didn’t speak any English, so he couldn’t tell me how anything felt, I just kept asking him okay? okay? until the teacher told me to stop. It was kind of hot, he said, looking up at me, and something he saw made him smile. Are you jealous, he asked, and I denied it too quickly, though it wasn’t exactly jealousy I felt. It made me worry we had different ideas about the story we were living together; I would tell that to a friend, not a lover, and it was as though R. had heard this thought when he continued. I’ve never had anybody to talk to about this, he said, you’re the only one, and then he smiled again. But I like that you’re jealous, he said, it’s nice, nobody’s ever been jealous of me before, and again he made that gesture with his fingers that was like a caress, or the idea of a caress. But he snatched his hand back quickly, almost guiltily, as the waitress set down our food, saying first Zapovyadaite, here you are, and then, more extravagantly, da vi e sladko, may it be sweet to you, a kind of courtesy that was out of place in such a casual restaurant. I glanced up as I thanked her, and in the moment before she turned away I thought I caught a look on her face that was something more than politeness, a look that was kind, and I wondered whether she had seen R.’s gesture and read it rightly and given it, in this small way, a kind of blessing.

• From This Boy's Life: A Memoir (1989)

  Breathing loudly, clenching and unclenching his jaw, he leaned over the edge and cupped his hands in front of his mouth and screamed a word I had heard only once, years before, when my father shouted it at a man who had cut him off in traffic. “Yid!” Silver screamed, and again, “Yid!” One day my mother and I went down to Alkai Point to watch a mock naval battle between the Odd Fellows and the Lions Club. This was during Seafair, when the hydroplane races were held. The park overlooked the harbor; we could just make out the figures on the two sailboats throwing water-balloons back and forth and trying to repel each other’s boarding parties. There was a crowd in the park, and whenever one of these boarding parties got thrown back into the water everybody would laugh. My mother was laughing with the rest. She loved to watch men goof around with each other; lifeguards, soldiers in bus stations, fraternity brothers having a car wash. It was a clear day. Hawkers moved through the crowd, selling sun glasses and hats and Seafair souvenirs. Girls were sunning themselves on blankets. The air smelled of coconut oil. Two men holding bottles of beer stood nearby. They kept turning and looking at us. Then one of them walked over, a pair of binoculars swinging from a strap in his hand. He was darkly tanned and wore tennis whites. He had a thin moustache and a crew cut. “Hey, Bub,” he said to me, “want to give these a try?” While he adjusted the strap around my neck and showed me how to focus the lenses, the other man came up and said something to my mother. She answered him, but continued gazing out toward the water with her hand shielding her eyes. I brought the Lions and the Odd Fellows into focus and watched them push each other overboard. They seemed so close I could see their pale bodies and the expressions of fatigue on their faces. Despite the hearty shouts they gave, they climbed the ropes with difficulty and fell back as soon as they met resistance. Each time they hit the water they stayed there a while longer, paddling just enough to keep themselves afloat, looking wearily up at the boats they were supposed to capture. My mother accepted a beer from the man beside her. The one who’d offered me the binoculars sensed my restlessness, maybe even my jealousy. He knelt down beside me and explained the battle as if I were a little kid, but I took the binoculars off and handed them back to him. “I don’t know,” my mother was saying. “We should probably get home pretty soon.” The man she’d been talking with turned to me. He was the older of the two, a tall angular man with gingercolored hair and a disjointed way of moving, as if he were always off balance. He wore Bermudas and black socks.

• From Cleanness (2020)

  In Bulgaria he was studying at the National Sports Academy, though that wasn’t the kind of therapy he wanted to do; he wanted to help people, he said, real people with real problems, not athletes with sore muscles. But today at least there had been a change of routine, he told me as we waited for our food; instead of practicing the techniques on each other, members of one of the teams had come in, they stripped to their briefs and laid themselves out on the tables. My guy was so beautiful, R. said, he wasn’t too big like some of the others, and I got to spend half an hour just touching him. I had to be careful, he went on, lowering his voice enough that I had to lean forward to hear him, I didn’t want anyone to see how much I liked him. I was so scared I would touch him wrong, I’m sure it was an awful massage. And he didn’t speak any English, so he couldn’t tell me how anything felt, I just kept asking him okay? okay? until the teacher told me to stop. It was kind of hot, he said, looking up at me, and something he saw made him smile. Are you jealous, he asked, and I denied it too quickly, though it wasn’t exactly jealousy I felt. It made me worry we had different ideas about the story we were living together; I would tell that to a friend, not a lover, and it was as though R. had heard this thought when he continued. I’ve never had anybody to talk to about this, he said, you’re the only one, and then he smiled again. But I like that you’re jealous, he said, it’s nice, nobody’s ever been jealous of me before, and again he made that gesture with his fingers that was like a caress, or the idea of a caress. But he snatched his hand back quickly, almost guiltily, as the waitress set down our food, saying first Zapovyadaite, here you are, and then, more extravagantly, da vi e sladko, may it be sweet to you, a kind of courtesy that was out of place in such a casual restaurant. I glanced up as I thanked her, and in the moment before she turned away I thought I caught a look on her face that was something more than politeness, a look that was kind, and I wondered whether she had seen R.’s gesture and read it rightly and given it, in this small way, a kind of blessing.

• From This Boy's Life: A Memoir (1989)

  I hear his voice in my own when I speak to my children in anger. They hear it too, and look at me in surprise. My youngest once said, “Don’t you love me anymore?” I left Chinook without a thought for the years I’d lived there. When we crossed the bridge out of camp, Chuck reached under his seat and brought out a jar of gorilla blood he’d mixed up for me. I worked on that while Chuck took sips from a pint of Canadian Club. I remember the wheat-colored label with the two big C’s, the way Chuck squinted when he tipped the bottle, the sloshing of the liquor when he lowered it again. I remember the glint of the liquor in the corner of his mouth. The Amen Corner____ Chuck got drunk almost every night. Some nights he was jolly. Other nights he went into silent rages in which his face would redden and swell, and his lips move to the words he was shouting inside his head. At the peak of his fury he threw himself against unyielding objects. He would ram his shoulder into a wall, then back up and do it again. Sometimes he just stood there, saying nothing, and pummeled the wall with his fists. In the morning he would ask me what he’d done the night before. I didn’t really believe that he had forgotten, but I played along and told him how wiped out he’d been, how totally out of control. He shook his head at the behavior of this strange other person. I could not keep up with him and I stopped trying. He never said anything, but I knew he was disappointed in me. Chuck’s father had run a dairy before he became a storekeeper and preacher. The family still owned the farm, though now they leased the pastures and barn to a neighbor. Mr. and Mrs. Bolger and their two young daughters lived in the main house. Chuck and I were off by ourselves in a converted storage shed a couple of hundred feet away. Mr. Bolger had the idea that a good dose of trust would rouse us to some adult conception of ourselves. It should have. It didn’t. The Bolgers went to bed at nine-thirty sharp. Around ten, if Chuck wasn’t already in the bag, we pushed his car down the drive a ways, then cranked it up and drove over to Veronica’s house. Arch and Psycho were usually there, sometimes Huff. They drank and played poker. I had no money, so I sat on the floor and watched the late show with Veronica. Veronica ruined the movies by telling me all about the stars. She had the inside track on Hollywood. She knew which actor, supposedly dead, was actually a drooling vegetable, and which actress could not be satisfied except by entire football teams. She was especially hard on the men.

• From Cleanness (2020)

  There were more people in the restaurant now, and G. lowered his voice as the booths around us filled and the air grew thick with smoke. I was leaning forward to hear him, and it occurred to me that he had brought me here for the added privacy of it, the privacy of the booth and his lowered voice but also the privacy of the language; at any of the brighter cafés on the boulevards we would have heard English but here no one else was speaking it, we were alone in that way too. I didn’t think of B. as special then, not really, he said, speaking of the boy who was also in my class, whom I thought of as G.’s particular friend; we were all equally friends, the four of us, but B. and I had always been in the same classes, in eighth and ninth grade, and then the next year they put us in different sections. It shouldn’t have mattered, he said, we were good students, we didn’t talk in class or fool around, and we still had our time together as a group. But it did matter, he said, I couldn’t stand it. I made them switch me, I said that I hated the other students, I said they were cruel to me. It wasn’t true but I made my mother believe it, I made her come to the school to complain, and after a few days they put me where I wanted to be. Everything should have been fine then but it wasn’t fine, I knew that it shouldn’t have made me so upset, I couldn’t understand why it had. But that’s not true, he said, shaking his head just slightly, I did understand, at least a little, I knew I felt something I shouldn’t feel.

• From Cleanness (2020)

  Over the next weeks I lost all the pleasure I had ever taken in my friends, he said. B. told me about every minute of it, every feeling, and I hated him while he spoke, I hated his happiness. There was so much to feel, G. said, I had never let myself imagine what I wanted, I had never in all those years fantasized about him, not once; I hardly fantasized about anything, I didn’t want that part of me to exist. But now he was all I could think about, I couldn’t concentrate in my classes—and it was true, I thought, I had noticed it, the abstraction, the missed work, the fact that so often I caught him staring off into space and had to call him back from wherever he had gone. Every day I saw something I couldn’t stand, G. said, the two of them kissing or holding hands, they were so happy together. Everything I had looked forward to was ruined, the year was ruined, and I was lonely in a way I had never been before, not just alone but incapable of being not alone, do you understand? I looked up at him, having heard the grimace I saw now on his face, a look of such desolation I barely caught myself before I reached for him, wanting to place my hand on his, though I had been teaching long enough to know never to touch students, or almost never, even innocent touches can be suspect. And he wouldn’t have welcomed it, I thought, he wasn’t the type to want it, it would have been an intrusion. But maybe I was wrong, maybe it was precisely what he wanted, maybe it was some better or wiser part of me I restrained. That’s the worst thing about teaching, that our actions either have no force at all or have force beyond all intention, and not only our actions but our failures to act, gestures and words held back or unspoken, all we might have done and failed to do; and, more than this, that the consequences echo across years and silence, we can never really know what we’ve done.

• From Mating in Captivity: Unlocking Erotic Intelligence (2006)

  In the twenty-five years that Marguerite and Ian have been together, they’ve had periods of total exclusivity and episodes of hurtful infidelity. “When I found out about Marguerite’s affair I was devastated,” Ian explains. “It took me months to realize I was also jealous. Not of her lover, but of her. Here I’d been resisting other women for years. When she came clean, we took stock. We decided to stay together but open the gates.” Marguerite adds, “We’re trying to come up with something that works for us. It isn’t meant to be a recipe for others.” When I ask her if her open marriage isn’t painful, she answers, “Sometimes it is. Sometimes it’s not. But monogamy—which we never negotiated, by the way—was painful, too.” Skeptics scoff at these arrangements, and question the level of commitment in these relationships. “I’ve never seen an open marriage last.” “Try it for a while, then get back to me.” “It’s selfish.” “Self-indulgent.” “When you play with fire someone always gets burned.” Yet it’s been my experience that couples who negotiate sexual boundaries, like the ones mentioned above, are no less committed than those who keep the gates closed. In fact, it is their desire to make the relationship stronger that leads them to explore other models of long-term love. Rather than expelling the third from the province of matrimony, they grant it a tourist visa. For these couples, fidelity is defined not by sexual exclusivity but by the strength of their commitment. The boundaries aren’t physical but emotional. The primacy of the couple remains paramount. The couples stress emotional monogamy as a sine qua non, and from there they make all sorts of sexual allowances. But far from being a hedonistic free-for-all, these relationships have explicit contracts which are renegotiated periodically, as the need arises. Marguerite and Ian emphasize that their arrangement is both clear and flexible. “We have our rules—no ongoing affairs, no lovers in the city where we live, no affairs with mutual friends—and as long as we stick to them things seem to be OK. If we need to renegotiate later, we’ll do that.” It’s interesting to note that although these couples bring a new meaning to the concept of fidelity, they are nonetheless susceptible to betrayal. Trust is crucial in any relationship, and this is no different for those who invite the third into their intimate space. Infidelity lies in breaches of the agreement, in violations of trust. Even though the rules themselves may look very different, they are breakable, and breaking them has equally painful consequences. In this sense, sexually open couples are no different from their monogamous counterparts.

• From Cleanness (2020)

  Over the next weeks I lost all the pleasure I had ever taken in my friends, he said. B. told me about every minute of it, every feeling, and I hated him while he spoke, I hated his happiness. There was so much to feel, G. said, I had never let myself imagine what I wanted, I had never in all those years fantasized about him, not once; I hardly fantasized about anything, I didn’t want that part of me to exist. But now he was all I could think about, I couldn’t concentrate in my classes—and it was true, I thought, I had noticed it, the abstraction, the missed work, the fact that so often I caught him staring off into space and had to call him back from wherever he had gone. Every day I saw something I couldn’t stand, G. said, the two of them kissing or holding hands, they were so happy together. Everything I had looked forward to was ruined, the year was ruined, and I was lonely in a way I had never been before, not just alone but incapable of being not alone, do you understand? I looked up at him, having heard the grimace I saw now on his face, a look of such desolation I barely caught myself before I reached for him, wanting to place my hand on his, though I had been teaching long enough to know never to touch students, or almost never, even innocent touches can be suspect. And he wouldn’t have welcomed it, I thought, he wasn’t the type to want it, it would have been an intrusion. But maybe I was wrong, maybe it was precisely what he wanted, maybe it was some better or wiser part of me I restrained. That’s the worst thing about teaching, that our actions either have no force at all or have force beyond all intention, and not only our actions but our failures to act, gestures and words held back or unspoken, all we might have done and failed to do; and, more than this, that the consequences echo across years and silence, we can never really know what we’ve done.

• From Mating in Captivity: Unlocking Erotic Intelligence (2006)

  We once shunned premarital sex and homosexuality; they are now more or less accepted in most circles. In recent years, a small group of men and women have taken on monogamy as the next big battle in their personal fight for sexual emancipation. Joan and Hiro describe having two types of sex: sex for love and sex for fun. The latter they reserve for their annual trip to a swingers’ convention in Las Vegas. They tell me that it has done wonders for their sex life as well as for their intimacy. Despite how they may appear, Joan and Hiro are champions of the marital ideals they seem to be defying. They don’t question the institution of marriage. In fact, they seek to preserve it. They value togetherness, honesty, and sharing. Even fidelity is upheld in their arrangement. Joan and Hiro have effectively neutralized the threat of infidelity by channeling it into their relationship. And, as the anthropologist Katherine Frank wryly notes, “What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas.” Swinging is a form of consensual adultery. It also accords equal freedom to both partners. Eric and Jaxon are also fans of recreational sex, and in the ten years they’ve been together they’ve always made a distinction between emotional loyalty and sexual exclusivity within their commitment. “Right from the start we talked about sex with other men. We’re open about it. For us, the real commitment is the emotional one. Sex outside the relationship isn’t a deal-breaker. I guess you could call us emotionally monogamous, sexually promiscuous.” Arlene, sixteen years older than Jenna, explains, “I know sex matters, it’s just not so important to me anymore. And the older I get, the less I care.” Jenna feels she’s in her prime, and isn’t ready for early retirement. They’ve agreed that when Jenna goes on location for a shoot, she’s allowed to have her fun provided she doesn’t forget where her priorities lie. When I ask Arlene if she isn’t threatened by this arrangement, she replies, “Of course I am. But at this point I think that asking Jenna to give up sex entirely would amount to a bigger threat than a few groupies. I can’t imagine saying to her, ‘Your body belongs to me whether I want it or not.’” Conscious that the juices of eros no longer flow between them, Arlene remakes the idea of fidelity. Monogamy stipulates keeping the forbidden on the outside, but rarely includes provisions for the couple. Eventually, if desire withers, monogamy too easily slides downward into celibacy. When this happens, fidelity becomes a weakness rather than a virtue. In the twenty-five years that Marguerite and Ian have been together, they’ve had periods of total exclusivity and episodes of hurtful infidelity. “When I found out about Marguerite’s affair I was devastated,” Ian explains. “It took me months to realize I was also jealous. Not of her lover, but of her. Here I’d been resisting other women for years.

• From Saint Thomas Aquinas Collection (22 Books) (2016)

  Objection 5: Further, according to the Philosopher (De Gener. Animal. i, 20), in the begetting of offspring the male is to the female as agent to patient, and as the craftsman is to his material. But it is not against the order of nature for one agent to act on several patients, or for one craftsman to work in several materials. Therefore neither is it contrary to the law of nature for one husband to have many wives. Objection 6: On the contrary, That which was instilled into man at the formation of human nature would seem especially to belong to the natural law. Now it was instilled into him at the very formation of human nature that one man should have one wife, according to Gn. 2:24, “They shall be two in one flesh.” Therefore it is of natural law. Objection 7: Further, it is contrary to the law of nature that man should bind himself to the impossible, and that what is given to one should be given to another. Now when a man contracts with a wife, he gives her the power of his body, so that he is bound to pay her the debt when she asks. Therefore it is against the law of nature that he should afterwards give the power of his body to another, because it would be impossible for him to pay both were both to ask at the same time. Objection 8: Further, “Do not to another what thou wouldst not were done to thyself” [*Cf. Tob. 4:16] is a precept of the natural law. But a husband would by no means be willing for his wife to have another husband. Therefore he would be acting against the law of nature, were he to have another wife in addition. Objection 9: Further, whatever is against the natural desire is contrary to the natural law. Now a husband’s jealousy of his wife and the wife’s jealousy of her husband are natural, for they are found in all. Therefore, since jealousy is “love impatient of sharing the beloved,” it would seem to be contrary to the natural law that several wives should share one husband.

• From Momma and the Meaning of Life (1999)

  Picky. Picky. Picky. Perfect health. Athletic. Slim. Younger than she. Recent bereavement. Extraordinary sensibility to art, literature, and existential concerns. I grew impatient with Irene and the impossible standards she set. I thought of all the other widows I had worked with, who would have given anything for any attention whatsoever paid by any of the men Irene had summarily rejected. I did my best to keep these sentiments to myself, but she missed nothing, not even my unexpressed thoughts, and grew angry at my wish that she become involved with a man. “You’re trying to force me to compromise!” she accused. Perhaps too she was sensing my growing alarm that she would never let me go. I believed that her attachment to me was a major factor in her refusing to engage a man. God, would I be burdened with her forever? Perhaps that was my penalty for having succeeded in becoming so important to her. And then Kevin entered her life. From the beginning she knew he was the man she had been seeking. I marveled at her certainty—her prescience. I thought of all those impossible, ridiculous standards she had set. Well, he met every single one of them, and then some. Youth, perfect health, sensitivity—he was even a member of the society of the secretly bereaved. His wife had died a year previously, and he and Irene fully understood and empathized with each other’s mourning. Everything clicked immediately, and I was overjoyed for Irene—and for my own liberation. Before she met Kevin, she had entirely regained her high level of functioning in the outside world, but there had remained a deep and almost inexpressible inner sadness and resignation. Now that too had rapidly resolved. Had she improved as a result of meeting Kevin? Or had she been able to be open to him because she had improved? Some of each? I could never be certain. And now she was bringing Kevin to meet me. Here they come, through the café entrance. They’re walking toward me. Why am I nervous? Look at that man: he’s gorgeous—tall, powerful, looks like he does a triathlon every day before breakfast, and that nose . . . unbelievable . . . where do you buy noses like that? Enough, Kevin, let go of her hand. Enough already! There’s got to be something not to like about this guy. Oops, I’m going to have to shake hands with him. Why are my hands sweating so? Will he notice? Who cares what he notices? “Irv,” I heard Irene say, “this is Kevin. Kevin, Irv.” I smiled, held out my hand, and greeted him through clenched jaws. Damn you, I thought, you’d better take good care of her. And, goddamnit, you’d better not die. 5 [image file=image_154.jpg] Double Exposure

• From Mating in Captivity: Unlocking Erotic Intelligence (2006)

  The affair is the third, but so, too, is the wife at home. Naomi is the hidden shadow in Doug’s marriage, but Zoë lives at the center of the affair. The lovers’ jealousy depends on the presence of the spouse. Without the betrothed, all the possessiveness, passion, and insanity of fevered lovers will simply go limp. Perhaps this is why so few affairs last after the marriage that inspired them dissolves. The true test of love in an affair begins only when the obstacle is removed. All relationships live in the shadow of the third, for it is the other that solders our dyad. In his book Monogamy, Adam Phillips writes, “The couple is a resistance to the intrusion of the third, but in order for it to last it is indispensable to have enemies. That is why the monogamous can’t live without them. When we are two, we are together. In order to form a couple, we need to be three.” What then is a couple to do? Many of the patients I meet simply refuse to acknowledge the third. They’re drawn by the lure of oneness, which insists that there is no need for others. Perfect love is sufficient unto itself. So fragile is this fusion that the presence of another, even in fantasy, is powerful enough to shatter it. This is poignantly illustrated in Stanley Kubrick’s film Eyes Wide Shut. Bill and Alice have just returned from a lavish black-tie Christmas party that has sparked a conversation about sex. Bill has always assumed that Alice, like him, is essentially incapable of infidelity. “You’re my wife and my child’s mother and I’m sure of you. You’d never be unfaithful. I’m sure of you.” Alice, outraged at his presumption and emboldened by a joint they have just smoked, decides to enlighten him. She describes in agonizing detail just how powerful the presence of the other can be, even when it is nothing more than a mirage. She tells him of her febrile fantasy about a naval officer she desired from a distance. They never met; nonetheless, his instant hold on her was so strong she would have given up everything if he’d only asked. She also says that this happened on a day when she and Bill had just made love, and Bill had never been dearer to her. Bill is devastated by his wife’s revelation, and he spends the rest of the film trying to avenge the betrayal and restore order to his broken world. What struck me is that, for Bill, a fantasy could generate the same sense of violation as an actual affair. Bill is like many of the partners I meet. His security rests not only on what Alice does but also on what she thinks. Her fantasies are proof of her freedom and separateness, and that scares him. The third points to other possibilities, choices we didn’t make, and in this way it’s bound up with our freedom.

• From Cleanness (2020)

  I have such a strange perspective on their lives; in one sense I see them as no one else sees them, my profession is a kind of long looking, and in another they are entirely opaque to me. He was so excited, G. said of this fourth friend, he couldn’t wait to tell me about the night before, how after I went to bed they stayed up drinking, how there was something going on between B. and our other friend, how they began talking to each other as though he weren’t there, until finally he said good night and left them alone. And then, before he fell asleep he heard them walk past his door together. Isn’t it great, this friend said to G., they’re perfect for each other, and it’s been coming for so long; he couldn’t understand how it hadn’t happened already, it was so obviously what they wanted. And he said all this to me like I knew it already, G. went on, like it was so clear it didn’t need to be said. But I didn’t know, I hadn’t seen anything, and as I sat there I felt something I had never felt before, it was like I was falling into something, like water though it wasn’t really like water, it was like a new element, G. said. But surely he didn’t say precisely that, surely this is something I’ve added; added in solidarity, I’d like to say, but it wasn’t solidarity I felt as I listened to him, it was more like the laying of a claim. The experience he had had was my own, I felt, I recognized it exactly, and as he spoke I felt myself falling also, into his story and his feeling both, I was trapped in what he told. Finally we heard them moving, G. went on, we heard a door closing and steps coming from above, and then they came down the stairs together. They were shy, holding hands, it was like they were nervous about us seeing them. Our friend whistled at them and laughed, clapping his hands, and then they all laughed together. But I couldn’t laugh with them, not really, I could only pretend to laugh. They had changed, the two of them, they seemed like different people sitting there in chairs they pulled together as close as they could, leaning against each other, like people I didn’t know; and even though I could see B. glancing at me now and again, I couldn’t make myself meet his eyes. G. paused, lighting another cigarette though the ashtray was already full. The restaurant was busy now, every table was taken, the room was loud with conversation and laughter, but G. hadn’t raised his voice as he spoke; I had to strain to hear him, leaning forward as best I could. He was silent for a while, dragging on his cigarette.

• From Mating in Captivity: Unlocking Erotic Intelligence (2006)

  This isn’t a justification of infidelity, or an endorsement. Temptation has existed since Eve bit the apple, but so, too, have injunctions against it. The Catholic church is expert not only in avoiding temptation but also in meting out penance for those we couldn’t resist. What’s different today is not the desires themselves but the fact that we feel obligated to pursue them—at least until we tie the knot, when we’re suddenly expected to renounce all we’ve been encouraged to want. Monogamy stands alone, like the Dutch boy with his finger in the dike, trying to hold back a flood of unbridled licentiousness. Inviting the Shadow Some couples choose not to ignore the lure of the forbidden. Instead, they subvert its power by inviting it in. “I would never want him to be unfaithful, but knowing it’s possible keeps me sexually interested in him.” “Pretending there are no handsome men in the world doesn’t make my relationship safer and certainly doesn’t make it more honest.” “My girlfriend is beautiful. Men are always coming on to her. The way she laughs it off makes me feel great; she keeps picking me.” These couples share fantasies, read erotica together, or reminisce about the past. They admit that, yes, the delivery man was hot. So was the computer tech, the salesman at Barney’s, your neurologist, the neighbor’s wife. Selena and Max have license to flirt but draw the line at realizing the possibilities. “We’re both gluttons for attention. I get a real ego boost when someone hits on me, especially now that I have a kid. And when someone hits on Max? Forget it. I feel like I’m going home with the prom king.” Max and Selena like to play with possessiveness, but both are dead certain of the rules of the game. When Elsa returns from a conference, Gerard is always curious about whom she met. “Was there anyone interesting? Did you tell him about your fantastic husband? And were you flirting while you were raving about me?” Wendy has always known that George has a weakness for blonds. So last Thursday she decided to be one for the day. She donned a platinum wig and a trench coat and showed up unannounced at the building site to take him to lunch. He says, “Great. The guys are going to think I’m having an affair.” Wendy doesn’t miss a beat: “Let them be jealous.” These couples, in their own ways, have chosen to acknowledge the possibility of the third: the recognition that our partner has his or her own sexuality, replete with fantasies and desires that aren’t necessarily about us.

• From This Boy's Life: A Memoir (1989)

  encouragement; when they made a basket the applause was subdued. The room came into focus for me. I caught my breath, found my rhythm, and settled into the game. I still had trouble keeping my feet, but nobody laughed when I fell down. The crowd was on my side now, and the other team seemed to know it. They played with an air of deference, almost of apology. I began to see myself from the stands and became sentimentally aroused by the consciousness of my own nobility and grit in seeing this game through. I had wrenched my knee slightly in a fall, and I parlayed this annoyance into a limp sufficiently pronounced to draw sympathy without forcing the referee to end the game. I hobbled gamely up and down the floor and the other team slowed down too, as if to refuse any further advantage over us. They won by a mile. When the buzzer went off, their coach ran onto the court and had them give us three cheers. NORMA AND BOBBY were late picking me up. The parking lot was almost empty when they pulled in. “Who won?” Norma asked. She pushed the door open for me and leaned forward as I squeezed past her into the backseat. “They did.” “Next time,” Bobby said. Norma closed the door and slid back over next to Bobby. They looked at each other. He put the car in gear and drove slowly out of the lot. It was warm inside the car, cloying. Norma stretched, fiddled with the radio, teased the hair on Bobby’s neck. She called him Bobo, her pet name for him, and said something that made him laugh. Her voice was low, her movements languorous. I watched them. As we drove on I kept watching them. I was nervously alert, suspicious without knowing what I was suspicious of. And then I knew. The knowledge did not come to me as a thought but as a sudden physical oppression. I had never understood before, not really, what they did when they were off alone together. I knew they fooled around but I thought they were mainly friends. I never thought she would do this to me. In the darkness of the backseat I sat rigid and mute, punching her, slapping her, calling her names. I took away the blue convertible I was going to give her, the furs and filmy clothes. I threw her out of the mansion. Then I let her back in. There was no choice. And later, whenever I heard Ray Charles sing “I Can’t Stop Lovin’ You,” I just had to stop and get sad for a while.

• From Saint Thomas Aquinas Collection (22 Books) (2016)

  THEOPHYLACT. The other Apostles are indignant at seeing James and John seeking for honour; wherefore it is said, And when the ten heard it, they began to be much displeased with James and John. For being influenced by human feelings, they were moved with envy; and their first displeasure arose from their seeing that they were not taken up by the Lord; before that time they were not displeased because they saw that they themselves were honoured before other men. At this time the Apostles were thus imperfect, but afterwards they yielded the chief place one to another. Christ however cures them; first indeed by drawing them to Himself in order to comfort them; and this is meant, when it is said, But Jesus called them to him; then by shewing them that to usurp honour, and to desire the chief place, belongs to Gentiles. Wherefore there follows: And saith unto them, Ye know that they which are accounted to rule over the Gentiles exercise lordship; and their great ones exercise authority over them. The great ones of the Gentiles thrust themselves into the chief place tyrannically and as lords. It goes on: But so shall it not be among you. BEDE. (ubi sup.) In which He teaches, that he is the greater, who is the less, and that he becomes the lord, who is servant of all: vain, therefore, was it both for the one party to seek for immoderate things, aud the other to be annoyed at their desiring greater things, since we are to arrive at the height of virtue not by power but by humility. Then He proposes an example, that if they lightly regarded His words, His deeds might make them ashamed, saying, For even the Son of man came not to be ministered unto, but to minister, and to give his life a ransom for many. THEOPHYLACT. Which is a greater thing than to minister. For what can be greater or more wonderful than that a man should die for him to whom he ministers? Nevertheless, this serving and condescension of humility was His glory, and that of all; for before He was made man, He was known only to the Angels; but now that He has become man and has been crucified, He not only has glory Himself, but also has taken up others to a participation in His glory, and ruled by faith over the whole world. BEDE. (ubi sup.) He did not say, however, that He gave His life a ransom for all, but for many, that is, for those who would believe on Him. 10:46–5246. And they came to Jericho: and as he went out of Jericho with his disciples and a great number of people, blind Bartimæus, the son of Timæus, sat by the highway side begging. 47. And when he heard that it was Jesus of Nazareth, he began to cry out, and say, Jesus, thou Son of David, have mercy on me.

• From In an Unspoken Voice (2010)

  For example, in certain bird species it is the male’s unique and creative use of notes, rhythm and phrasing that the female finds attractive. § On the other hand, the defense of territories also can involve combat and killing. In fact, 70% of male monkeys in a monkey troupe never get to mate, and they die in isolation. 114 Evolution is about life or death; if love fits in there, so much the better (for us). The combination of raw instinct and artful shaping is also found in human mating rituals. Clearly, however, one must beware of what has been called “zoomorphism”—the uncritical extension of conclusions drawn from animal behavior to humans. Having said this, anyone who has seen a well-executed rendering of a dance such as the tango or samba has witnessed an exquisitely instinct-rooted mating ritual. Seen simply as formalized movements, devoid of their primal sexual rooting, the steps lose their vitality and credibility. Equally important are the unexpected and creative variations as well as the partner’s response to those surprises that make the dance simultaneously instinctual and artistic. I once watched the mating dance of two scorpions, and had to laugh at just how it resembled (including the gift of a rose—in the form of a twig) the tango in its basic structure. Imagine seeing, in a split screen, a couple passionately engaged in a tango, along with two scorpions coupled in the fervor of their mating dance. One would be struck both by the unexpected, almost bizarre, similarity as well as by the difference in the sense of nuance and variation. Let us not forget the millions of lovers the world over who, at this very moment, are gazing into each other’s eyes. With their enchantment, originality, creativity and perfection ignited, they are engaging the instinctual stepping-stones for an entire life together. Unfortunately, when this dance goes awry, there are also the instincts that drive the jealous rage of brokenhearted lovers. For most of us, the multitude of primal impulses is generally hidden from our rational appreciation. Yet, in sharpening our focus, we can begin to discern an internal savannah, one populated by ancient instincts that manifest as coherent behaviors, sensations, feelings and thoughts. These primal reactions and responses are organized and orchestrated by “hardwired” neurological mechanisms. The assemblage of physiological processes, known as “fixed action patterns” and “domain-specific programs” (and the stimuli that release them, the so-called innate releasing mechanisms, or IRMs), are the legacy of our long evolutionary past. It is worth mentioning that the term fixed makes these behaviors seem more rigid than they really are. This is probably due to a mistranslation of the original German word for these responses, Erbkoordination , which translates, descriptively, as “legacy coordination.”

• From The Art of Seduction (2001)

  home. But Salomé did not stay long: she accepted an invitation of Nietz-herself And in this she succeeded with little effort, sche's to visit him, unchaperoned, in Tautenburg. In her absence Rée was for indeed she was a consumed with doubts and anger. He wanted her more than ever, and was woman more to be wooed prepared to redouble his efforts. When she finally came back, Rée vented than to do the wooing. his bitterness, railing against Nietzsche, criticizing his philosophy, and ques-And now listen to the splendid sequel: not long tioning his motives toward the girl. But Salomé took Nietzsche's side. Rée afterward it happened that was in despair; he felt he had lost her for good. Yet a few days later she sura letter which she had prised him again: she had decided she wanted to live with him, and with written to her lover fell into the hands of another him alone. woman of comparable At last Rée had what he had wanted, or so he thought. The couple set-rank, charm, and beauty; tled in Berlin, where they rented an apartment together. But now, to Rée's and since she, like most women, was curious and dismay, the old pattern repeated. They lived together but Salomé was eager to learn secrets, she courted on all sides by young men. The darling of Berlin's intellectuals, opened the letter and read who admired her independent spirit, her refusal to compromise, she was it. Realizing that it was written from the depths of constantly surrounded by a harem of men, who referred to her as "Her Ex-passion, in the most loving cellency." Once again Rée found himself competing for her attention. and ardent terms, she was Driven to despair, he left her a few years later, and eventually committed at first moved with suicide. compassion, for she knew very well from whom the In 1911, Sigmund Freud met Salomé (now known as Lou Andreas-letter came and to whom it Salomé) at a conference in Germany. She wanted to devote herself to the was addressed; then, psychoanalytical movement, she said, and Freud found her enchanting, al-however, such was the power of the words she though, like everyone else, he knew the story of her infamous affair with read, turning them over in Nietzsche (see page 46, "The Dandy"). Salomé had no background in psy-her mind and considering choanalysis or in therapy of any kind, but Freud admitted her into the in-what kind of man it must be who had been able to ner circle of followers who attended his private lectures. Soon after she arouse such great love, she joined the circle, one of Freud's most promising and brilliant students, Dr. at once began to fall in love Victor Tausk, sixteen years younger than Salomé, fell in love with her. Sa-with him herself; and the lomé's relationship with Freud had been platonic, but he had grown ex-letter was without doubt far more effective than if the