I have encountered many people who believe that jealousy is the ultimate measure of love. That your love for someone is measured by how paranoid you get when it becomes apparent that you might lose that person to someone else.

I think that is why a lot of people use jealousy as a war tactic in relationships. 

A girl will have a fight with her boyfriend because he has told her that he loves her but his actions show otherwise. Pause. If someone’s actions show that the person doesn’t care, what are you still doing with them? Do you think your tears and constant nagging will make them love you? 

Anyway, after the fight, the girl figures that if her boyfriend sees that another guy is interested in her, he will step up his game to keep her. Pause. Why not just leave him altogether and get someone who doesn’t have to be nudged into treating you well? 

Anyway, so the girl embarks on a mission to make her boyfriend jealous. She finds another guy, probably the nice guy who actually loves her but she friendzoned him and uses the poor fella as a pawn. 

Eventually, one or two things happen. Either, the boyfriend finally finds a perfect excuse to leave her. The coward had wanted to leave all along but didn’t know how. 

And when he leaves, he makes sure she knows, and all of social media knows that it’s her fault. That he loved her with every fiber of his body and in turn, she broke his heart. People comment and tell him that women are like that; when you love them wholeheartedly, they walk all over you. 

The girl pleads for forgiveness to no avail and cries over the boy for years to come. She is left to deal with a lifetime of guilt. 

Or…apparently if her boyfriend loves her, he will move heaven and earth to find and eliminate the ‘threat’ to the relationship. 

Then he will act nice for a few days and then go back to his old ways and the girl will go back to feel unsure about his love. (Although if she’d used her brain she’d have figured out that he doesn’t love her.)

So you can see why I absolutely buy into the narrative that jealousy is a measure of love. It isn’t. Love is a good thing. Jealousy isn’t. How can something good be measured using a bad attribute? How can the measure of love be distrust and insecurity and fear? 

Whenever I give my opinion about this matter, people on the opposite side of the argument claim that I have never been in love. But that’s not true. I have loved enough to write songs about it. I keep the songs to myself of course because my voice is what some nightmares are made of. 

Anyway, the bottom line is that I believe in giving a hundred percent when you are in a relationship. But if the person you love doesn’t reciprocate the love or if they show interest in someone else, for the sake of your happiness (and sanity), you should let them be.