hey fairy family it's time for another episode of ask the fairy and this is where i read
notes that people have sent me and questions and comments that they've sent that i think have
a lot of applicability to many people out there and so rather than typing in a little
box on youtube i share my answers with all of you here so today okay here's one this is
just a little short question about gifts do you keep gifts or mementos from past relationships
and what if your partner keeps things as well this is from i'll call him tom thank you for that tom
i have a feeling you're really asking about your partner keeping gifts because it causes jealousy
and i have a kind of radical view about about love relationships and jealousy and that is that
if you really want to have a happy relationship you try not to cause jealousy and i say that's
radical because i don't know about you but in the culture i came up in in the 70s and 80s and 90s
there was this idea that if you felt jealous there was something wrong with you that that
wasn't cool that you that you were just being jealous right and one of the most empowering
ideas i was ever taught and it was actually from my husband when i was first dating him
was that jealousy is there for a reason and yes i totally know it's possible for people
to be crazy jealous unreasonably jealous sick jealous and yes that will destroy relationships
but before we go there and talk about like crazy jealousy i just want to talk
about realistic jealousy and the cultural idea that we were supposed to be okay with people
having mementos from exes being friends with exes people who we're in a serious
relationship with the fact is it can cause jealousy now not everybody is jealous
but what makes you jealous it's when it's when somebody that you're connected to in an intimate
relationship and where you have an expectation of some kind of fidelity and commitment
when they're interacting with uh somebody else in a way in a manner with energy that feels like
they're trying to keep a flame alive or ignite a flame and in fact that makes most people in
an intimate relationship feel scared and unsafe and not because there's something wrong with them
but because it's natural it's natural in forming an intimate and committed relationship
to not want somebody else in the picture now for all the people who are totally happy and doing
some sort of polyamory or something that's fine there are youtube channels where people talk about
how to deal with that but this is not the channel i teach people how to have intimate one-on-one
relationships and i'm going to just tell you try not to create jealousy now it's not reasonable
for somebody to say that you can never do something you want to do it's got to be voluntary
but here's what you could do you could make a decision if you don't want to cause jealousy that
you are going to really make some distance with the people who are your exes they're not going
to still be your friends in fact one of the most empowering ideas in my own healing process
was something i learned from my husband actually when we were first dating
and he just said i'm dating you because i want to get to know you and see if we're
suited for marriage and i want to give this my best shot and i don't want to make you jealous
and he said so i'm i'm not gonna hang out with like you know women on my own i'm not gonna go
have lunch with them or see exes or anything you don't even have to worry about that and he told me
you can do that if you want but you don't have to i'm not expecting it of you it's just something
i'm gonna do because i just want to learn i want to get to know you when you're not jealous
and my jaw just about fell because i had been told all my life that if i got jealous it was because
i was just being jealous you know because i you know i grew up in this kind of strange post-modern
hippie culture where you're supposed to always be friends with your exes you're like okay the
romance is over but why can we just be friends and you're always supposed to say yes and then you try
to do it but be you know be honest one person usually is pining away for the other one right
one person is actually in love with the other one and hoping that by continuing to hang out
something will happen or it will be rekindled i know that some relations aren't relationships
aren't like that i have them like i have a friendship with my ex-husband we have children
together so we were highly motivated to maintain a friendship we would not have a friendship if
we didn't have kids together but now you know these kids are college age and we've had a lot
of years to work this out he has a wife i have a husband we're a family in many senses of the word
and um and i'm very grateful to have his friendship and i'm very very clear like neither
one of us has any romantic energy for the other at all and frankly we barely did when we were married
it wasn't really there to begin with so it is possible it is possible to have a friendship with
an ex and especially when there's a purpose like that to raise children together um and sometimes
for less of a reason you know just because there's a good friendship there and there genuinely is no
romantic energy but even when there's no romantic energy it can make other partners jealous and
if you want a great relationship i would give preference to the new partner not the old one
and do what you can to make them feel as secure as you can because what when we're
forming a new relationship with somebody what we want is an open heart all right where when
one person cannot open their heart or is scared or jealous or angry or feeling threatened
it just isn't going to happen you're not going to have that magic bond happen
and you might not be destined for that bond anyway it may not come but you want to give it a chance
and not create jealousy so one thing that i learned when i was looking into this is that
like in my grandmother's generation when when you dated somebody it was to consider marriage right
you have many other ways to date right now you don't have to do that but but in her day that's
what it was you dated to consider marriage and if one person decided it ain't gonna happen
you cut off all ties you did not stay friends it was like that was it and you became this total
clean slate to consider whatever might come along in the future and i used to think that that was
barbaric i now think it's really wise after having a lot of really like messy entanglements with exes
and expecting new people in my life to put up with it and creating a lot of pain and sometimes
for very good reason did they feel pain because there was energy there and there was sort of like
yeah well if this doesn't work out maybe i'll go back to that or you know what one of my friends
called lab rats you know i know they're still into me and i'll just keep them around because
that keeps my self-esteem up when i have nobody in my life and somebody to hang and then i have
somebody to hang out with on saturdays so that's just that's not cool either that's not it's not
right to the other person it's feeding off like a vampire their emotional energy for you
just to fill up your life and not only does it do that to them but what it does to you is it
turns off your cab light should you have the good fortune to meet somebody amazing and cool
uh you your the vibe they get from you is off they if they go out with you a little bit and they find
out you have these friendships with your exes and stuff healthy people are gonna like that's a red
flag it is a red flag so the original question you asked tom was about gifts and mementos and
i think there's a place for gifts and mementos from people in the past there are some people
where it was such a terrible experience that i took all photos and destroyed them or sent them
back uh it wasn't something i wanted to keep but some people were really important to me
and our experiences were important to me and they're tucked away and they're
sealed up in files somewhere where they're not going to interfere with my life or become an
obsession or anything like that but for the most part yeah stuff like love letters and
anything that anything that eventually led to sorrow i i just i'm not saying you
have to do this but i made a decision like anything that led to sorrow i was just like
let's just get it out of here i i want to have a new experience and
uh i had done that a little bit along the way but when my my now husband and i were getting married
you know our our decision to get married and that happening for us was so much the fruit of of me
being willing to put behind me a lot of the past ideas and behaviors and attachments and things
that had made me so unhappy before then i was really willing to do something new and i just
you know i just got clear that all those unhappy endings
gone goodbye and not think about them anymore and i'm so glad i did but i do respect that not
all relationships are like that and um yeah you would want something to remember them by
and you may want to have contact from time to time so with respect to the person you're with
um you you see what's possible there without generating actual jealousy the other thing to keep
in mind and this is like let's say you haven't seen somebody in a number of years and you want
to reach out and say hello and see if they want to have coffee you know well that's not the end of
the world but is there a possibility that they're with somebody who would be hurt and jealous
because of this because they've heard about you and if you really want to live on the jedi plane
of of being a good person you want to be very mindful about something like that you don't
want to cause jealousy or pain in somebody else's relationship or in the heart of some person who
loves that person you used to love you don't want to cause them pain that's just bad it's not a good
thing to do to people and you want to it's just a good thing to do to support other people and
having the best relationships they can so isn't that different isn't that different than like
hey you know don't be jealous you're just being hung up you're being too attached or whatever
that's how i was raised to uh i want to i want people who are in a relationship with me to have
an open heart and to feel safe with me and i'm not going to make them jealous and furthermore i don't
want to cause pain in their in in ex's partners and things if i can so not an absolute this is
not like um this is not like a do not go zone with barbed wire around it or anything it's it's a gray
area it's nuanced but take care of the people who are interested in loving you it's very precious to
have somebody who loves you and who's interested in growing a better relationship with you just put
that first and that's it for ask the fairy today if you like this topic i'm going to suggest that
you have a look at this video right here i go more deeply into it and i will see you very soon
you