Oh hey everybody. This week’s Ask Cristen could be called ‘The One with all the Jealousy’,
the title of that ‘Friends’ episode where Ross becomes like so jealous of Rachel’s
coworker Marker, who she’s like we’re just friends Ross and he’s like no way you’re
friends because that guy’s handsome and guys can’t be friends with Jennifer Anistons.
This week’s Ask Cristen question is coming from anonymous Julia, no that is not her real
name. Anonymous Julia originally wrote in asking, ‘Can men and women be “just friends”?’
And I talked about that all in last week’s Ask Cristen video so check it out if you haven’t
already. I wanted to make this follow-up video because of this little line that jumped out
to me in her question. ‘My own boyfriend is uncomfortable with my having men friends.
Grrr!’ This is an important thing for us to understand which is that line between jealousy
that just naturally arises in romantic relationships and jealousy that crosses the line into possessiveness
and potential abuse. One quick caveat that all the studies I could find examining this
jealousy dynamic between dating partners and friendship partners focused exclusively on
straight people. A definite amount of heterosexism when it comes to relationship studies so LGBTQ
viewers please know that I have you in mind but unfortunately academia does not all the
time. Heterosexism aside, one study identified 4 particular kinds of jealousy that tend to
arise in these situations: Sexual jealousy which is pretty self-explanatory, companionship
jealousy, intimacy jealousy and power jealousy. In straight relationships the only significant
gender difference that researchers identified were that women were likelier, not surprisingly,
to experience that companionship jealousy, so it’s the whole thing we hear about sometimes
where men are concerned or more threatened by the prospect of sexual infidelity whereas
women tend to be more threatened by the prospect of emotional infidelity. Also not surprisingly
at least to me is that one of the biggest predictors of this type of jealousy is how
long that friendship has existed. The thing is the existence of those threat responses,
feeling nervous, feeling jealous, even expressing a little bit of discomfort with a partner’s
friendship with someone that you feel is in someway encroaching on your relationship is
not an indictment on that person, it doesn’t necessarily mean that that person is horrible
and possessive and trying to keep you down. But this is also where we have to understand
and know where that line is. In a healthy relationship that jealousy might arise but
it’s also going to be balanced out by some rationality and some understanding and acceptance
that your other person is going to have other people in their life. If a conversation about
that friendship arises, it should not go: hey I don’t want you to be friends with
that person. [Buzzer]. It should more go: I feel a little bit uncomfortable with like
the vibes I’m getting from that friend, so can you help me understand just what’s
going on? [Bell]. Insecurity and discomfort are just going to happen sometimes in relationships.
But that is quite different from possessive and potentially abusive jealousy, the kind
of jealousy that gets excused as, ‘Oh but he just loves me so much he doesn’t like
me hanging out with other guys.’ If you find yourself with someone who will only date
you on the condition that you ditch all your guy friends or ditch all your girlfriends,
I would recommend ditching that zero and getting some gyros with your friends. A word though
to the person with the friend who is causing all of this jealous turmoil. Be self-aware
enough to recognize whether your friendship is really threatening your relationship. In
a nutshell, if you are the person who is experiencing this jealousy it is important to first check
your jealousy. Be honest with yourself about where it’s coming from. And if you’re
the person with that friend, check yourself, check your friend, check whether you or that
friend may or may not have ulterior motives going on and also check whether emotions that
are being triggered in your partner are understandable and healthy or over the line. Now I want to
know from you dear viewers. Do you have any advice for these kinds of scenarios of how
to check yourself before you wreck yourself? Let me know all of your thoughts in the comments
below. And thanks to everybody who watched and commented on last week’s Ask Cristen
video, ‘Can Men and Women Just be Friends?’ I’m going to share a bunch of those comments
and comments from this video in another video in a whole like comment-appalooza. Stay tuned
for that and as always ask me your questions so I can give you some answers.