How to Deal With Jealousy

Your partner laughs a little too long at a colleague’s joke. Your best friend posts photos from a weekend with someone you’ve never met. Your sister announces she’s pregnant, and while you’re genuinely happy for her, something tight and bitter twists in your chest.

Jealousy and envy are among the most uncomfortable emotions we have, partly because we’re ashamed of them. We’re taught that they’re petty, immature or unkind. So people tend to hide them, deny them or let them leak out sideways, in sarcasm, coldness or suspicion.

But both feelings are normal. They’re old, deeply human and, like every emotion, they carry information. This guide is about hearing that information without letting the feelings run the show.

Jealousy and envy are not the same

In everyday speech, people use the word jealous for both, but they’re different feelings:

• Jealousy is about losing something you have, usually a relationship, to someone else. It involves three people: you, the person you care about and a perceived rival. Its core is fear.
• Envy is about wanting something someone else has: their success, looks, relationship, money or ease. It involves two people: you and the person you’re comparing yourself to. Its core is longing, sometimes mixed with resentment.

We explore the difference in detail in Jealousy vs Envy: What’s the Difference? The distinction matters because each feeling points to a different need, and each calls for a slightly different response.

What jealousy and envy are for

Jealousy protects bonds

Evolutionary psychologists such as David Buss have argued that jealousy evolved to protect valuable relationships. For our ancestors, losing a partner or an ally could be very costly. Jealousy made people alert to threats and motivated to hold on to the people they depended on.

In small doses, jealousy can still do that. It can remind you how much someone matters, and prompt you to pay more attention to the relationship.

Envy points at what you want

Envy is often a signal of desire. When you envy a friend’s career change, it may be telling you that you’re unhappy in your own job. When you envy someone’s confidence, it may be pointing at something you’d like to develop. Researchers distinguish between benign envy, which motivates people to improve, and malicious envy, which makes people want to pull the other person down. Both start from the same place: wanting something you don’t have.

Why these feelings get out of hand

Insecurity

People who feel less secure in themselves or in their relationships tend to feel more jealousy and envy. If you doubt your worth, any comparison or rival can feel like a threat. Research on attachment has found that people with anxious attachment styles, who worry a lot about being abandoned, report more jealousy.

Past experiences

If you’ve been cheated on, left, or grew up feeling that love could be taken away, jealousy can fire more quickly. The brain is trying to protect you from being hurt the same way again.

The story in your head

Jealousy and envy are fed by stories: they must be having an affair, she has it easy, everyone is doing better than me. These stories often fill gaps with the worst possibility.

Comparison

Constant comparison, especially online, feeds envy. We see other people’s highlights and compare them to our ordinary days. How to Stop Comparing Yourself to Others goes into this.

Checking and reassurance-seeking

Checking a partner’s phone, asking repeatedly for reassurance or monitoring someone’s social media can bring brief relief but usually makes jealousy stronger over time, the same way checking feeds anxiety.

How to deal with jealousy and envy

1. Notice the feeling without acting on it

Jealousy often shows up in the body first: a hot face, a tight chest, a sinking stomach, a racing mind. Notice it, and give yourself a pause before you say or do anything. Very few good decisions are made in the first minute of jealousy.

2. Name it precisely

Is this jealousy, the fear of losing someone? Or envy, the wish to have what someone else has? Or something else, like loneliness or insecurity? A clear name tells you what you need.

3. Check the story against the facts

Ask yourself: what do I actually know, and what am I imagining? What would I think if a friend described this situation to me? Jealousy is very good at filling in blanks. Facts often tell a calmer story.

4. Find the need underneath

Jealousy usually points to a need for security, reassurance or closeness. Envy usually points to a need for something you’d like in your own life. Once you know the need, you can look for a way to meet it that doesn’t involve watching, accusing or resenting.

5. Talk, don’t test

If jealousy is about a relationship, talk to the person calmly and honestly. “I felt a bit insecure when you spent the whole party with Tom. Can we talk about it?” is very different from “What’s going on between you two?” Asking for reassurance once is fine. Asking for it constantly tends to wear down the relationship. How to Stop Being Jealous has more on this.

6. Turn envy into direction

When you envy someone, ask: what exactly do I want here? Is it something I could work toward? If so, envy can become motivation. If not, it may be a sign to grieve something you can’t have and let it go. How to Deal With Envy explains how.

7. Build your own sense of worth

Much jealousy and envy comes from feeling that you’re not enough. Working on that directly, through self-compassion, doing things that matter to you and spending time with people who value you, often reduces both feelings more than any technique.

When jealousy becomes a problem

Jealousy becomes harmful when it leads to controlling behavior: checking phones, tracking locations, isolating a partner from friends, accusing them without evidence or exploding in anger. If you recognize this in yourself, please talk to a therapist. If you’re on the receiving end of this kind of jealousy and feel afraid or controlled, it may be a sign of an abusive relationship, and support is available. In the United States, you can contact the National Domestic Violence Hotline.

A small practice

The next time you feel jealous or envious, write three short lines. First: what triggered it. Second: what I’m afraid of, or what I want. Third: one thing I could do about that fear or want that doesn’t involve the other person at all. Look at the third line. That’s usually where the real work is.

For more on how emotions work, see How to Understand Your Emotions.