This is a comprehensive guidebook and step-by-step template for recognizing feelings of jealousy and insecurity as they come up with effective tools for sorting through those emotions, and when, if, and how to bring up challenging or potentially emotionally charged conversations with loved ones.
Review
After years of struggling with jealousy with KnyghtMare’s poly life I have finally found a book that has turned it all on its head. The Jealousy Survival Guide: How to feel safe, happy, and secure in an open relationship by Kitty Chambliss is the best little book on the subject out there right now. I’m finding positive coping mechanisms, learning how to manage my feelings and also why they exist in the first place. If you’ve had any moments of jealousy because of an open relationship and your feelings about your partner’s partners, this is a book you should check out.
This book is a comprehensive guidebook and a step-by-step workbook for recognizing your feelings of jealousy and insecurity and then learning how to cope with them in healthy ways. It also helps you bring up the often difficult conversations with loved ones so that you both can benefit. It’s broken into three sections, and the meat of the book is in the second section, but I found I could connect with how I was feeling right from the start and thought that the author was talking directly to me and tugging at some emotions I had been trying to ignore for so long.
If it sounds like I’m giving this book a glowing review, you’d be right. Not only is it well put together, but I have experienced, first hand, the result of the activities in the book and the improvement of my relationship with KnyghtMare when it relates to his poly life. I can’t possibly give enough appreciation to the author for what she’s helped me learn about myself and especially the acceptance of my turbulent emotions.
Inside the book, you’ll be asked to write a contract to yourself for the duration of reading the book and working through it. That contract alone is something I copied into my planner and put up online so that I could be held accountable for my actions and my responsibility for improving my responses around poly. I chanted and meditated on the power statements daily, and in the midst of a pang of jealousy and they really do their magic if you let them.
The author walks you through several strategies to work through your jealousy and insecurity and while I thought one of them was not worth my effort, I could definitely see how it would help someone else and I’m so glad that there were options for how to process the emotions that were building up inside me for so long.
It was like a much anticipated exhale, to be able to let go of the anger and fear, the dissolution and the misunderstandings and finally have productive conversations with KnyghtMare about my feelings and how to help me accept poly as the way of life he has made it.
If there was one negative I could give this book is that it’s far too short! I wanted more when I put it down and while not every book can have everything this book has left me wanting more from the author on the same topic and I’ve been devouring anything I can by Kitty Chambliss.
If you’d like to read more from the author like I did, head over to LovingWithoutBoundaries.com and check out website set up to help people navigate poly relationships today.
Would you like to get a copy of the Jealousy Survival Guide? You can find it on Amazon in print and Kindle format and other online booksellers.