Polyamory, Jealousy & The Path to an Elevated Frequency
Polyamory, Jealousy & The Path to an Elevated Frequency
How to raise your vibration by feeling jealousy, and what the complex emotional dynamics of polyamory can teach us about finding a higher vibration.
*For your listening pleasure there is also an audio version of this article read by the author. It may include a few sidebars ;)
Updated April 2024
Different Versions of Polyamory
To be clear, I have not practiced polyamory myself, and do not pretend to fully comprehend the complex dynamics and emotions experienced by those who do. My references to polyamory here are from people in my circle who previously have, or currently do, practice polyamory.
I used to have such a naive view of polyamory before I knew anyone practicing it. “Who are these zen Buddhas who experience no jealousy?” or “Are these just people who want to sleep around?” Since then, I have come across as many expressions of polyamory as there are humans who practice it.
A woman with many partners who keeps it all light, and likes exploring different versions of herself with different partners. Friends who respect polyamory’s ability to expand their consciousness by bringing awareness to their shadow, or evolve their communication skills as they work through complex emotions.
People somewhat pressured in to trying it because their partner wants more freedom to explore themselves. What all of them seem to agree on is that polyamory will bring up some complex and extreme emotions.
I was recently chatting with a girlfriend thinking about trying polyamory. Her partner wanted to explore some elements of himself beyond the boundaries of what felt comfortable in their relationship.
She felt she’d be happier in a monogamous relationship, yet cared about her partner and wanted him to have breathing room to learn about himself. She recognized that she wasn’t the best personality fit to help him explore the side of himself he felt he needed to. Did it work for her though? She was really hung up.
This gets in to the conversation of when we are creating our own high vibration universe, and when we become a moon orbiting in someone else’s? When we operate as a moon to someone else’s earth, vibrational frequency often suffers.
As a moon we are a secondary (but important) player in creating someone else’s world, but it reduces our power to create our own universe. When we feel torn between supporting someone we love and supporting ourselves, it can be tricky to find the path that will enhance vibration.
Higher Vibration Paths
If my friend goes ahead and reluctantly tries polyamory it hints of a potential low vibration timeline because her heart isn’t in it. Yet, losing her partner because she doesn’t want to give something new a try doesn’t feel great either.
High vibration paths tend to light up for us, and feel juicy. However, sometimes we have to travel down a path a bit to figure out if it’s lit or not.
There’s value in making sure how we imagine the path will feel is actually how the path feels, especially if we are hung up on what to do. The big frequency caveat here is to know when to turn around if the path isn’t lit.
Often we commit to paths because we’ve already started, because our society views going backward or reversing course to be a waste of effort.
“Always finish what you start” and “Don’t be a quitter” ring in our minds. Yet, a high vibration life often involves pausing to feel if a path lights us up, and then sampling paths if it’s too hard to feel the lit path from the beginning.
We can physically go down each path, or journey a simulated version in meditation and observe our feelings. To raise vibration we don’t want to make decisions purely from the mind or using other people’s rules.
Best friend thinks polyamory isn’t a good choice? Doesn’t matter. You are the only one who can innately feel for you if a choice is resonant or not. Co-worker tried polyamory and says you’ll likely have a terrible experience like they did? You can listen and respect the perspective, but it most likely has zero bearing on how you, a completely different human, will experience polyamory.
“Polyamory does not require a lack of jealousy, but willingness to take responsibility for one’s feelings.” ~Anonymous
Processing Devastatingly Complex Emotions
The heavy emotional processing that comes with polyamory is another area where frequency comes in to play. Think of the vast swath of people who refuse to watch horror movies. I’m one of them. There’s an inner knowing that after the film I just can’t process those yucky emotions I’m left with very well.
I acknowledge I do not have the emotional bandwidth to process such extreme feelings and visuals. This same logic can be applied to the rest of our lives.
While my depiction is certainly limited, the people I’ve seen thrive practicing polyamory are absolute wizards at processing low vibration emotions and moving them through their bodies.
They also tend to try polyamory with the intention of personal development, actively working jealousy out of their system, increasing their communication skills, or some higher level goal.
They tend to possess a heightened level of awareness for finding behavior patterns and beliefs causing emotional upset. Once they find these they are practiced in the emotional alchemy of clearing the low vibration belief or pattern, and replacing it with something healthier that enhances their vibration.
If you want to explore this yourself, here’s an article on how to work with anger to raise vibration. Plus, another one on how to use anxiety to amplify your vibe.
“I’m jealous” becomes not a fit of rage, or quick-fix suppression of jealousy to act like things are fine, but an examination of beliefs. The belief, “I’m boring” is uncovered as causing jealousy when they compare themselves to their parter’s charismatic significant other.
This person can then choose to stay upset, or clear emotional impressions left from times they ignored or overlooked. Find ways to appreciate the quiet version of themselves. Realize charisma is only showing catching their attention as an important trait because they aren’t satisfied with themselves in that arena; there’s many traits that hold value, and this one isn’t more important than any other.
Once they successfully replace the old belief with something like, “The quiet side of me is endearing” and genuinely believe it (not just order themselves to believe it) big shifts happen.
They will emerge from this process with a higher vibration because they are no longer holding a low vibration belief that anchors them in lack. The more secure we become in ourselves the less we even feel an urge to compare ourselves to others.
When Polyamory Ends With Regret
However, the person who stops at emotional suppression of jealousy will not be as lucky. I’ve spoken to many a friend who later realized they were damaged because they suppressed their true emotions in order to “act like they weren’t upset.” They feared being perceived as weak. These people are having a similar experience to me watching a horror film.
They are stacking up emotionally traumatic experiences because they don’t have the ability to process them yet. People who followed this polyamory prescription have shared with me they look back and wish they hadn’t done it.
Now they are spending time and money in therapy to work these traumatic experiences out of their psyche- when they could have just paused to realize polyamory didn’t ever feel resonant to them in the first place. In doing it they were abandoning creating their own universe, and playing a supporting role for someone else.
This is what happens when we are sucked in to the pull of creating someone else’s universe. We create for them, but the path isn’t high vibration for us. I’m not saying there’s no value in doing for others.
Ideally, we want to find intersections where we can do for others, AND it’s high vibration for us as well. Often these opportunities are marked with a feeling that we can act from a place of joy instead of reluctance. When we do for others with reluctance we often just create resentment.
The Magic of Jealousy
In my perspective, individuals practicing mindful polyamory are clearing big chunks of jealousy from the human collective consciousness which can raise the vibration of humanity. What do I mean by this?
Imagine the world is covered in rainbow Skittles; humans containing jealousy are blue Skittles. As people confront the low vibration of jealousy, and replace old belief patterns with empowering beliefs, blue Skittles start to disappear.
Jealousy’s low vibration is slowly erased from the human collective consciousness. Beliefs, thought patterns, and personal comparisons start to erase themselves from our collective consciousness.
The frequency of jealousy begins to weaken. People brave enough to put themselves in the path of jealousy and work toward high level relationship solutions, and have vulnerable conversations to find ways to transmute jealousy, are doing us all a favor. (To see where jealousy sits on the emotional vibration chart click here.)
“You’ve got to stop thinking of consciousness as your own. As soon as you are in the presence of others, your consciousness is linked at some level to those others.” ~James Rozoff
For a long term look at how lower vibration emotions have been worked out of the collective human consciousness, compare our current society to Medieval Europe.
The Plantagenets were a ferocious dynasty ruling England from 1154 to 1485. This is the dynasty the show Game of Thrones is based on.
In 1326 Queen Isabella turns on her husband Edward II for betraying her, and has him and his right hand man publicly strung up from 50 foot gallows. Historical documents record she casually eats fruit as hideously disgusting things I won’t even name are done to them in front of a cheering crowd.
Today, the low vibration of brutally has pretty much expired. There are still pockets of the world where it occurs, but most feel revulsion about how people were punished in Medieval Europe- no matter how hideous the crime. Nor would we watch live gore and brutality for fun.
However, in 1326 England that was something to do on a Saturday.
The aversion we feel to this behavior is what I imagine will happen to other low vibration emotions like jealousy and control over time as society’s vibrational frequency rises.
Society seems to go through a process of feeling first a slight discomfort, then dislike, then total aversion, toward behaviors originating in lower frequencies. We often even look younger as our frequency increases after we release emotions with a slower oscillation, as emotions stored inside us reflect in our faces and posture.
“I explore polyamory not only to work through emotions, cultivate self awareness and interpersonal skills, but using the lens of frequency, there is a higher vibration of love that blossoms when polyamory is really done right. It’s an ecstatic feeling.
The combination of loving someone and not trying to control them from fear of losing them, and genuinely celebrating their connection with others and vice versa, can create deep trust in the unfolding of life, and paradoxically a deeper devotion of love within the partnership that is truly free.
It’s challenging to sustain for long periods of time, but I’ve tasted enough to want to keep figuring out how to cultivate that frequency.” ~Annika Knepper, Substack author of The Road Back Home
Really, the lessons of polyamory can be applied to life. We want to deeply understand our emotional capacity so we don’t take on experiences we don’t have the skills to process. We want to pause and feel if a path is lit before we travel down it. If we start out and find it’s not, we applaud ourselves for the courage to explore, and note it takes wisdom to turn around.
Exploration followed by reversing course is in no way wasted effort.
We spin in with a cameo and create in someone else’s universe when it gives us joy to do so. Outside that, we stay true to the masterpiece we are creating, and resist the gravitational pull of others if it stops work on our canvas, and asks us to paint something that doesn’t feel inspiring.
If you want to explore programming your vibration to better align with relationships you want to attract, visit my website. How to make yourself a match for high vibration relationships is one of the most popular topics people schedule for.
If you want to keep reading about vibration and relationships, try the power of being single or how to manifest love.