Now when I feel envious or jealous, I send thoughts of gratitude to the ex for teaching him to put the toilet seat down—and for letting him go. I know that Arne loves Jacque. That he knows how to spell it correctly. That he knows my middle name and how much I weigh.
The moral of the story? Let go of the jealousy any way you can. It’s corrosive to your insides and your marriage. Find a way to laugh, to change the downward spiral of your thoughts midstream. Here’s a completely ludicrous exercise to try.
I’ve done it and it’s so stupid, it actually works. It was beginning to feel as if there was a track in my brain that the ugly, jealous thoughts, once started, would just run along, as though they were recordings. I wondered what would happen if I disrupted the flow of negative thoughts with a nonsensical word that would jar me out of the cycle.
My youngest stepdaughter was wearing a shirt with a pineapple on it that day. So I started saying “pineapple” to myself every time I started feeling jealous, and it was so ridiculous I ended up laughing every time. The good news is that it worked.
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