Rachel Wright, polyamorous LMFT, on jealousy in open relationships

Jealousy in Open Relationships: A Therapist’s Practical Guide

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ByRachel Wright

Yep. There is, in fact, jealousy in open relationships. There’s jealousy in many different types of relationships — familial, professional, platonic. Jealousy is not an emotional experience exclusive to romantic/sexual connections. I’m now about twelve years (🤯) into running a polyamory-affirming practice, and many years into my own non-monogamous life, I can tell you the question I get constantly — “Am I too jealous of a person to be non-monogamous?” “Does this jealousy mean I’m not cut out for this?”

The answer is almost always no. Jealousy is one of the most universal human emotions, and it shows up whether you’re monogamous, polyamorous, or somewhere in between.

But what are you doing with your jealousy when it comes up? Do you push it down and hope it disappears? Do you let it run the rest of the conversation? Do you ask what story it’s been telling you about yourself or your partner(s)? Do you separate yourself from the feeling enough to look at it, or do you become it?

I run a DBT Skills Group for non-monogamous folks and work with polyamorous folks almost every day. What I can tell you, from the research, my clinical work, and my own life, is that jealousy in any relationship is workable. Often uncomfortable, often inconvenient, and absolutely workable. The folks I see who handle it best are the ones who stop trying to make it go away and start learning what it has to tell them. You can be one of those people. 🙂

This blog is for those already in some form of non-monogamous / polyamorous / open relationship and getting hit by jealousy harder than they expected, and for the folks considering opening up who want to better understand what they’re walking into. There’s a free Jealousy Framework workbook linked at the bottom that walks you through the practices step by step.

Key Takeaways

  • Jealousy is a universal human emotion that shows up in family dynamics, friendships, workplaces, and romantic and sexual relationships, regardless of structure. Feeling it is part of being a person with attachments. In non-monogamous, polyamorous, and open relationships, it pops up too, often around different triggers than in monogamous ones.
  • Jealousy is one of the harder emotions to tolerate. It pulls hard on your nervous system and on your action urges, which is part of why the urge to react fast (or shut it down fast) feels so loud.
  • Jealousy comes with a story that tends to be very loud and very persuasive. The story often says something about your worth, your safety, or your partner’s intentions. Separating yourself from the story long enough to look at it is part of how you stop being run by it.
  • Two of the biggest mistakes people make with jealousy, as identified in Dr. Joli Hamilton’s research, are trying to get rid of it before learning from it and trying to manage it by controlling a partner’s behavior.
  • Jealousy and compersion (joy at your partner’s joy) can live in the same person, about the same partner, in the same hour. They don’t function as opposites on a spectrum.
  • I’m Rachel Wright, a polyamorous and queer licensed therapist who also runs a DBT Skills Group for non-monogamous folks. My free Jealousy Framework workbook, linked below, walks you through where to start.

What jealousy actually is

Jealousy is information. That’s the frame I use with clients, because it shifts the whole conversation away from “what’s wrong with me” toward “what is this telling me.”

In the simplest terms, jealousy is your nervous system flagging something. It might be pointing out that an agreement you and your partner made isn’t being honored, or that your attachment system is activated and needs tending to. It might even be telling you that the structure of your relationship has shifted in a way you weren’t ready for. It might also be indicating that something about your story, your history, or your sense of worth is being challenged and needs care. Put simply: Jealousy is your nervous system flagging a perceived threat.

It can also be a few of those signals at once, which is part of why jealousy can feel so disorienting in the moment. You can be reacting to a current situation, an old wound, and be fatigued all at the same time.

Dr. Joli Hamilton, a research psychologist whose doctoral work focused on the lived experience of jealousy, puts it directly:

“Jealousy is not the enemy. Choosing our responses to it thoughtfully makes it possible for jealousy to enhance our intimacy with self and others, rather than harm our relationships.”

What jealousy in open relationships doesn’t mean: that you’re ‘failing’ at non-monogamy, or that something is wrong between you and your partner(s). Most of the NM folks I work with feel jealousy regularly, sometimes intensely, and they’ve still built durable, fulfilling, and satisfying relationships. The two things coexist. And, baby… and.

A piece that often surprises people is that jealousy and compersion (the feeling of joy at your partner’s joy with someone else) aren’t opposites on a spectrum. Recent research by Dr. Justin Mogilski and colleagues showed that jealousy and compersion can show up in the same person, about the same partner, about the same situation, often in the same hour. You can be thrilled that your partner is on a great date and still feel a slight grip in your chest as you wait for them to come home. Both can be true at the same time.

What jealousy in open relationships actually looks like, broken down

Let’s dig into the important elements of jealousy that you gotta know.

The vocabulary. Jealousy in open relationships doesn’t only feel like one thing. It can show up as feeling defensive, mistrustful, rivalrous, suspicious, angry, scared, anxious, possessive, wary, watchful, or self-protective. It can also be a fear of losing someone or something. Step one is to name what’s coming up for you.

The prompting events. The events that trigger jealousy include any moment when an important relationship feels threatened, when a potential competitor is paying attention to someone you love, or when someone goes out with a person you wanted to be with. In non-monogamy, the prompting events get specific: your partner telling you they want more time alone with another partner, watching them flirt with a metamour, seeing them light up about a new connection in a way that feels different from how they light up about you. Step two is naming the specific prompting event, which is very helpful, because vague jealousy is harder to work with than specific jealousy.

> > Here is a bare-bones sheet to track your agreements and make sure you’re clear on what they are, why, and when you’re going to check back in on them. < <

The interpretations. This is the layer where most jealousy spirals live. The common interpretations go something like this: your partner doesn’t care about you anymore; you don’t measure up to a rival; you’re being cheated on; no one cares about you; you’re nothing to your partner; you don’t deserve what they have. In polyamorous relationships, the interpretations often sound like: my partner is going to leave me for them, I’m being replaced, the new connection means I’m not enough, the time imbalance means I’m being deprioritized. These feel like facts when you’re inside them, but they’re interpretations. Naming them as interpretations is the third step.

The body. Jealousy, especially in the context of something new, is a full nervous system event. Breathlessness, fast heartbeat, tightness or a lump in the throat, muscles tensing, teeth clenching, becoming suspicious, injured pride, feelings of rejection, needing to be in control, feeling helpless, the urge to grasp what you have or push away your ‘rival’. Noticing where it lives in your body is the fourth move.

The action urges. Every emotion urges us to something. Jealousy pulls you toward verbal accusations, demanding accounts of time or activities, interrogating your partner, spying, collecting evidence, clinging, and excessive demonstrations of love. None of these are inherently bad impulses, and most of them, when acted on without slowing down, hurt the relationship more than the jealousy did. Knowing what jealousy is pulling you toward (what your urges are when you feel jealous) is the fifth step, and learning how to choose whether to follow the urge is a massive part of the work.

The aftereffects. If jealousy goes unworked, it leaves a trail: narrowing of attention, seeing the worst in others, becoming mistrustful across the board, being hypervigilant to threats, and becoming isolated or withdrawn. These are reversible! Step six is to notice the aftereffects and tend to them, including the trust you may need to rebuild with yourself. Jealousy in open relationships can really fester when hidden, along with the shame from hiding it.

Why jealousy shows up differently in non-monogamy

When researchers began measuring jealousy in mono- and non-monogamous samples, some older assumptions about jealousy fell apart. Mogilski’s work, alongside earlier studies from Dr. Terri Conley’s lab and more recent comparative research by Dr. Joli Hamilton, Nicholas Morrison, and Ayla Gioia (published in 2024 in Cogent Mental Health), found that the emotion itself shows up in both groups. The difference between the two groups? The triggers.

In monogamous relationships, jealousy is more often triggered by sexual infidelity, or the threat of sexual infidelity. Sex with someone else means an agreement (the agreement of monogamy) was crossed, and the intensity tends to spike around that specific behavior.

In non-monogamous relationships, sex with other partners is often part of the agreement, so it carries less of that specific charge. What tends to trigger jealousy in open relationships is what can feel threatening: emotional intimacy with another partner, shifts in the perceived hierarchy of the relationship, or a sense that your own position is changing. Time imbalances and unstated changes to existing agreements can also bring up jealousy.

What Hamilton’s research shows, and what I see often in session, is that non-monog folks tend to develop a more deliberate toolkit for working with jealousy because the structure requires it. When you can’t avoid the emotion, you build the muscles to move through it. Many mono folks manage jealousy by avoiding situations that trigger it (”you can’t go to that strip club,” or “you can’t hang out 1:1 with a woman”). However, non-monogamous folks, by necessity, learn to face it and move through it. Jealousy in open relationships isn’t something that every non-monogamous person experiences, but the vast majority do at some point.

The most common triggers I see in my practice

New relationship energy on the other side. When your partner is in the early, intoxicating phase with someone new, their attention moves, they text differently, they light up differently, and your nervous system reads this as threat — even when nothing has actually changed about your relationship with them.

Time and scheduling. When the calendar starts to feel icky, jealousy in open relationships often shows up before the conversation about scheduling does. It’s worth checking whether the trigger is the emotional intimacy or the practical math of how time is getting allocated.

Comparison with metamours. Metamour is the word for your partner’s other partner. When you start comparing yourself to a metamour (their job, their body, how funny your partner says they are), jealousy is often dressed up as insecurity.

Changes to existing agreements. If you and your partner had an agreement that changed without a conversation, jealousy often signals that the agreement needs to be renegotiated explicitly. Learn more about creating relationship agreements here.

Reminders of past wounds. Sometimes jealousy stems from a previous relationship in which you were hurt, or from a family-of-origin pattern in which you seemed like an afterthought.

Two big mistakes people make with jealousy

Hamilton names two specific mistakes (that I often see in my practice), and these are fucking game changers, ya’ll.

Mistake one: trying to get rid of jealousy before learning from it. This is the instinct to push away an uncomfortable emotion when it arrives. Jealousy is uncomfortable enough that most people want it gone immediately. The problem is that jealousy is important information, and if you suppress it before you understand what it’s telling you, you lose the data. We gotta observe it, describe it, feel it, and ask what it’s pointing at. After the message is received, the intensity tends to drop on its own. You’ll make the fastest progress managing your jealousy if you’re willing to stay with it long enough to listen.

Mistake two: trying to manage jealousy by controlling a partner’s behavior. This is the bigger trap, and the one that erodes relationships fastest. It’s also where jealousy’s story (the one that says you’ll be safe if your partner just does X) gets handed the pen to write the next agreement, when the story actually belongs to you.

When jealousy spikes, the temptation is to make it stop by changing what your partner is doing — spending less time with their other partner, a different texting agreement, a new agreement that limits them. Sometimes those asks are reasonable, but most of the time, they’re an attempt to regulate your own nervous system through somebody else’s behavior, and that path runs out fast.

It can feel much easier to ask someone outside yourself to change something because it seems like, if they do, it will relieve the pain or discomfort we’re feeling in that moment. The direction of work around jealousy is mostly inward — toward your own patterns, your own history, & your own capacity. That’s the part that’s both harder and far more empowering than the controlling route, and it’s the part that makes the jealousy actually workable.

What helps in the moment

When jealousy spikes in us, your body is usually a step ahead of your brain. It can be quite alarming, actually. I recommend three things, in this order.

First, name it out loud. If you’re familiar with DBT, this is a great chance to use STOP and maybe TIPP. Even just to yourself! “I’m feeling jealous.” The act of naming the emotion engages a different part of the brain than the part that’s spiraling, and it tends to bring the intensity down a notch. If you can, say it to your partner(s) too, without making it their job to fix.

DBT STOP skill rachel wright ma lmft lindsay branman
Copyright Lindsay Braman 2026 | Purchased for Educational Distribution Use

Second, slow your body down before you make any decisions. Distress tolerance is what we’re practicing here. In this case, staying with a hard emotion long enough that it can do its work. Jealousy peaks fast and ebbs faster than people expect. A walk, a glass of water, ten slow breaths, a hot shower, a quick ice bath — it’ll help. The decisions you make in the middle of a jealousy spike are rarely the decisions you’ll want to have made in an hour. Buy yourself time. Future you shall thank you. 🙂

Here are some DBT tools put together by a therapist who is also an incredible artist. I hope this helps with the concept of slowing your body and nervous system down without making any decisions.

worksheet in black and white to build a dbt tipp tool kit open relationships non-monogamy jealousy
Copyright Lindsay Braman 2026 | Purchased for Educational Distribution Use

Third, ask what specifically is at risk. This is where Wise Mind comes in, the part of you that lets your logic/reasoning mind and your emotion mind start talking to each other. Is your relationship in danger, or is your nervous system activated? Is an agreement being broken, or is your attachment system telling you it needs reassurance? The answers usually point you toward the right next move, and they keep you from treating an internal experience as an external crisis.

What helps over the longer arc

Secure attachment with your own partner. Jealousy, especially jealousy in open relationships, is much easier to navigate when the underlying open relationship feels stable. If it doesn’t, that’s where to put your energy. The jealousy will keep flaring until the underlying issue is addressed/tended to.

Candid communication about the structure. A lot of jealousy I see in long-term NM relationships traces back to an agreement that wasn’t explicit, or that changed without a conversation. Routine check-ins on how everything is working keep these from accumulating. Once a month is a useful baseline — ideally weekly — especially if you’re in a season of change.

A felt sense that there’s enough. Enough time, enough love, enough attention. Enough is something you build deliberately, through small regular acts of choosing each other out loud. When we feel enough, when we’re receiving enough, it’s not as easy to fall into a trap of jealousy in open relationships.

A relationship with your own jealousy. The folks I see who navigate non-monogamy well tend to be on a first-name basis with their jealousy. They know its patterns, what tends to set it off, what soothes them. Some of them have literally given jealousy a name, a character, a voice, so they can notice when it’s the one talking and decide whether to follow it.

When jealousy is information vs. when something needs to change

Sometimes jealousy is an emotion to ride out, and sometimes it’s data that something needs to change, so how can you tell the difference?

Jealousy in open relationships is worth taking more seriously if it’s persistent, worsening over time, or recurring with a specific pattern. In those cases, jealousy might be telling you that the version of non-monogamy you’re in isn’t actually fitting you. Maybe the hierarchy needs to be renegotiated, or the pace needs to slow a bit. Or, a specific dynamic with a metamour needs to be addressed directly. And even maybe non-monogamy isn’t the right structure for you — which is so so soooo important to be honest about.

Jealousy is a universal emotion. What you do with it is what matters, and you have more agency in that than the spiral wants you to believe.

When working with a therapist might help

If jealousy is interfering with your relationship, your sleep, your work, or your sense of self, and the tools above feel hard to apply on your own, that’s a point to get more support. An NM-affirming therapist or skilled coach can help you map your own patterns, work with your nervous system in real time, and have the harder conversations with your partner with someone holding the room. If you’d like to work with someone on my Shame Free Therapy team, you can find more information here. I also have so many wonderful colleagues scattered throughout, so please don’t hesitate to reach out and let me help you find a good fit!

FAQs

Is it normal to feel jealous in an open relationship?

Yes!!! I prefer the word “typical” rather than “normal,” but yes. The research repeatedly shows that non-monogamous folks feel jealousy at about the same rates as monogamous folks. The triggers tend to be different, and the emotion itself is universal.

Does jealousy go away in any non-monogamous relationship?

Does anxiety go away in any person’s entire life? Does feeling sad go away because we’ve dealt with it? No. Jealousy does tend to ebb and change shape with practice, communication, and time. Most NM folks I work with describe jealousy becoming less frequent and less intense over the years, though most also say it doesn’t disappear entirely (that’s my experience, too). The goal is to be on a first-name basis with it, more than to eliminate it.

Can you be non-monogamous / polyamorous or in an open relationship if you’re a “jealous person”?

Jealousy is an emotion, not a personality trait. Emotions don’t last forever. So, yes. Some of the most thoughtful people I know are people who feel jealousy strongly and have learned to work with it. Feeling jealousy is part of being human, including for people who do non-monogamy beautifully, are monogamous, are romantic or asexual — it’s universal.

What’s the difference between jealousy and envy?

Jealousy is about losing something you have, or fearing that you might lose it. Jealousy has a threat attached to the precipitating event, while envy is about wanting something someone else has. In non-monogamy, and in life, both can come up. Sorting which one you’re feeling can help point you toward the right conversation.

How do I know if my jealousy is a signal that the relationship isn’t working?

Jealousy that’s persistent, escalating, or tied to a specific dynamic that keeps repeating is worth looking into a bit. It may be signaling an agreement that needs renegotiating, a structural imbalance, or a structure that’s no longer the right fit. Working with a polyam-affirming therapist can help you sort what’s information about you, what’s information about the relationship, and what’s information about the structure itself.

Can my partner make my jealousy go away?

No. But how fucking cool would that be, if we could just literally wave a magic wand ~~**bippidi boppidi boo**~~ and all of a sudden, it starts lessening. It doesn’t need to go away, but we can create a relationship with it that serves you rather than hinders your life. Trying to make it their job tends to make the relationship smaller without reducing the jealousy. Your partner can support you, validate you, hold space, and honor agreements. The actual work of metabolizing jealousy belongs to the person feeling it. That’s actually one of the most empowering parts of doing non-monogamy well, honestly.

What’s the fastest way to start working with my jealousy?

Name it, slow your body down, ask what’s at risk, then look at the patterns over time. My free Jealousy Framework workbook, which I co-created with Dr. Joli Hamilton, walks you through this step by step, and you can grab it here.

TL;DR

Jealousy is a universal emotion that arises in non-monogamous relationships in response to specific structural triggers, and it’s totally manageable with the right skills. Having jealousy in open relationships carries no verdict on you or your relationship. The research keeps showing that non-monogamous folks feel jealousy just as often as monogamous folks do; it’s just that the triggers tend to be different (emotional intimacy, time imbalances, perceived hierarchy shifts, NRE on the other side).

Two of the biggest mistakes are trying to suppress jealousy before learning from it and trying to manage it by controlling a partner’s behavior, both named in Dr. Joli Hamilton‘s research. The work goes inward, toward your own patterns, capacity, self-awareness, and a toolkit for distress tolerance, emotion regulation, mindfulness, and interpersonal effectiveness. Name it, slow your body down, ask what’s at risk, build secure attachment with your own partner, talk about the structure regularly, and get to know your own jealousy patterns. My free Jealousy Framework workbook, made with Dr. Joli, walks you through it one step at a time.

>> GRAB THE FREE JEALOUSY FRAMEWORK WORKBOOK HERE <<

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