As a university student, your jealousy blossomed further still. When your boyfriend left a text of yours unanswered for five hours, the shock you endured made you come down with a fever. When the same boyfriend didn’t pick up the phone, you would leave him voice mail after voice mail at two-minute intervals. That was no easy task, either—as soon as you put down the phone from recording one message, you’d redial to start recording the next. You were driven to such wild curiosity about his ex that you took an overnight bus to his hometown. When you approached and questioned the various people you met, you were mistaken for a private detective, and before long rumors were flying around that your boyfriend was mixed up in some bad business.
Your bible was The Tale of Genji. Every man you fell in love with, every man you went out with, caught a glimpse of hell. All of them, without exception. For the man that you married, every day was a living hell. Why’d he marry you, anyway? It was clear from the start what kind of person you were. When he casually checked the messages on his phone in your presence, hadn’t he sensed your murderous gaze bearing down on him?
And what’s more—and this is what’s really amazing about you—until yesterday, you hadn’t even realized that you were the jealous type. TV programs are always spilling over with crazily possessive girlfriends and wives, so you never questioned your normality. You were under the impression that this was what romance, what love was all about.
So what if jealousy had occasionally driven you to punch through the car window, or to rip to shreds the yukata you were sewing for your husband when it was inches away from being finished, or to slip a GPS device into his shoe to track his whereabouts? Even the way you were perpetually honing your sense of smell so that you’d instantly be able to catch a whiff of another woman on your husband’s person seemed to you perfectly conventional behavior.
And so yesterday after dinner, when your husband announced that he wanted a divorce, quite out of the blue, your first reaction wasn’t distress so much as utter bewilderment. He spoke at length about how abnormal he felt your jealousy was. It terrified him, he said, and he couldn’t tolerate it anymore. It was sheer madness. Visibly teetering on the cusp of sanity, your husband sank his head onto the dining table like a Jenga tower tumbling down, and promptly dissolved into sobs.
You are a well-meaning person at heart, and so you were quickly overcome by deep regret. It had simply never crossed your mind until now that what you were doing was wrong. You apologized repeatedly to your husband, promised that you would change, and begged him for one more chance. Your husband smiled heroically. “Okay,” he managed to squeak as he dried his eyes. Then, still somewhat ill at ease, the two of you sat in silence and ate the apple pie you’d baked for dessert.
Today you woke up feeling fresh and new. You felt rebirth was possible. You would become a kindhearted person to whom jealousy was a foreign concept, a generous-spirited sort who could accept your husband just as he was. You swore to yourself that you would.
But—and here we reveal our real reason for getting in touch with you on this occasion—why on earth did you have to go and do something as banal as to repent? If your husband ignites the flames of your jealousy with the suspicious messages he receives on his phone, or the matchboxes he keeps in his pockets from dodgy-looking establishments, or the posh chocolates he brings home on Valentine’s Day, then it’s him that’s in the wrong. If he makes you imagine he might have been unfaithful—leaving aside the question of whether he really is occasionally being unfaithful—then it is entirely his fault.
Why should you have to go and show benevolent forgiveness toward a husband like that? You made your dissatisfaction clear. Where’s the problem with that? You’ve done nothing wrong. The misguided one here is your cheating husband. That’s why, from now on, you should let yourself go wild with jealousy. We implore you not to part so readily with your defining asset.
Maybe you haven’t realized it yet, but your jealousy is a talent. You mustn’t go listening to the nonsense spouted by all the drudges surrounding you. They know nothing. There is no need for you to divest yourself of your own fangs. It would be the world’s loss if you were to do so.
So long as your husband keeps up this flighty behavior of his, you should continue to show him hell. If he starts blathering on about divorce again, then find a chink in his armor and blackmail him. If necessary, we are happy to help you out in that regard by locating some kind of chink on your behalf. We don’t think it will take long.
It is also testament to the singularity of your gift that your jealousy retains a youthful intensity even into your fifties. Ordinarily, individuals find their personalities softening as they get older. After living with someone for years on end, they develop a sense of resignation. Plainly put, they stop caring. Many women end up looking not to their husbands but to the male stars of their favorite TV programs to trigger their most passionate feelings. This is because such stars facilitate beautiful fantasies. There is nothing wrong with that, either.
Surely it has not escaped
