Jealous Thoughts  (continued)

Envy, on the other hand, is wishing you had something that someone else has," comments Edward. "Envy is a two-person situation."

Jealousy is a solitary experience. One feels utterly and finally alone.

As jealousy is hot, envy is cool and static. It simply gnaws away at us with a form of greedy desire for attention, material objects or personal qualities.

For the person who suffers from envy, it's an admission of their inferiority and the superiority of others. Like jealousy, envy springs from a low sense of self esteem or personal worth.

"I went through a period of deep envy over a friend of mine, who did the same work as me but was making three times my salary," says Irene M., a Victoria legal secretary.

"I really liked her and admired her. But I begrudged her all that money, and the things she could afford, and it soured our friendship. Finally, I saw it wasn't her I resented but the fact that I wasn't making the same salary. I felt second-rate. It totally turned our friendship around."

Patterns of envy in childhood can extend to the adult. The envious child who isn't taught to work out their feelings, becomes an envious man or woman, never really succeeding because their lives are spent coveting or emulating someone else's good fortune. Instead of creating their. When envy provides us with the motivations to compete and we win, it's a hollow victory.

Marcia R. remembers her own feelings when an ex-boyfriend began dating one of her neighbours.

"I was so mixed up, all I could think about some nights when I saw his car there, was going over and throwing a brick through her window!"

Instead, she quickly embarked on a relationship of her own. "But it was an empty experience, " says Marcia.

She later realized, "I wasn't jealous over y ex-boyfriend's affair, I was envious that he had something I didn't - a happy relationship."

In a house where an older child is envious of the attention a new baby receives, they will do virtually anything to regaining the centre stage. Some research suggests this is the basis for a whole closet full of deviant behaviour from kleptomania to addictions, to eating disorders.

"Traditionally, women have been cast as being more jealous than men," Edward notes, "but this is untrue. Both sexes feel jealousy with the same intensity but for different reasons."

But there are differences in the way we show these feelings.

A jealous man is angry, while a jealous woman is depressed. For a traditional male, his mate's infidelity represents his personal inadequacy while, for a woman associated with an unfaithful man, betrayal means the breach of a nurturing bond.