CHAPTER 14GETTING RID OF JEALOUSY This letter to R. W. will serve as well for thousands of other wives — and husbands!
WHAT a goose you are to make all that fuss about your husband's friendship for that woman, who is thirty years his senior. If he hadn't loved you he wouldn't have married you, and if he doesn't keep on loving you it will be your fault, not the other woman's. You are filled with jealousy and resentment against her, and criticism and faultfinding and resentment against him. Just as long as you set yourself against her and against his relations with her you will make trouble for yourself, as well as for your husband.
The one thing for you to do is to take him exactly at his word, in his relations with her, and quit caring anything about it. Let sleeping dogs lie — just remember the time when you waked them up once and got well beaten up for your pains. Mind your own business and you will come out all right, and make a happy home for yourself and your husband. But as long as you are trying to mind her business as well as your own, you will make nothing but trouble for yourself.
Between you and me I do not consider it any of your business what his relations are with that woman. And above all things do I consider that you have no right to question what he tells you about his relations with her. It is up to you to accept her as a sort of mother to him, and let it go at that. If you do this and do it with good will and with persistence, you will come out all right, and your husband will keep on loving you. If you don't, the trouble will end in a separation. You do well to be ashamed of a record of two divorces and a possible third.
Ella Wheeler Wilcox once said a thing to me that I thought very, very apt. I told her that, I had obtained a divorce from my first husband and married Mr. Towne, and she looked at me thoughtfully for a moment, and then said: "Well, Elizabeth, one divorce may be a misfortune, but any more than that would be merely a bad habit!” I laughed heartily! And I told her that I would do my best to see that I didn't contract that bad habit.
You are jealous and exacting, and that is probably the reason for both your divorces, and it certainly is the reason for your troubles at the present time. Live your own radiant life, and leave your husband to live his life as he pleases and carry on what interests he chooses. An old friend is a very precious possession, not to be parted with for any new-made wife, I can tell you. No matter what their relations have been in the past, no matter what their relations are now, those relations are too sacred for you to meddle with. Just let them alone. Accept her as his mother, and be nice to her and to him.
Now for the best thing to help you. Get first of all my little "Solar Plexus" book. Read it a chapter or two at a time every day right along until you get your troubles thoroughly solved, so that you can love his friend just as he loves her, and so that the friend herself treats you as if she cared for you. You will find how I used those principles to solve some of my own troubles. Get into the spirit of that little book and shine. Be your own radiant self, and express the good within you, instead of crawling into your shell because somebody else outside of you doesn't do what you think is right.
You have the wrong attitude toward people in your town — your attitude is entirely wrong to all life, so far as I can see. The use of that little "Solar Plexus" book ought to set you straight. The mere reading of it will not — you have got to read it over and over, and keep practicing and practicing. Practice makes perfect and nothing else takes its place. Go in to win and stick to it till you solve those problems and solve them right. Get in touch with your own soul and you will know what decision to make in regard to your child, and you will find yourself getting into harmony with the people around you. If you don't like your environment, it is up to you to put love into that environment until you make it over.
And here's a letter to one who was jealous of her own relatives:
I have read your letter carefully and prayerfully. The one thing at the bottom of all your trouble is jealousy. Probably your sister is somewhat jealous, too, but the positive jealousy is certainly your own. Out of this jealousy comes a tit-for-tat feeling, and each one of you brews ugliness within. When this ugliness gets big enough it slops over in a row. The row clears the air, just as a thunderstorm clears the heated summer atmosphere, and then you go along fairly well for a little while, each one resolved to do better. But so long as that jealousy exists you will keep on repeating history. You will keep on saying nasty things just like that one that you said when she came back from her visit. It takes two to make a family row, and either one can stop it, by purging her own heart of all ignoble emotions and feelings. To purge your heart you must ignore and deny those things away, and refuse to let them move you. "None of these things move me," said St. Paul.
The cure for your condition lies in that little "Solar Plexus" book of mine. Get it and live with it. Read the entire book the day you get it, and read a chapter or two every morning for the next six months. Get into the spirit of it and shine. Break off your sins by Tightness — every time your thoughts fly the track and get onto the evils and the ugly point of view, deny away the limitations and the unpleasant things. Affirm the love and the true being and the right intention of your sister. It is a mere matter of your taking dominion over your thoughts, and persisting until nothing but the kind thoughts remain. You can do it. Thousands of others have done it — yes, hundreds of thousands, and millions! It is the old battle of all the race and of all time.
Get that little book and live it. Live it until you glory in all the good things she has and is, and then you will see things in an entirely different way, and your troubles will disappear like snowflakes before the August sun. The Sun of Righteousness within you.
Better get that little "Experience" book of mine and read that; in it there are some of my own experiences in overcoming the animosities. They will help you to find yourself and solve your problem. Remember that practice makes perfect, and nothing else takes its place, and the lessons point the way. You have to do the rest, and you can.
The first thing to do is to quit trying to make your sister do things for the sake of outward appearance. What if she does sit on the other side of the church? She has a perfect right to sit where she pleases, and if you are a thorn in her side and a nettle, the best thing she can do is to get as far away from you as she can. And keep away. Her impulses in this direction are right ones, and they are well within her rights. Quit resenting them.
If you want your sister to sit by you, you must love her. To be loved, you must love. To have others agreeable you must be agreeable. The key is within yourself. It is nowhere else, not even in your sister. Either one of you can do it — but I have no chance to tell your sister how, and I am telling you. And after all you are the positive one in this matter. Yours is the positive jealousy, so you are the logical one to act. Go in to win and stick to it. Your fate is in your own hands. You and she are evidently well fitted to do splendid work together. Don't let the little meannesses separate you. Live love. FINANCE IN THE HOME >
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