We spend a lot of time searching for someone to love( or at least can I admit, I have) . We (or maybe just me) are predators in this way, lurking about, roaming to and fro searching for someone to devour and feed our inner need to be loved. This is jealousy which "loves only as it is loved". This is how predators love. Funny, we are jealous even before we meet the object of our love, perhaps this is why jealousy becomes such a problem after wards. Girls dream of a knight dressed to the nine's, who is beautiful enough to grace GQ, yet manly enough to kill a bear with a toothpick, all the while listening to her dreams and desires with an enchanted smile. Boys want a girl with a perfect body who won't talk to much and who won't give them grief when they are gone or come home late and who will give it up on demand. Both dreams focus on the self. This is the problem of erotic love, while it seeks out an object for affection, it already loves itself with a biting passion. And in erotic love there can be only one beloved. The first wall two people must scale when attempting to come together in relationship is this self love.
Post Script
The jealousy I mentioned is a jealously with no redeeming qualities.
"Three times in 1 Corinthians, Paul used this word in a good sense to encourage his brethren to “earnestly desire (zeeloúte)” spiritual gifts (12:31; 14:1,39). He obviously was not commanding the Corinthians to sin, but to do something that was good and worthwhile(http://www.apologeticspress.org/article/777 retrieved on 3/12/2011)."
Jealousy is from medieval Latin zelosus (think zealous), so jealousy properly conceived and defined, can either be a positive passion or destructive demand. Jealousy isn't always wrong, and I for one will definitely be (positively) jealous in my romantic relationships.
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