What causes jealousy?

[Leviticus 26]

I've liked this guy for two years but most of the time my feelings do not result in jealousy. Like I remember a couple of weeks ago, I saw a guy who was wearing the same jacket as him holding a girl in his arms and wearing a knapsack. I thought it was him since they had the same height, built and body and I didn't even care... when I looked closer I realized that it wasn't him.

But now about 3 or 4 weeks later, I was agonizing over the prospect that the girl he was pursuing may have returned interested... I felt absolutely miserable when I looked at her facebook profile fearing the worst and discovered that she is still single and trying to attract guys which made me feel better.

[Archer]

Jealousy is your reflection of low self worth and "your" lack of trust in some one you have chosen to trust.

[citrine_dream]

Attachments, feelings of possession... even if he's not "with" you, there's a part of you that sees him as ''your'' crush... it's normal to feel this way, but I think it's freeing to realize what's happening. If you do not possess something, or care about possessing it you don't care if you loose it. A little jealousy isn't bad, but if the feeling is distressing for you then just try to let go of the idea that this guy is some how rightfully yours.

[Looseyâ„¢]

Insecurity mostly. Once you become secure about yourself you will conclude that anybody would be lucky to have you and that it's their loss if they don't. The added bonus is that if you really love yourself, it makes you irresistible to others. Jealousy is counterproductive. It only makes things worse, never better.

[Will]

I think jealousy comes in when you think someone is better than you and you can't do much about it. I was jealous in high school when some of my friends got into better colleges than me even though I was working fairly hard. I felt like they were just plain smarter and better than me. I knew jealousy was a sin so I would try to fight the feelings. However, now 3 years later, I don't really care if my friends are going to be more educated and succesful than me. They may be happier than me too, but for some reason I just don't care anymore. Actually the Bible says weakness can be good. It says that the weak in spirit are blessed in Matthew 5:3 and it says that Christ's power is made perfect in Paul's weakness in 2 Corinthians 12:9. Also, somehow sufferings and disadvantages and rip offs can somehow make me feel the opposite of guilty sometimes. Also, they can be fun for some reason because maybe I enjoy coming up with creative and genius solutions to them and I enjoy the challenge. I am like 3 soon to be 4 years behind my friends academically and have some mental illnesses and leaky gut syndrome and my holistic medicine provider just found black mold in my system which she says is as serious as cancer. I get bummed out sometimes, but not that often. I am pretty optimistic that these things will clear up and if they don't and all I can do in life is blow leaves and mow lawns then I'll get by. If you're jealous, you can always pray with faith and seeking God with your heart, and this can help. It has helped me. You can do this with any sin. Another idea I came up with on how to fight jealousy is that if you are jealous, than you can outdo the people you are jealous of somehow. This is just an idea though, I mean then your friends might be jealous of you and you may end up killing yourselves or making your lives miserable trying to outdo each other. So in the end, I would say the jealousy is worse than actually being worse than someone at something sometimes.

This coincidentally appeared in the news on my homepage a couple days ago and is pertanent to your question:

http://news.discovery.com/tech/facebook-...lousy.html