Jealousy Has Turned Your Relationship Into a Very Well-Behaved Garden

Jealousy has a sneaky little talent for turning a perfectly ordinary relationship into an immaculately manicured French garden in your head.

You begin by dating a man, which is all perfectly normal. Then somewhere along the way, you find yourself mentally beside a row of box hedges with a pair of shears, wondering whether something over there looks a little unruly.

You are not becoming controlling, of course. Goodness, no. You are making one tiny adjustment. Maybe you would rather he not be quite so friendly with that woman, or perhaps a little more information about where he is going would be nice. And surely certain people could remain at a tasteful distance from the relationship without anybody making a fuss about it.

Just a little trimming for peace of mind.

And it works beautifully.

For approximately six minutes.

It Begins With One Innocent Little Snip

At first, there may even be something worth trimming. A branch is sticking out, a woman seems a touch too interested in Sir, or one evening has somehow returned home with fewer details than Madam remembers ordering.

And in real life, that little snip may be a request, a new rule or one more thing Sir is now expected to do differently so everything feels safely back in place.

Snip.

Much better.

Then another hedge catches your eye. Nothing is actually wrong with it, but it does have the look of something that could become troublesome if everybody simply wandered off and trusted it.

So you tidy the top, straighten one side and remove a perfectly healthy branch that was growing with rather too much confidence in a direction you did not especially care for.

Before long, Madam is trimming bushes that have committed no offense whatsoever. They simply look as though they might, given enough sunshine.

Naturally, none of this feels like control. It feels like excellent gardening, and goodness, the place is beginning to look marvelous.

The roses get tied a little more securely to their trellis. The gate receives some attention. Then the flowering pots begin moving because their original positions suddenly seem a touch too relaxed. One ends up beside the fountain, another migrates toward the wall, and a third eventually returns to exactly where it started after what has been, for a flowerpot, a surprisingly eventful afternoon.

Nothing is wrong, you understand. Madam would simply prefer to keep it that way.

Madam Finds Plenty More to Fix

Before long, the shears are no longer enough.

The gravel path gets raked again despite nobody having walked on it. A bench moves several feet to the left, spends a little time there, comes back, and eventually receives a fresh coat of paint because at this point we are well beyond a little casual gardening.

The fountain has behaved beautifully for years, but Madam gives it a look anyway.

And the lavender?

The lavender has done absolutely nothing.

Still, one cannot have vegetation becoming overconfident.

By now even the most respectable parts of the garden are receiving supervision. A rose leans a little too enthusiastically toward the neighboring bed and is gently redirected. A vine develops ideas of its own and finds itself tied neatly back into place. Several flowers receive attention entirely as a precaution.

Just in case.

Those three little words can keep a jealous garden extremely busy. Just in case he enjoys the attention. Just in case she meant something by that. Just in case dinner really did run late. Just in case that completely innocent shrub has been waiting for everyone to turn their backs.

And every little correction does its job for a moment. The hedge is straight, the gate is shut, the roses are behaving, and peace seems to have returned to the grounds.

Then Madam notices something near the fountain.

Madam Now Has Quite a Garden on Her Hands

By this point, the whole place is so beautifully controlled that a daisy would think twice before leaning in the wrong direction. Sir, too, seems to have learned the rules.

The paths are immaculate, the roses know their place, and the flowering pots have changed address so many times they may need forwarding mail. The bench looks lovely in its new coat of paint. The gate has been checked twice, although Madam may wander back in a moment because really, who knows what a gate gets up to when nobody is looking?

Sir may now be wondering how an ordinary relationship came to require quite this much landscaping.

And this is where the whole sight becomes wonderfully ridiculous. Madam started all this because she wanted to feel safer, yet every improvement somehow reveals one more little thing worth watching. A branch. A pot. Another woman. An evening that ran late. That completely blameless lavender standing there with far too much freedom.

So the gardening continues. Things are trimmed, straightened, moved, checked, reconsidered and occasionally repainted until the imaginary French garden looks ready to receive royalty.

And it is exquisite.

The hedges are flawless, the paths are straight, the roses have abandoned any thoughts of rebellion, and even the bench has finally stopped wandering around the grounds.

Madam has managed to supervise and control practically everything.

Everything, that is, except the one thing that started all this gardening in the first place.

The jealousy, rather inconveniently, is still wandering around unsupervised.