If you were looking for a way to say “I’m screamingly insecure and no more ready for a functional relationship than a gurgling infant,” look no further than jealousy. While this asshole emotion developed out of the evolutionary need for survival, how it manifests itself in modern culture can be draining, maladaptive and shittier than a Burning Man Port-O-Potty for everyone involved.

If you were looking for a way to say “I’m screamingly insecure and no more ready for a functional relationship than a gurgling infant,” look no further than jealousy. While this asshole emotion developed out of the evolutionary need for survival, how it manifests itself in modern culture can be draining, maladaptive and shittier than a Burning Man Port-O-Potty for everyone involved.

However, jealousy does have one benefit: It reveals your inner self to others in ways no Tweet or cleverly collaged ransom note ever could. So let’s find out what an outward display of jealousy broadcasts to the world about you.

“Hi! I’m wildly insecure!”

Ooh, burn. At its heart, jealousy comes down to insecurity. For whatever reason, jealous people aren’t confident in their status, abilities, looks or personality and it comes across as extreme sensitivity to instances where those things are “threatened.” Even though that threat is usually just imagined, jealous people don’t believe they’re good enough to combat the threat. Insecurity, like jealousy, is based on fear, so getting to the bottom of what the jealous person is actually afraid of is a huge part of making it so they’ll let you talk to the voice on the other end of the Taco Bell drive-thru without getting too butt-hurt to poop.

“I’m not in control.”

For some people, jealousy is a badly disguised need for power and control. Although we know rationally that we can’t own our partners, emotionally we want to because ownership signifies societal status. However, jealous people are often lacking in status and control, and feel helpless in some area(s) of their life. Maybe they’re underappreciated at work. Maybe they can’t get ahead in school. Maybe no one believes their abduction story. To compensate, they try to control others by managing their behavior. However, anyone with eyes can see they feel helpless. Everyone but Helen Keller, that is. She’s in the dark about it … too soon?

“I have the worst mommy issues.”

We learn jealousy during infancy and early childhood as a survival tactic. To a baby, the mother is everything, being that it’s her responsibility to keep it alive and all. When something or someone else gets her attention, the infant feels as if life itself is being denied.That’s why when adults experience jealousy, they’re often thrown into a state of irrational fear, and rendered helpless and grief-stricken … like babies, but with a combover and a barely acceptable amount of chest hair.

“I’m the fun kind of delusional.”

Jealous people often invent scenarios or embellish existing ones as a foil to justify their envy. Sometimes, this means responding to unreal cues that they interpret as threatening. For example, say one person posts “I love Beetlejuice” on Facebook. The jealous one might respond by saying “Who the fuck is Beetlejuice? Your fuck buddy or something?” Bitch please. Even if you could fuck Beetlejuice, it would have to be in the present, and Michael Keaton is 63 now and can’t even get wood without dressing up like Batman. See where we’re going with this? People are often jealous because of something they made up themselves. To others, that either says you’re delusional or the 19th century classic novelist Mark Twain. And we bet you’re not that last one.

“I’m projecting my shit onto you.”

Projected jealousy happens when someone is afraid of an internal feeling or inclination they’re harboring. Instead of confronting it, they blame others for having the same feeling to distract  people from seeing it in them. Let’s say you’re in a relationship and you want to see otherpeople, but you can’t admit that to yourself. Your inner duplicity might lead you to suspectyour partner of cheating and accuse them of whatever you dream of doing. But trust us, dude, you’re the only one south of the Canadian border who dreams of being anally penetrated on a bearskin rug in Saskatchewan while enjoying the smooth sound waves of Kenny G.

Here’s the point of all this: Jealousy says a lot more about you than it does about your partner or your relationship. But its presence is a good thing; it’s a sign that it’s time to work out your childhood scars and interpersonal feuds so you can move on and be a better human. Spend your energy on something more productive, like sex or horse whispering. We promise it’s worth it.