Unit 42

Understanding Jealousy

Most of us have experienced Shakespeare's "green-eyed monster" -- jealousy. It is a terrible obsession. Often in a crisis we'd like to kill the person who tries to take our lover away. It is said that 20% to 35% of all murders involve a jealous lover. Just as falling in love seems "natural" and unlearned, so does jealousy. It just comes over us when someone or something (like work, TV, or sports) threatens our love relationship.

There are four stages of jealousy:

Suspecting the threat: If you are insecure about a love relationship and very dependent on your lover, you are likely to be jealous. You may see "signs" of disaster when none are there. In reality, 45% of the people in the Psychology Today survey had cheated on a partner while pretending to be faithful. If the threat to our relationship -- the competitor -- is attractive, intelligent, successful, etc., we will be more threatened and more disturbed.

Assessing the threat: We may spy on our lover and the competitor; we probably lie awake nights worrying about the situation and reviewing the signs, "Did she come on to him?" "I wonder if he has talked to her?" "Does he love her?" "Wonder if everybody but me knows about it?"... Women are concerned about their partner becoming attracted to other women by sex, intelligence, and other attractions, and dissatisfaction with the current relationship. Men are more concerned about protecting their egos if they are "beaten out" by another man; they worry about their partner having sex with someone else (but they'd probably blame the partner if that did happen). It is in this deep worry and spying stage that we go crazy.

Emotional reactions: If we decide there is a threat to our love, we can have a very wide range of responses: clinging dependency, anger at the competitor or the partner, morbid curiosity, self-criticism, and depression with suicidal thoughts, hurt and resentment of the partner's lack of devotion, social embarrassment, selfish -- sometimes realistic -- concerns ("I'd better take the money out of the bank"), urge to "get back at" the partner, fear of losing companionship, loneliness, regrets at giving up all the future plans, etc.

Coping response: There are two basic choices -- trying to save the threatened relationship or trying to protect your sagging ego. Men are more likely to become competitive or angry, often including getting drunk. Women more often become weak and depressed. After an affair, men want sexual details and women want to know how serious the relationship is.