Romantic Jealousy: Causes, Symptoms, Cures (11 page)

This helps explain why people with delusional jealousy avoid situations that might provide positive proof of' their suspicions. They don't really want to believe that their mates have been unfaithful. On the contrary, they want to be convinced that unlike their fathers, and unlike the childhood situation, this time they are "number one" with their faithful mates.

Choosing a faithful wife and harassing her with groundless accusations is one way a man tries to overcome a trauma of his mother's betrayal. Another way is to choose an unfaithful mate who will provide ample opportunities to master the childhood trauma. In this case the jealousy is not delusional; it derives from an actual situation. Yet it is still not under complete control of the conscious ego. It represents a "repetition compulsion," an irrational need to replicate a traumatic experience. In such a case the adult seeks situations in which he or she seems to master repressed conflicts and traumas of childhood, even while the true conflicts remain repressed.

Not all people suffering from delusional jealousy have a parent who was sexually unfaithful during their adolescence. Another cause, in my experience, is a perceived threat to the relationship that is projected on the partner, but has other causes. An example is a woman who was convinced that her loving husband had an affair with his secretary. I ler jealousy was groundless. It started after a series of terrible losses that included the death of one of her twin boys from (-ancer, followed by the death of her mother and of an older sister who raised her. (The mother, who had twelve kids, did not have much time for her.) What seemed to have triggered the jealousy was another sister's painful discovery that her husband had been unfaithful. The woman's childhood experiences as the tenth child in a poor family with an overworked and overburdened mother did not give her enough security in her own loveability. The losses she experienced made her feel even more dependent on her husband's love. The thought that she could loose him was terrifying. No assurance of his love was enough to calm her anxiety. She felt that if she were to loose him (like she lost her child, her mother, her sister) she would die. With the influence of her sister's painful experience of betrayal, her fear of abandonment took the shape of delusional jealousy.

Another antecedent of delusional jealousy reported in the litera- lure is either undergratificaIion or overgratification by parents during the earliest stages of' life-both of which leave the person in chronic need of self-aggrandizing love from others and suspicious of rivals. In clinical terms: narcissism. Such people enter relationships to bolster their self-esteem. When doing so they unconsciously relive their childhoods.2

In men, another cause of delusional jealousy is real or imagined smallness of the penis. Clinical work with men who suffer from this problem suggests that they feel at a disadvantage to other men in the struggle to obtain and hold a mate. Their feelings of inadequacy-which are also common among impotent husbands, elderly husbands married to young wives, and plain spouses wedded to handsome ones-pave the way for the advent of delusional jealousy (Todd et al., 1971).

Similarly, delusional jealousy in elderly individuals was found to be related to such things as organic disease that rendered the older person housebound, disparity in age and health between the older person and the spouse, and previous infidelity (Breitner & Anderson, 1994).

In addition to psychological antecedents of delusional jealousy, studies found it to be related to a variety of organic causes including brain damage, organic psychoses, alcoholism, and alcohol psychosis, as well as such seemingly unrelated problems as hyperthyroidism and carcinoma.' Interestingly, in women, the ovulatory phase of the menstrual cycle was found to increase sensitivity to jealousy (Krug et al., 1996).

However, delusional jealousy is best known for its relationship to a variety of severe mental disorders, especially schizophrenia and paranoia. It was also found in people diagnosed as suffering from borderline personality disorder and mental handicap.4

It should be noted that when researchers are talking about the prevalence of delusional jealousy in those psychiatric disorders, they are not talking about very high percentages. In one much-quoted study by Michael Soyka et al. (1991), case histories of 8,134 psychiatric inpatients were reviewed. The prevalence of delusional jealousy overall was only 1.1°/0. It was most frequent in organic psychoses (7O/0), paranoid disorders (6.79/6), alcohol psychoses (5.60/0), and schizophrenia (2.5°,o).

Since delusional jealousy in these psychiatric disorders is organic, cause(] at least in part by chemical changes in the brain, the treatment of choice for most psychiatrists and many clinical psychologists is pharmacological, which is to say, drug therapy.' Cognitive-behavioral therapists, many of whom oppose such chemical intervention, suggest instead cognitive techniques for the treatment of delusional jealousy.' System oriented therapists believe that it is the couple, not the individual, that should be treated in the case of delusional jeal- oUSy.7 The majority of psychodynamic therapists agree with Freud that delusional jealousy is a defense, or the result of a defense, against represses] memories, and thus it is best treated by individual psychotherapy.8

Having explored the psychodynamic explanation of delusional jealousy, and some of the approaches that have been used in treating it, we can return to Sam and Amalya.

Back to Sam and Amalya

After falling in love with a woman like his mother (both promiscuous and attractive) and suffering the painful jealousy such a relationship can generate, Sam chose to marry a woman he did not love and who, because of her dependence on him, was sure to be faith- fc►I. It worked. Throughout the years of his marriage Sam never felt the pangs of jealousy. The price was that he didn't feel the ecstasy of love, either-just a comforting sense of security. For a while this was enough.

Things were sure to be different with Amalya, an attractive woman who had had many sexual liaisons with other men, just as his mother had done. A relationship with her had to be both more passionate and more emotionally risky.

Sam's jealousy of Amalya was not entirely delusional-he was not harassing her about imaginary affairs with other men. His jealousy was of' men she had indeed had affairs with and, for all he knew, could have affairs with again. Yet Sam's jealousy wasn't rational, either; it wasn't congruent with reality. Sam knew Amalya loved him and was faithful, yet he couldn't stop imagining her with other men, men she no longer cared about.

Why would anyone imagine things that cause him pain? One of the factors contributing to Sam's jealousy was an unconscious mechanism called "split-off projection" The "split-off" part is a disavowed part of themselves that people project onto another person. They do this because it is easier to deal with negative features in another person than it is to deal with them in oneself. If one believes oneself to be lascivious and immoral, one can try to cope with and control these difficult feelings. One can also do something that turns out to be much easier: choose someone appropriate and project these qualities onto that person.'I'his makes it possible for a person to deal with the feelings in interactions with the spouse, without having to acknowledge that they are within themselves.

In Sam's case, the "split-off" was the part of him that was like his mother: immoral, lascivious, unfaithful. Sam could not accept that he was like his mother. I IC could not accept that maybe, just maybe, he too did the unthinkable (for example, desired his own mother). Once he split off that part of himself and suppressed it, he could convince himself that he was pure and moral. But the split-off part pushed to be expressed, and it was finally expressed in Sam's relationship with Amalya. Sam projected on Amalya his forbidden desires and the internalized image of his unfaithful mother.

While Sam was helpless to do anything when he witnessed his mother's unfaithfulness as a child, as an adult he had some control over the situation he perceived as similar. I le could punish Amalya (who represented his mother) for her involvement with other men by withdrawing from her sexually and by refusing to marry her. It is telling, however, that Sam started doing this only after he was sure that Amalya loved him and would not be unfaithful.

In addition to reenacting the childhood trauma of his mother's betrayal, the jealousy served two important functions for Sam. First, it gave him a "legitimate" excuse to postpone his divorce from his wife and his marriage to Amalya. Second, it enabled him to entertain sexual fantasies that, given his self-perception as pure, moral, and innocent, he had difficulty admitting even to himself. The jealousy gave him an excuse to both imagine and interrogate Amalya about the details of her sexual relations with other men. This could have stimulated both voyeuristic and homosexual fantasies for him.

And there was something else. As I mentioned before, most modern day clinicians tend to disagree with Freud about the role played by repressed homosexuality in delusional jealousy. Yet it is interesting to note the role played by just such repressed homosexuality in Sam's jealousy. Amalya described Sam's never-ending interrogation of her earlier sexual relationships with men. He wanted to know in detail everything they did to her and everything she did to them. Why? According to Freud, this gave Sam an excuse to satisfy a suppressed homosexual drive. In other words, he could imagine her having sex with those other men, without a threat of having his own interest in men discovered.

An Evaluation of the Psychodynamic Approach

The psychodynamic approach contributes to our understanding of delusional jealousy by making us aware Of the unconscious forces underlying it. These forces explain behaviors that are otherwise difficult to understand, such as jealous people's choice of an unfaithful mate, their relentless efforts to seek out confirmation of their worst fears, their drive to push their mate toward their rival, or their to n- dency to become obsessed with painful images of the mate in a passionate embrace with the rival. Such thoughts and behaviors increase the jealous person's pain but, according to the psychodynamic approach, they provide a defense against even more troubling feelings and thoughts.

Another contribution of the psychodynamic approach is its view that the roots of adult jealousy are in early childhood experiences. According to Freud, these experiences occur in the Oedipal stage. Since Freud saw these experiences as universal, he was convinced that reexperiencing them as romantic jealousy in adulthood was both inevitable and universal.

Other psychodynamic writers believe that the origin of some feelings associated with jealousy may be even earlier than the Oedipal stage. When a hungry baby cries and Mother doesn't appear, the baby experiences tremendous anxiety and fear of abandonment. These fears are universal. Consequently jealousy, which is their manifestation in adult life, is universal.9

In every adult there is a child that at some point felt abandoned and scared, a child that cried in pain and raged with frustration. In most adults there is a longing for the complete security felt in the first weeks of life. Many felt resentment for the love they had to share with a sibling or a parent. As adults they may not remember those feelings, but they carry them nonetheless. These are the feelings that cause them to respond in exaggerated and inappropriate ways to jealousy triggers.

Because psychodynamically oriented therapists believe that jealousy both expresses and disguises some of our deepest fears and desires, they treat jealousy as a psychological problem in the mind of the jealous individual that is best treated in long-term psychotherapy. Other approaches question both psychodynamic approach's assumptions and methods.

One of the major criticisms of the psychodynamic approach is directed against its tendency not to consider the reality that may have prompted the jealousy and to assume that all jealousy is to some extent delusional-a product of a person's mind, unrelated to reality. Little attention is paid to literal infidelity, except sometimes to show how the person provoked, or in some sense desired, the very betrayal that aroused his or her jealousy (Downing, 1986).

A related criticism is directed at the tendency to blame the indi- victual for choosing or creating the circumstances that give rise to the jealousy problem. Psychodynamically oriented therapists tend to ignore what the jealousy suggests about anyone other than the jealous individual.

The psychodynamic approach is also criticized for putting too much emphasis on the role of the unconscious and not enough emphasis on conscious expectations and real events that create a jealousy problem and help maintain it.

Yet another criticism is directed at the tendency to put too much emphasis on the role of early childhood experiences in creating a jealousy- problem and not enough emphasis on present forces, especially the dynamics of the relationship. The approval that is most closely associated with this criticism is the systems approach, which will be discussed in the next chaopter.

A Note to Therapists

When working with individuals who are concerned about the intensity of their jealousy-the "crazy" things they feel, think, and do when jealous-it is important to examine two questions. First, is it possible that the jealousy is not only a response to a spouse's jealousy-provoking behavior, but also a reenactment of an early childhood trauma? In other words, what are the roots of the jealousy? Have either Mother or Father been unfaithful? Has either parent been unusually jealous? Has the person ever witnessed a violent jealous outburst between the parents?

The second question is, What hidden payoffs does the person get from being jealous? What function does the jealousy serve? Does it provide affirmation of the partner's love and loyalty? Does it force the partner to behave in a more considerate way? Does it make it possible for the jealous person to project impulses toward infidelity onto the partner? Is it a way to punish oneself for having unacceptable fantasies or desires? Is it a way to indulge in sexual fantasies?

 
4

Treating the Couple,
Not the Jealous Mate

Quarrels would not last if the fault were only on one side.

-La Roehefoucauld, Reflections, 1675

The Systems Approach to Jealousy

According to the systems approach, jealousy is a result of dynamics within a particular relationship and is best treated as a problem the couple shares.]

In psychological terms, a system constitutes "a complex of interacting elements and the relationships which organize them."2 Emotions, actions, and thoughts are interacting elements of a system we call a person. The person is a subsystem of a more complex system involving an intimate relationship, which at times is called marriage. This relationship is a subsystem of a more complex system of an extended family, which itself is a subsystem of a particular society.'

Unlike the psychodynamic emphasis on events in our past, the systems approach considers the past mostly irrelevant to the treatment of 'jealousy. The unconscious roots of the jealousy problem also do not matter. What matters instead are the forces that elicit and maintain the problem. The focus is no longer the mind of the jealous individual, but the higher-order system, the whole, of which the individual is a part. The whole involves first and foremost the couple, but can also include the jealousy triangle, the couple's family of origin, and even the community and the culture in which the couple lives.

higher-order systems (such as the couple) both influence and are influence(] by lower-order systems (such as the actions, thoughts, and emotions of the jealous person). This reciprocal influence can cause negative-feedback loops that maintain the jealousy problem or positive-feedback loops that promote change. Disrupting a negative feedback loop in a higher-order system (a relationship) may involve or lead to change in a lower-order system (the jealous person).

With the passage of time, patterns of behavior become rules, or habits that are difficult to change. A couple's relationship functions according to these rules. (One of the most important rules dictates who makes the rules.) Once rules are established, the couple system tends to resist change. Yet a healthy system can exhibit both stability and change at one and the same time.

Instead of asking "Why?" (i.e., why is the individual jealous?) systems therapists ask "What?" What is the cause of the jealousy problem? And, more important, what can be done to bring about change? Psychodynamically oriented therapists give interpretations aimed at helping the troubled individuals gain new insights into their jealousy problem. By contrast, systems therapists give couples concrete recommendations designed to disrupt the destructive patterns that cause the jealousy problem and to help maintain the positive change. Disrupting those destructive patterns, instead of unearthing their cause, is the primary goal of systems therapy.

To bring about change in the person suffering from jealousy, that person's marital system must change. The focus of the therapeutic intervention is on behaviors in both mates that help maintain the jealousy problem. Because the goal is to disrupt a destructive feedback loop, the therapist tries to find the point that is easiest to change. This can involve a change in behavior that produces a change in the rules of the system or a change of rules that produces a change in behavior. The case of Dave and Lillian, which will be presented shortly, provides an example of such a system change.

While the focus of the specific intervention can vary, the general focus of systems therapy is always the system and the circular processes (feedback loops) that take place in it. Systems therapists assume that a change in one part of the system (for example, one mate) always causes change in the other parts of the system (for example, the other mate), and therefore changes the whole system. When the husband withdraws, the wife responds with an attempt to get closer. When the wife tries to get closer, the husband responds by withdrawing. The response of one mate provides the stimulus to the other: Does he withdraw because she gets too close, or does she get closer because he withdraws?

In a marital system, according to systems approach, it is impossible for one mate to be totally passive. Even when one does not respond to something one's partner did, such as blaming one unjustly for being unfaithful, the lack of response gives the partner a powerful message.

Roles such as victim and victimizer are seen as a result of an arbitrary decision in which both mates take part. If the husband plays the role of the unfaithful villain, a systems therapist is likely to assume that the wife is contributing to or getting something from the role of the betrayed victim. One goal of therapy is to change such arbitrary definitions. A change in the way a couple perceives a chain of events (for example, what preceded the affair that can help explain it) can change the couple's dynamic.

Systems therapists see jealousy as caused by destructive, self-reinforcing patterns of interaction and not by events in the individual's past. When a couple comes to therapy and the husband describes the "crazy things" his wife does because of her "pathological jealousy," the therapist is likely to ask what in the husband's behavior caused her to behave in this way. Another question the therapist might ask concerns the husband's response, which may reinforce the wife's jealous behavior. When the wife identifies the husband's affair as the central problem, the therapist is likely to ask her what she might have done to cause her husband to have an affair, or else what she did in response to the affair.

Even though only one person in the couple may experience jealousy, systems therapists believe that jealousy serves a function in the couple system. Symptoms such as affairs or jealousy are viewed as forms of communication. Dave and Lillian demonstrate how an affair can be a form of communication.4

Dave and Lillian: An Affair as a Form of Communication

When Dave and Lillian first met, Lillian was insecure and impoverished. She was attracted to Dave's stability and quiet self-confidence. Dave, for his part, was attracted to Lillian's high energy and intense emotionality. During the first years of their marriage Dave was a stable breadwinner, which enabled Lillian to go back to school and get a degree. Both were happy in their marriage.

After about six years, however, Dave decided he needed a change and took a job in real estate, a field that Lillian considered "gambling" instead of a "real job" Dave's income in this new job was unstable; in addition, the real-estate field went into a slump shortly after lie entered it, making even his unstable income rather meager. During that time they had to rely on Lillian's salary, which she said was "all right," but in fact was not all right with her. Lillian explains:

Dave's career has not been successful. For the past four years I have been the steady breadwinner while Dave has tried to break into commercial real estate. Although he did have one fairly good year, he brought in a total of about $40,000 (luring a fouryear period. Even when he made some money, neither of us felt it could be freely spent because there was no way to know when or if he would make the next deal and another commission. Sales, especially during these hard limes for real estate, can be very stressful work. Dave has pert out a lot of effort, undergone a lot of stress, and gotten very little back for it.

Lillian understood that what she saw as Dave's "failure" was the result of bad Tuck rather than "a symptom of inherent failure tendencies or inadequacies" in Dave. Still, she felt "emotionally impacted by a sense of his 'failure" It triggered childhood fears and insecurities that were related in part to the fact that she viewed her father as "a total and complete failure in the business world." Dave's problems and lack of success threatened her sense of security in Dave and in the marriage, and the experience affected her sexual feelings:

The sexist woman in me expects a man to be stronger and steadier and more financially successful than I am. Someone inside me wants to be a delicate, charming little girl ... with a big, powerful, successful man to take care of me and overwhelm me with his forcefulness, his sureness, his surefooted success. I must admit that I expect a husband to he successful, and Dave is not successful. Although I don't consciously make his career success a condition of my love, I am sure that on an emotional level I am experiencing deep disappointment in him. I have wondered if this disappointment is behind my lack of sexual attraction.... Dave's financial dependency is the crux of my anger and disappointment.... The whole failure issue-men should succeed; my father was a failure-has a lot of emotional energy around it and generates its own dynamic.

The effect of Dave's perceived career failure on Lillian's sexual feelings had a concrete manifestation:

Dave is relatively short for a man. lie is also very slender. I am fairly slender but more solid than he is. I never used to think about it at all, but lately I have been craving largeness in a man. Dave is wonderfully endowed sexually, and fills me up as no other man has ever clone quite so well. But in terms of body size and weight I have lately found him lacking. I crave bigness and power on top of me when we make love these days. I feel cheated because my arms wrap so easily around his slender body. I feel like a protecting mother/companion/comfort-giver ... when I want to feel like a nymphet overwhelmed by a large, powerful, passionate man who is driven to frenzy by my loveliness.

Lillian has not always been disappointed with Dave's size. As a matter of fact, the opposite is true.

Is this body-disappointment based upon the failure disappointment that I feel on an emotional level? Have I got his smallness of body mixed up with his smallness of income? Will this body-disappointment go away when Dave gets a new career under way and has success? And will sexual excitement ignite between us then?

Despite the intensity of her disappointment and rage, Lillian was unable to discuss her feelings openly with Dave. She valued the security her marriage provided, and was afraid that if she expressed her true feelings openly, Dave might get so upset and angry that he would leave her. So she blocked out her negative feelings. It is impossible, however, to block emotions selectively; once you put on an emotional shield, it inhibits all emotions. Consequently, when Lillian repressed her anger she also repressed her feelings of love and passion.

Although he died not admit his failure in real estate, Dave was worried about his financial future. He wanted to protect Lillian from his fears and his feelings of insecurity and inadequacy, feelings that were caused by his "unmasculine" dependency on Lillian's earnings. Dave couldn't admit those feelings even to himself. So he blocked them out, blocking with them his passion. Lillian describes the results:

As must be typical, the symptoms of the problem come up most glaringly in the bedroom. I no longer feel sexually attracted to or excited by Dave. Dave says he is still attracted to me-and that the lack of enthusiasm comes from me rather than from him. But the predictability and low-key style of his lovemaking cause me to think that perhaps our lack of enthusiasm is shared. I have no complaints about his willingness, frequency, sweetness, or consideration and giving during lovemaking. It is the lack of creativity, of genuine excitement, of passion that I refer to. And I do nothing to introduce these elements myself, since I no longer feel any passion or strong attraction. I do not find myself motivated to exhibit feelings I am not having although some pretense on my part might get the ball rolling, perhaps. It's just not something I want to force myself to do.