Romantic Jealousy: Causes, Symptoms, Cures (22 page)

Studies of swingers suggest that most often swinging is initiated by the husband out of boredom or desire for sexual variety, with the wife's reluctant consents.4 Other couples in open marriages also have rules that limit the extramarital involvement: One couple is open only with other couples, another is open only when one of them is out of town. For one couple, the rule is "you can have sex, but not spend the night"; for another, sex is allowed only with strangers whom we are not likely to meet socially." Contracts differ in degree of openness and are rewritten whenever the partners see fit to do so.

Despite the rules, many couples discover that the effort to keep a marriage strong while being open to involvement with other people requires too much effort: "You have to talk all the time in order to make sure your marriage doesn't suffer. The time and energy involved in that are so big that little is left for anything else." Many of the couples I interviewed or worked with who had tried open marriage decided eventually to go back to monogamy. Studies of swingers suggest that despite the self-selection that screens out highly jealous people, jealousy remains a problem for swingers: Up to a third of swingers soon drop out because of their own or their spouse's jealousy.'

Some people have made unusual attempts to combine the security of a good relationship with the sexual variety offered by being involved with other people.

A Life without Jealousy?

Is it possible to eliminate jealously from your life? The answer, according to the members of an urban commune called Kerista, was "definitely yes!"

The Keristans described themselves as an "egalitarian, nonmonogamous, utopian community" Kerista included, at the time I studied them, fifteen women, seventeen men, and two children living together in San Francisco. It was founded twenty-five years ago as a "polyfidelitous family" "Polyfidelity," a coined word, is a "group of best friends, highly compatible, who live together as a family, with sexual intimacy occurring equally between all members of the opposite sex, no sexual involvement with people outside the group, a current intention of lifetime involvement, and the intention to raise children together in multiple parenting."6'

A polyfidelitous family resembles a traditional marriage in that family members did not become sexually involved with each other until they had made a mutual commitment to a "current intention of a lifetime involvement," and in that once the commitment was made, they were totally faithful to each other. A polyfidelitous family differs markedly from a traditional family in its basic assumption that one can have many primary relationships simultaneously.

Members of the commune described a high degree of love and tenderness for each other. Each one of the men claimed to be equally In love" with each one of the women, and the women claimed to love equally each one of the men. Women referred to other women affectionately as "starling sisters"; men referred to other men as "starling brothers." The terms connote the affection experienced and expressed by the commune members toward their same-sex partners. Members had three-leper names (Jud, Eve, Geo, Ram) that were selected after an individual entered the commune.

Sexual relationships within the family were nonpreferential and happened within a rotating sleeping pattern. The sleeping pattern, which followed a set formula, scheduled nighttime to be spent in a twosome. The sleeping pattern did not schedule sexual intercourse; having sex or not having it depended on the feelings of the two partners spending the night together.

The economics in Kerisla were managed according to a system of "surplus income sharing." In this system, members put all their surplus income above their own expenses into a common fund and set a personal wealth limitation of one thousand dollars. Policy decisions on how and where to spend this common fund, like all other decisions, were made by a majority vote. Kerista was doing well financially. In 1990, for example, its gross revenues came to $15 million.

Kerista had developed its own religion and is a legally recognized church. Members shared a belief in "Divinity-a higher order of reality." In addition, they had a mythological deity called Sister Kerista, who is "an intermediary between the individual and Divinity, that the mind can more easily reach out to"

Interactions among members, including strong differences or personal problems, were settled through a round-the-clock "communication process." All members were equal participants. The official power structure was one of "absolute equality." All decisions were made democratically by majority vote.

How Polyfidelity Combats Romantic Jealousy

The Keristans approached me some years ago when I was going to lead a jealousy workshop. They volunteered to tell the workshop participants how they had managed to overcome their own jealousy. I found the things they said so fascinating that I asked them to take part in my jealousy research, which they did.

Before joining the commune, the Keristans said, they had all felt jealous at some point in life, but the commune enabled them to rid themselves of their jealousy. Following are some of the elements in their lifestyle that helped them overcome jealousy.

In Kerista, nonpreferentiality was an ideal and a norm. All oneon-one relationships were viewed as unique: "The nonpreferentiality doesn't mean limiting the depth of intimacy and caring for the sake of equality and variety. Because of the strength of each one-to-one bond, no one sees the strength of another relationship as a threat to the uniqueness of their intimacy bonds."

The Keristans extended the limits of the twosome to include fifteen people. Within a family unit of fifteen people jealousy is just as ridiculous as it is within a traditional family structure. Furthermore, in a traditional marriage, all the emotional resources are invested in one person. When that person withdraws or leaves, the result is a serious trauma. In Kerista, the emotional investment was spread among fourteen people. Consequently when one person left, the trauma was much smaller.

The possibility of losing a partner is far less threatening in a polyfidelitous family than it is in a traditional marriage. First, if a person leaves, other members are not likely to see it as a personal rejection and therefore can tolerate the loss more easily. Second, the loss is shared by all members, and therefore is less painful. Since the threat and the pain of loss are small, they are less likely to trigger jealousy.

In Kerista, jealousy was viewed as °a conditioned response that flashes whenever residual emotions from the past are triggered." It was not considered a response to a threat to the relationship's exclusiveness. On those rare occasions when someone felt jealous, all group members talked about it openly, assuring the person feeling jealous of his or her secure place in the commune. Furthermore, there was no exclusive relationship to be guarded or threatened. Every intimate detail about the sexual habits of each member was well known to everyone and was the subject of open discussion. "Everyone knows if one of the men has a problem with premature ejaculation, or if one of the women has a problem reaching coital orgasm, and we all talk about it together," one member explained.

When Eve and Ram went together to an erotic film festival (on their scheduled night for being a twosome), Azo felt a flash of jealousy. At first, he didn't recognize it as jealousy; all he knew was that he felt somewhat depressed. When lie entered the kitchen, several people were there. Right away lie said he was upset. This was a recognized invitation and the others responded accordingly. They started to question him about his depression. Eventually they discovered that it was triggered by a fear that he might lose a measure of intimacy with Eve because he was not sharing the experience of the erotic film festival with her.

When his feelings were clarified, his partners assured him that both Eve and Ram were solid in their commitment to nonpreferential love and that he was not likely to lose any measure of intimacy with Eve. Azo also had an opportunity, during the discussion, to examine his own wishes to have a preferential relationship with Eve, and to reaffirm his own commitment to a polyfidelitous lifestyle.

At Kerista, the sexual involvement between one's lover and another person, which for most people is the strongest elicitor of jealousy, was expected to increase one's sense of security. Keristans saw sexual involvement between their male and female partners (they were heterosexual) as an affirmation that their polyf'idelitous ideology works. They did not see it as a threat to their relationship with those partners or to their egos, so they were not likely to feel jealous.

The Keristans claimed that their total trust in each other (and consequently their lack of jealousy) extended to people outside the community. In other words, outsiders were not viewed as a threat. When Lee stayed out until the early morning hours on a (late with an old boyfriend, for example, no one doubted her total fidelity, and therefore no one experienced jealousy.

A major component of jealousy, for many people, is the suspicion or resentment of the rival. In Kerista, on the other hand, the relationship that every man had with the other mete and every woman had with the other women elicited what they called "compersion" rather than jealousy. "compersion is the positive warm feeling you experience when you see two of your partners having fun with each other. It's the antonym of jealousy."

The Keristans disagreed with the sociobiologists who claim that jealousy is a natural, instinctive reaction. They believed instead that "it is natural to be free of jealousy. The natural instinctive reaction is compersion." Like the O'Neills, the Keristans were convinced that because jealousy is culturally learned, it can, and should, be unlearned.

Since the Keristans viewed jealousy as a function of a particular social structure and sex role socialization, they had put a great deal of effort into creating a new social structure and new sex roles within it.

If jealousy is a response to a feeling of powerlessness in the relationship, as some psychologists have argued,7 then a community like Kerista, in which members share equal power, is likely to minimize it.

If jealousy is a sanctioned response to a violation of sexual property rights, as some sociologists have argued,a it is less likely to occur in a social structure where sexual property rights include all the adults in the community rather than a single couple, and where intimacy is shared equally by all members of the family.

Likewise, if jealousy arises from a desire to preserve a possession,9 a society that discourages possessions is less likely to elicit jealousy, especially in a group for whom sexual involvement of one's partner with others doesn't imply a threat of possible loss.

When I compared the Keristans' responses to The Romantic Jealousy Questionnaire (see Appendix B) to the responses of 1 03 people in conventional relationships, I discovered that all the Keristans described themselves and their partners as "not at all jealous." They also said that they never experience jealousy, dislike jealousy, do not want their partners to be jealous, and do not consider their own jealousy a problem. All this was true only from the time they joined Kerista. During their childhood, adolescence, and young adulthood they were just as jealous as the other people surveyed. The Keristans viewed jealousy as an undesirable personality characteristic and never considered it an appropriate response, even in the most extreme of situations. Unlike most of' the other people surveyed, they believed that one can stop oneself from being jealous.10

As can be expected, none of the Keristans believed in monogamy. All of them described themselves as being totally open with their partners about other sexual experiences, and all of them believed that their partners were totally open with them as well. They also believed that they were totally faithful to their partners (every single one of them) and that all their partners were totally faithful to them.

Their responses were so similar that I wondered whether they discussed the questions and decided on the "group answer." The Keristans assured me that they (lid nothing of the kind. They didn't have to. They talked about these issues with each other so often that they knew each other's positions without having to talk about it.

In Kerista, jealousy was an unlikely response because, within a polyfidelitous subculture, events that usually trigger jealousy (one's mate having sex with someone else, for example) were not likely to be appraised as threats. In addition to the way the Keristans appraised jealousy triggers, they also made every attempt to keep such triggers to a minimum. They avoided displays of affection in front of other partners; they were faithful to their partners; and they shared a commitment to a lifelong involvement with each other, thus ensuring that even if some of the group members leave, the "family unit" will remain and the individual will not be left alone.

As a result of all this effort, Kerislans were not likely to encounter many situations that trigger jealousy. On those rare occasions when they did encounter such situations, they were not likely to appraise them as threatening. And when a situation was appraised as threatening, social norms that define jealousy as unwholesome and undesirable guaranteed that the response to the threat would take the form of an open discussion.

For those who may have decided by now that the best way to conquer jealousy would have been to join Kerista, or perhaps establish a similar commune in their own neighborhood, a word of caution is in order. Kerista represented a selective group of people who got together from all parts of the country because they believed in a polyfidelitous lifestyle, and because they shared a commitment to a utopian ideology whose ultimate goal is to make the world a better place in which to live. Despite their unusual practice of sleep rotation, the Keristans were quite conservative in their sexual attitudes and practices. Few people nowadays require a lifetime commitment before they get involved sexually, but the Keristans did. The Keristans did not practice open marriage. They were totally faithful, only in their case that meant being faithful to fifteen partners.