Romantic Jealousy: Causes, Symptoms, Cures (7 page)

Finding out that your husband of thirty-five years, a man you considered your best and most trusted friend, has betrayed you is no doubt a justifiable cause for extreme jealousy.4 "Abnormally jealous" people, however, experience extreme jealousy in response to far milder triggers, and far more often. 'Abnormal jealousy" may stem from choosing a mate who is likely to make you jealous-because of the mate's personality, the person's lack of confidence, or the dynamic of the relationship. It can be caused by imagining threats even where there are none: "Ever)' attractive woman I see walking down the street is a threat. Thinking about the women he is meeting in his work can make me insane with jealousy."

How often do you experience extreme jealousy? Never? Rarely? Occasionally? Often? All the time? For most people, intense jealousy is a very rare experience. People who are "abnormally nonjealous" never experience intense jealousy. Some manage to protect themselves by avoiding involvement with anyone they are intensely attracted to. Others do it simply by "not seeing," or consciously ignoring, the threat.

Jealousy can be an extremely painful experience, but making it stop is not easy. Question: Can you make yourself stop being (feeling, thinking, acting) jealous? Definitely? TO a certain degree? Definitely not? Most people are able to stop themselves from being jealous, but only to a certain degree. When one is in the midst of a jealousy crisis it is especially hard.

Jane said she couldn't stop herself from being jealous. No matter how hard she tried, she couldn't stop thinking about the other woman-the way she looked at the theater in her backless dress, the way her voice sounded on her answering machine ("so unnaturally cheerful"), the way she must have behaved with Jane's husband (free, daring). Jane couldn't stop going over every detail of the affair again and again in her mind.

Through therapy Jane came to recognize the role she had played in enabling the affair-by being away with her daughter and unavailable to her husband when he desperately needed support and assurance of his manhood. She also realized that her husband's affair was only part of the reason for her obsession with the other woman. Her thoughts and feelings were related to her own sense of disappointment with the choices she made in her life. The other woman had a successful career and had achieved many of the things Jane herself would have wanted. As a free and independent woman, her rival could afford to come to the theater dressed in an outrageously sexy outfit. She could also do other things (such as have affairs) that Jane herself, as a married woman and a homemaker with many responsibilities, could never afford to do. Jane's own life was devoted to her husband and children. She never had time for her own interests, but her devotion seemed to go unappreciated. Once Jane was able to understand the underlying causes of her obsession, she could direct the energy that fueled her jealousy into discovering ways to find meaning in her own life.

The Jealous Person and the Jealousy-Producing Relationship

Until her husband's affair, Jane had never considered herself a jealous person. The affair made her change her self-perception. She "discovered" she was jealous. Question: Has your partner ever been unfaithful to you? People who answer yes are more likely to describe themselves as jealous. Actually, the more unfaithful people's mates are-in other words, the more they experience jealousy-provoking situations-the more likely they arc to describe themselves as jealous. Unfaithfulness damages one's sense of security in a relationship. It makes one realize that even a good marriage can be threatened. And security, it turns out, buffers against jealousy. The more insecure you feel in a relationship, the more likely you are to be jealous. Of course, the level of security people feel in their relationships is not only a function of their adult attachment history but also (and probably even more so) of their childhood attachment history and style (Sharpsteen & Kirkpatrick, 1997).

A person's sense of ,security in a relationship is also related to general self-esteem. Yet, as Tuvia Warned (1991) has pointed out, the level of security a relationship provides moderates the correlation between self-esteem and jealousy: The correlation is less evident in stable and well-established relationships and more evident in people who had experienced jealousy in previous relationships.

Question: How long do you expect the relationship to last? The longer one expects the relationship to last, the less likely one is to be jealous. It is revealing that the length of the relationship in and of itself was not at all related to jealousy-both young and old couples (in terms of the time they had been together) described themselves as jealous, and both young and old couples described themselves as nonjealous. The length that the relationship was expected to last, which is a measure of security and commitment, did correlate with jealousy-the more commitment, the less jealousy.

Commitment to a relationship doesn't develop in a vacuum. It's a reflection of the way a couple feels about each other and about the relationship. The more satisfied people are with their mate and the relationship, the data show, the less jealous they tend to be.

Does the jealousy cause the dissatisfaction, or does the dissatisfaction cause the jealousy? It can be argued that jealousy, with its ensuing drama, conflict, and unhappiness, is the cause of the insecurity and the dissatisfaction. On the other hand, it can also he argued that unstable, insecure, and unsatisfactory relationships make people more sensitive to threats and consequently more likely to experience jealousy. One interpretation focuses on the jealous person, the other on the jealous relationship. Which is correct? In the next two chapters both perspectives are elaborated, with the assumption that both are correct.

As noted before, people don't just fall into a certain kind of a relationship. They play an active role in shaping their relationships as well as problems. Some create relationships in which jealousy is not likely to be triggered. Others choose mates and help build relationships in which jealousy is likely to be triggered often. One a jealous relationship is established, both mates have to collude to keep the jealousy problem alive.

Do you believe in monogamy? Most people, it turns out, believe that monogamy is the best type of relationship. This is true even for those who don't practice it (Pittman, 1989). While people who insist on sexual exclusivity in their intimate relationships tend to be more jealous than people for whom exclusivity is not that important, monogamous people tend to seek like-minded mates and consequently have relationships in which their jealousy is not likely to be triggered.'

If the connection between belief in monogamy and jealousy doesn't seem obvious, let me point to a more obvious connection, between what we do to others and what we fear they might do to us. I lave you ever been unfaithful to your mate sexually (Never? Once? Very few times? Many times? All the tine?)? The more unfaithful people themselves have been, the more jealous they are likely to be. The more lies one has told, the more attuned one's ear becomes to lies, at times hearing them even when they have not been spoken. The more schemes one has pulled off to get together with one's lover, the more suspicious one become of situations that might be such schemes.

"Projected jealousy" derives either from one's own actual unfaithfulness or from repressed impulses toward it (Freud, 1922/1955). I lave you ever fantasized about sexual involvement with someone other than your mate? Most people have at times had such sexual fantasies. What is revealing is that those who fantasize Most often about being with someone else are also those who describe themselves as most jealous.(' Since they themselves are attracted to other people and possibly have thoughts about wild love affairs, they naturally assume that their mate has such thoughts too. Just as they think at times about eloping with a passionate lover, they are sure that their mate has such thoughts loo. Projecting their own impulses onto their mate makes them jealous.

Jealousy can be projected onto other people besides one's mate. Indeed, individuals who describe themselves as jealous tend to think that more people in the general population are jealous than (10 people who describe themselves as not jealous.

Furthermore, people who describe themselves as jealous prefer their mates to be jealous and in general tend to see jealousy as a more positive personality characteristic. They are likely, for example, to see jealousy as a normal reaction that accompanies love, or as an instinctive reaction to a threat. They are less likely to see it as a defect.

It is possible that people who see themselves as less likely to control their jealous response need to believe that jealousy is not such a negative trait. The need to justify their own jealousy is so great that it keeps them from seeing the negative effect jealousy can have on intimate relationships. In fact, the more people described themselves as jealous, the more likely they were to have intimate relationships end because of their jealousy.

Is There a "Jealous Personality"?

People who have several intimate relationships end because of their jealousy usually describe themselves as having been jealous from a very young age. This has made some personality psychologists argue that such a thing as a "jealous personality" actually exists. Differences between people in the propensity to respond with jealousy, they claim, are not only valid and reliable over time-they even run in families.?

My own experience leads me to believe that labeling certain individuals as having "jealous personalities" doesn't do them much good, and can even be damaging. It is more helpful to look at people as having different predispositions to jealousy. As we saw in chapter one, jealousy originates very early in life. It is triggered again whenever there is a threat of losing a valued love relationship. People whom personality psychologists label "jealous personalities" tend to have had more traumatic experiences related to unfaithfulness, jealousy, or loss of' love in their childhood, and consequently have greater predisposition to respond with jealousy later in life.

I low jealous were you during the earlier stages of your life?

■ during childhood?

■ during adolescence?

■ during young adulthood?

■ (luring adulthood?

Of the people surveyed, the majority reported being most jealous during adolescence. It is possible that during this stormy period all experiences, including jealousy, are more intense. It is also possible that adolescents are most likely to fear losing their beloved because a lack of mutual commitment characterizes relationships at that stage of life. Both these reasons help explain the findings Of ',1 study of adolescents' love relationships. The study, which involved boys and girls aged 14-17, suggests that jealousy was the main cause of both physical and emotional violence among these aelolesccnl couples (Gagne & Levoie, 1997).

Most people report decreasing levels of jealousy after adolescence (less during young adulthood than (luring adolescence and less during advanced adulthood than during young adulthood). There are several ways to interpret these findings. It is possible that over time, people develop better coping strategies for dealing with their jealousy. It is possible that, with experience, people avoid relationships in which their jealousy is likely to be triggered often. It is possible that with age most people become more sure of themselves and thus are less likely to be threatened by certain jealousy triggers." It is possible that over time most couples develop a sense of security in their relationship and thus are less likely to view jealousy-triggering incidents as serious threats. And it is possible that the growing openness of society in general and the institution of marriage in particular has caused a general decline in jealousy

The fact that people who were more jealous than others in childhood also tend to be more jealous later in life supports the notion that people have stable predispositions for jealousy. Such a predisposition is influenced, among other things, by one's family constellation. Developmental psychologists see the roots of adult jealousy in sibling rivalry. The psychological pattern of reacting to jealousy triggers in later life, they argue, is determined by the child's first experience of jealousy when his desire for exclusivity with his mother is threatened by a sibling.10

In my research, the more older brothers people had, the more jealous they were likely to be. The more younger brothers they had, the less jealous they were likely to be. The number of sisters was not related to jealousy. This suggests that it's not the presence of a sibling in and of itself that triggers jealousy. The trigger has to be a sibling who is in a position of advantage (an older brother has an age and a sex advantage in our patriarchal society). Adult jealousy is influenced by childhood envy of the older sibling's advantage and by the childhood jealousy triangle with one's sibling and mother.11

People who have a predisposition to jealousy can expect those around them to notice it at some point. And they do. The more jealous people are (or consider themselves to be), the more likely it is that people who know them well will consider them jealous. It's not easy to hide the torment of jealousy.

If jealousy is hard to hide from people who know you, it is doubly hard to hide from intimate partners. They are the ones most likely both to trigger and to witness our jealousy. People are less likely to exhibit jealous behavior in public or in casual relationships and more likely to exhibit it in intimate relationships. One obvious reason is that jealousy is more likely to be triggered in an intimate relationship than in a less valued casual relationship. Another reason is that jealous behavior is generally considered socially unacceptable in our culture.)2