Romantic Jealousy: Causes, Symptoms, Cures (2 page)

-St. Augustine

Jealousy is the dragon in paradise: the hell of heaven: and the most bitter of emotions because it is associated with the sweetest.

-A. R. Orage, On Love

I found myself sitting all curled up in the bushes following every movement seen through the curtains in her lit-up window. I knew her boyfriend was there, and the knowledge caused me an excruciating pain. It was a cold winter night, and once in a while there was a drizzle. I said to myself, "I know I am a sane, welladjusted, responsible adult. What in the world is happening to me? I lave I totally lost my mind?" Yet I continued sitting in those bushes for hours. I didn't leave until the light in the window was gone. A force more powerful than myself held me hypnotized to the light and to her. I never felt so close to madness.

Although I knew that our relationship was over, I still had very strong feelings toward him. Then, one day, I saw him at the corner store where we used to shop when we lived together. Ile was with this Los Angeles-type bleached blonde, the kind who spends hours choosing her outfit. She had heavy makeup perfectly put on, and every hair on her head was in just the right place. I knew that I looked like a bag lady, my nose was red from a cold, my hair was unwashed and greasy. I think I simply went mad. I went up to him, kicked him in the balls, snapped his hat and ran outside I got into his car-which for some reason he left unlocked-and started crying. I've never cried like that. I felt I was going out Of' My mind.

The man in the first paragraph and the woman in the second are describing powerful experiences that have several things in common. The experiences are extreme and unusual, involve loss of control, and result in a sense that one is going mad. Indeed, these are three notable features of jealousy.

What Is Romantic Jealousy?

The word jealous is derived from the Greek word zelos, which signifies emulation and zeal and denotes intensity of feelings. In this book the focus is not on jealousy in general but on romantic or sexual jealousy-the jealousy that emerges in the context of a romantic relationship.

The phrase "romantic jealousy" means different things to different people. It evokes a variety of images, explanations, and definitions. Here are some examples: "It's a hard-to-control emotion that results from fear of losing an important person to someone else." "It's a feeling you have when you're afraid you're losing an important relationship." "It's the feeling of being betrayed by someone you trust." "It's when somebody else looks at a person I love the way I do" "It's when you are insecure about your relationship or about yourself, and you feel that you are not man enough.""When you love someone, but the love they felt for VOL] is gone"

What is your definition of romantic jealousy? I presented this question to close to a thousand people and received as many definitions as there were respondents. The definitions I just presented, for example, were suggested by inmates serving time in prison for committing crimes related to jealousy.

Since it seems clear that we can't simply assume everyone knows what jealousy is, I would like to offer the following definition: Jealousy is it complex reaction to a perceived threat to it valued relationship or to its quality.'

Jealousy is a con►plex reaction that has both internal and external components. The internal component of jealousy includes certain emotions, thoughts, and physical symptoms that often are not visible to the outside world. The emotions associated with jealousy may include pain, anger, rage, envy, sadness, fear, grief, and humiliation. The thoughts associated with jealousy may include resentment ("How could you have lied to me like this?"), self-blame ('How could I have been so blind, so stupid?"), comparison with the rival ("I'm not as attractive, sexy, intelligent, successful"), concern for one's public image ("Everyone knows, and laughs at me"), or self-pity ("I'M all alone in the world, nobody loves me"). The physical symptoms associated with jealousy may include blood rushing to the head, sweaty and trembling hands, shortness of breath, stomach cramps, feeling faint, a fast heartbeat, and trouble falling asleep.

The external component of jealousy is more clearly visible and is expressed in some kind of behavior: talking openly about the problem, screaming, crying, making a point of ignoring the issue, using humor, retaliating, leaving, or becoming violent.

The fact that jealousy has both an internal and an external component has an important implication for coping. Even if people can modify the internal component to some extent, most have relatively little control over it, especially over their emotional and physical responses: "1 wish I could be cool and rational about it, but the pain is simply too big." "I stood there like an idiot, blood rushing to my face, and couldn't do a thing to stop it." However, people can be trained to have more control over their thoughts. Actually, the premise of cognitive therapy is that we can change our feelings by changing our thoughts (e.g. Bishay et al., 1996; Dolan £& Bishay, 1996a; Ellis, 1996).

People have far greater control over the external component of their jealousy than over the internal component. They don't always realize this (and even when they do, they don't always want to admit it), but they can-if they choose to-talk about their feelings, make fun of the whole thing, cry their hearts out, suffer silently and covertly or loudly and visibly, lash out in anger, get out of the relationship, try to make their mate jealous, or throw dishes. When one feels overwhelmed by jealousy, it is important to remember that while it may be difficult to control jealous feelings, changing the thoughts that trigger them helps keep the feelings in check. Furthermore, most people have significant control over what they decide to do about their jealousy.

The jealous response is triggered when there's a perceived threat to the relationship. The perceived threat may be real or imagined (just as the relationship can be real or imagined). If a man thinks that his wife is interested in other men, even if the threat is a result of his own wild imagination, he is going to respond with intense jealousy. On the other hand, if a woman has a close friendship with another man, but her husband feels secure in their marriage and does not feel threatened by this friendship, he is not likely to respond with jealousy.

A couple I saw in therapy provides an example of jealousy in response to an imaginary threat. The husband, a rather plainlooking man, married a beautiful woman thirteen years younger than himself. He was convinced that every man who looked at his wife desired her. Since he did not feel secure in his own attractiveness, he was terrified every time she left the house, thinking that she would find someone else and leave him. His wife was faithful and committed to the marriage; when they first met, she loved the fact that he put her on a pedestal and welcomed his intense attraction to her. With time, however, she found his jealousy increasingly bothersome and suffocating. When the couple came to me for help, she said she needed to get away from him-not because he lacked attractiveness, and not because she had found a more attractive man-but because of his suffocating jealousy.

Another couple provides an example of how not perceiving a threat can act as a buffer against jealousy. The husband in this case was a swinger. He loved swingers' parties, even orgies. His wife did not. For years he used to go to these sexual encounters alone, with the full knowledge of his wife. The wife, for her part, disliked the idea of sexual promiscuity, but accepted the fact that this was extremely important for her husband, and that it was not a threat to their marriage or to herself. After years of this arrangement, the wife had an affair. The husband's way of dealing with it was to befriend her lover and accept him as part of the family. He said the lover wasn't a threat to his marriage. Furthermore, the fact that his wife had a lover made him feel freer to continue his own sexual exploits. Even if one doubts the husband's claim that he felt no jeal ousy, it's clear that his response to what is for most people a powerful jealousy trigger was very mild.

A relationship that triggers a jealous response has to be valuable. It can be valuable in different ways. If a woman can't stand her husband and he arouses in her only feelings of boredom or disgust, the knowledge that he is having an affair is not likely, in and of itself, to trigger much jealousy. Yet for such a woman, losing her husband to another woman may threaten her public image, as well as her standard of living and general lifestyle. In other words, the marriage may not be valuable for her emotionally, but it may have economic or social value. The following is a case in point. It demonstrates that jealousy can exist in a relationship that has only extraneous value, even after that relationship has ended.

A wealthy woman who wanted desperately to get out of her marriage finally managed to do so, at great financial cost. She had to leave the house to her husband, but said she was glad to do it if it meant being rid of him. Then, one night as she drove past the house, she saw a shadow of a woman on the curtain and was overcome by tremendous jealousy.

Did she perceive a threat to her marriage? Obviously not, since the marriage was over. Was her marriage emotionally valuable to her as a love relationship? Obviously not, since she was the one who worked so hard, and sacrificed so much, to get out of it. Yet she felt jealous when she saw the shadow of the woman. Jealousy, as noted earlier, is a response to a perceived threat to a valued relationship or to its quality. The woman was responding to the threat against her perception of her relationship with her husband.

In her mind she saw herself as superior to her husband and as having more power in their relationship. After all, wasn't she the one who kicked him out of the marriage and out of her life? And here the worthless bum had already found someone else to be with, while she was still alone. What enraged her even more was that the two of them were "in" and she was "out" of "her" house. The other woman presented a threat not to her actual marriage but rather to her perception of the marriage.

This example illustrates the complexity of the jealous response. The wealthy woman experienced possessiveness (this was "her" husband and "her" house), exclusion (they were "in" and she was "out"), competitiveness (her husband had someone and she didn't), and envy (she wanted to have a relationship like the one she imagined he had).

For some people, the strongest component of jealousy is a fear of' being abandoned: "He is going to fall in love with her and leave me and then I'll be all alone." For some, the primary component is loss of face: "I low could you humiliate me in front of everyone by flirting openly with this slut?" For some, the most painful aspect is the betrayal: "How could you, the person I trusted more than anyone else in the world, He to me and betray me in this way?" For some, the primary component is competitiveness: "If she fell in love with him, he must be a better lover than I am"; or, "How could she fall for this sleaze-ball?" And there are those for whom the primary component is envy: "1 wish I were as skinny and gorgeous as she is" or "as successful professionally as he is."

When people describe intense jealousy, they often confuse their response with the degree of threat actually present in the situation. "fhcy may, for example, respond as if their male's "outrageous" flirting at the party indicated that their mate would leave them for that other person, when in fact all that the flirting causes is embarrassment. When they confront the threat realistically ("flow likely is it that your husband will leave you for the other woman?"), the intensity of their jealousy invariably diminishes.

Predisposition to Jealousy

Although jealousy appears in different forms and in varying degrees of intensity, it always results from an interaction between a certain predisposition and a particular triggering event. The predisposition to jealousy is influenced by the culture we grow up in; some cultures encourage jealousy while others discourage it. It is influenced by our family background: A man whose mother was unfaithful to his father or whose parents had violent outbursts of jealousy is likely to have far greater predisposition to jealousy than a man whose father and mother felt secure in each other's love. It is influenced by our family constellation: A woman who was outshone by a prettier or brighter sister is likely to have a greater predisposition to jealousy than a woman who was the favorite child in the family. It is also influenced by childhood and adult attachment history: A person who had a secure attachment to his mother will be less likely to become jealous than an anxiously attached person, and A person who was betrayed by a trusted mate is likely to develop a greater predisposition to jealousy in the future.

A predisposition to jealousy may never express itself unless a triggering event brings it out. For a person with a high predisposition to jealousy, such a triggering event can be as minor as a partner's glance at an attractive stranger passing by. For most people, however, the trigger for intense jealousy is a much more serious event, such as discovering that their mate had an illicit affair. For a person with an unusually low predisposition to jealousy, almost no event, short of ending the relationship because of a romantic involvement with a third person, can activate the jealous response.

Throughout the book, as mentioned in the preface, five theoretical approaches to romantic jealousy will be presented. Each emphasizes a different aspect of the predisposition to jealousy (Pines, 1992). The psychodynamic approach focuses on the question, Why (10 certain people have an unusually high or low predisposition to jealousy? It assumes that the answer can be found in people's childhood experiences. The systems approach asks, What is it about a particular relationship that increases or decreases a couple's predisposition to jealousy? It assumes that the answer can he found in the repeated patterns in the couple's interactions. The behavioral approach asks, What increases an individual's predisposition to behave in a jealous way? It assumes that the answer can be found in learned behaviors. The sociobiological approach asks, How have evolutionary forces of natural selection shaped men's and women's innate predisposition to jealousy? It assumes that the answer can be found in universal sex differences that exist in most human societies as well as in the animal world. The social-psychological approach asks, What effects does the culture have on people's predisposition to jealousy? It assumes that the answer can be found in cultural norms, which define what people perceive as threatening and what responses are considered appropriate.