Romantic Jealousy: Causes, Symptoms, Cures (26 page)

Ed lived with his girlfriend for over a year before the rape and his arrest. He describes the relationship:

It was intense, both good and bad. Sometimes I had the control, and sometimes she. We both were very needy. I really loved her. I was always afraid it wouldn't last, based on relationships I'd had in the past. For the whole year and a half I was afraid the relationship would crumble. I was insecure about myself and my identity. Several tines I wanted to get married and was rejected.

The discovery of her betrayal was devastating:

When she thought the time was right she told me about being involved with my best friend. That really hurt me. As if I wasn't enough. There was an emptiness in my chest, a heavy lump. I couldn't handle hearing the details. I had nightmares about her leaving me-driving her car and going away. I fell a tremendous love for her. I was scared. Someone I cared about was slipping away. When you love someone and the love that they felt for you is gone, that's the greatest pain in the world. I saw no way of controlling the situation.

The discovery started a process of deterioration that eventually led to a rape of a woman on the beach:

The reality was hard, and I started being more involved in fantasy than in the real world. I was involved with drugs and alcohol. Once I tried to commit suicide. I had a deep sense of helplessness. I was passionals and needy, but I didn't feel she really loved me. The crime was intended to destroy the relationship. I felt inadequate as a man. I had a lot of anger toward women going back to my past. I was very scared during the rape, more than she was. It was scary to be out of control that way.

Ed is aware of his jealousy and his tendency to respond to it with violence. Even after his trial and incarceration, jealousy continued to be a difficult issue in his relationship:

I'm a jealous person. I feel it very intensely. I was always an emotional person. I punched a guy once, right in the throat (in a jealous rage). I have a lot of emotional involvement in the relationship. I can feel when she's with someone, and couldn't continue subjecting myself to this kind of pain. It's a cruel punishment. When I went to prison she started seeing other people, and I always knew. Last week she told me she met someone else she wants to date. I gave her back all her pictures and letters. I couldn't handle my jealousy.

Ken was also living with a woman he loved, and experienced tremendous jealousy when She showed interest in other men:

We were living together three and a half years and were going to get married. I was very attracted to her physically and emotionally. I loved her. I wanted to spend all my time with her.

Everything was great until about a month before my arrest. In the last month, my brother told me he saw her with two guys. It kind of hurt me. I didn't understand it. She told me she was pregnant, but she didn't want me next to her. She pulled away. I fell terrible pain. I couldn't fall asleep. I thought I was losing her.

Like Ed and all the other inmates described earlier, Ken felt he was losing control over the relationship at a time when other aspects of his life were falling apart too. It was a difficult and scary feeling:

I was 18 at the time. I lost my job. I lost my car, my dad went to jail, my mother was kicked out to the street, and my girlfriend was withdrawing from me. I was on "crystal" about five or six clays, driving my friend's car. I was mad at myself for letting all these things happen. I lost control with my girlfriend. I was afraid I was losing her. She never believed my crime. She cried and cried and cried. I told her I didn't understand it myself. She told me she still loved me.

The events leading to Al's crime were similar to those that led Ken and Ed to violence. Al loved his girlfriend ("I always felt that she was a very attractive woman and a great person"). They lived together four years. Al hoped their relationship would last forever, yet felt extremely insecure about it:

Things went from terrible to excellent and back again. I never trusted her. She always flirted, flaunting herself. She's an exhibitionist.

The jealousy crisis that eventually led to rape started when Al discovered he had been cuckolded:

I found out at the hospital about her going to bed with this guy. That meant that the baby she had is probably not mine, because my sperm count is very low. After we talked, I went and got loaded on grass. I felt empty. I was afraid I was losing her. I started going out with different women and taking them to bed. The woman that called the police on me was one of these women. My crime was a revenge toward my old lady. I was telling her, "You can do it, I can do it" I didn't care during the trial. I thought about suicide. I still loved her.

Al had responded to jealousy with violence in the past:

I know that jealousy is a problem for me. I am very jealous. Too jealous. Almost all my relationships ended because of it. I was always jealous of this one dude. I kept my old lady away from him. I told him if he does something to my lady, I'll fuck his. One time at a party she disappeared for a long time. At first I was worried, then I found out she was talking to this dude. I kicked his ass and I got really mad at her. I was very jealous, very angry. If I thought she was having an affair, I'd try to catch them and hit her or split. After I found out, it would conic to a slop. Either I would leave or she would.

All four rapists described themselves as "extremely jealous" All four needed desperately to feel in control, yet were extremely dependent on their partners. Each felt devastated by the discovery that "his" woman was involved with another man. Other crises made them feel that they were losing control over their lives. The use of drugs exacerbated the problem. Rape gave them a sense of control over a woman, control they felt they had lost in their own life and relationship.

This explanation is not an excuse for the crimes these men committed. It also does not mean that the women in their lives deserve blame for their crimes. Instead, it means that men who have an unusually high predisposition to jealousy and violence and are otherwise unstable emotionally, who are dependent on their intimate relationship and feel betrayed-especially when they are in a crisis and using drugs-are likely to respond to their jealousy with violence.

What Causes Crimes of Passion?

Mike, Chuck, Ken, Ed, and Al are typical of criminals who serve time in prison for violence related to jealousy. As noted earlier, such criminals tend to be male, young, and from a low socioeconomic class.9 In virtually every case the crime was a result of an extreme predisposition to jealousy combined with an extreme jealousy trigger: withdrawal or actual betrayal by a woman they loved and depended on emotionally.

During group therapy and individual interviews with these men, we explored the roots of their jealous predisposition (Pines, 1983). The exploration revealed two shared experiences in virtually all of their backgrounds. The first was a traumatic experience of abandonment in early childhood. At times the abandonment was by the mother, at times by the father, at times by both parents (in one case the young boy arrived home from kindergarten to discover the house locked and both parents gone). In some cases the parent left the family; in others he or she died of illness, committed suicide, or withdrew emotionally. In all cases the boy experienced panic, rejection, abandonment, loss, and total helplessness. As adults these men tended to be especially dependent on their intimate relationships. When they felt that their lover was withdrawing-because of interest in another man, or because of problems in the relationship-the withdrawal triggered tremendous jealousy marked by emotions closely related to the traumatic childhood experience.

The second experience shared by most of these men had to do with the lack of a positive masculine role model during childhood. At times it was caused by the absence of a father altogether, other times by the presence of an abusive father or one who was distant, cold, and critical.

The lack of a loving, "normal" father-strong sometimes, weak other times, supportive sometimes, angry other times-caused the men to internalize instead a sex-role stereotype of a man who was a macho caricature. Consequently, when his lover began to withdraw, the withdrawal was perceived as a serious threat to his masculinity. In his extreme jealousy, the man felt the need to do something that would prove to his lover, and even more so to himself, that he was a "real man." His feelings of powerlessness in his relationship and life in general made him desperate to feel powerful, and he regained his feeling by attacking his victim.

The crimes that the jealousy triggered had two primary characteristics: They gave the men a sense of control, and they "proved" their masculinity. Most of the men admitted that having control over their victim was the most exciting part of the crime. The crime itself-whether a murder, a robbery, or most particularly a rape-enabled the men to prove their masculinity to the women who made them doubt it. The crime often involved a high level of daring and risk (e.g. robbing a house while the owners were eating dinner in the dining room); the "masculine" risk-taking was a great source of pride for these men.

Women and Crimes of Passion

While women are less likely to commit violent crimes than men, on rare occasions women also respond to jealousy With violence. In another study of jealousy and violence, I compared the responses to The Ro►unntic Jealousy Q)uesliounaire (see Appendix B) of twelve women inmates who described themselves as having a jealousy problem to those of twelve women who were similar to the inmates in age and socioeconomic status.10

The results of the comparison indicated that the women in prison described themselves as jealous, and believed their intimate partners perceived them as jealous, to a much greater degree than the control group. When describing their most intense experiences of jealousy, the women inmates reported feeling more rage, aggression, anxiety, humiliation, grief, frustration, depression, and pain. They also reported feeling possessive, self-righteous, and close to a nervous breakdown. When asked how they coped with their jealousy, the women in prison were far more likely to say that they used violence. They also reported being more likely to suffer silently but visibly or to leave their mates.

When asked about their childhoods, the women in prison described a more troubled home life; a relationship between the parents marked by violence; having a jealous mother; and being beaten while growing up. They were also likely to feel Tess secure in their current intimate relationships.u

Like the men who committed crimes of passion, these women had traumatic childhoods that contributed to their extreme predisposition to both jealousy and violence. An extreme case of such a childhood marked by abandonment and loneliness, was described by a gay woman I interviewed in prison who killed another woman by hitting her head with a rock. The reason for the attack was a pass that this woman made toward her lover.

Hidden Crimes of Passion

So far, the discussion of the relationship between jealousy and violence has focused on people who were incarcerated for committing crimes of passion. Ilowever, not all people who act violently as a result of jealousy end up in prison. How likely are people with a serious jealousy problem to act violently?

A study conducted by Paul Mullan of 138 people referred for psychiatric assessment for a serious jealousy problem (none of the referrals came from the courts) revealed that while only 10/6 had ever been charged with a violent crime, a mere 19% had not acted aggressively toward their partners. Close to 574 had a history of committing acts of violence, including threats to kill or maim (24%), accompanying threats by brandishing knives (nine men and two women, together 6%), underlining threats by waving blunt instruments such as pokers (nine men, or 70/0), and holding a gun to the partner's head while issuing threats (one man) (Mullen & Maack, 1985).

Fifty-six percent of the men and 530/6 of the women inflicted assaults on their partners. The seriousness of the attacks varied. Ten of the men throttled their wives with homicidal intent. Twelve people stabbed or slashed their mates with knives. Nine men and two women struck their partners with clubs or other blunt instruments on one or more occasions, causing multiple fractures in four instances. The most common pattern of violence was repeated attacks involving hitting, punching, and kicking the partner. This catalog of violence had never come to the notice of the police, despite the hospital treatment a number of the partners received for their injuries.

In a later article on crimes of passion, Paul Mullen argues that in recent years jealousy has been transformed from a sanctioned response to infidelity into personal pathology. In making jealousy a symptom of psychopathology, it ceases to be the responsibility of the individual and allows claims of diminished capacity with respect to crimes of passion (Mullen, 1993).

Implications

Most readers can probably understand to a certain extent why the people described in this chapter did what they did, but would never do such things themselves. They would never kill, rob, or rape because of jealousy, and would not hit, punch, or kick their partner. Nevertheless, as noted at the beginning of the chapter, it is important to know how to defuse the potential for violence in an extreme jealousy situation whether one is being jilted, doing the jilting, or is a concerned observer.

It is extremely important to be aware of emotionally charged sit uations that could lead to violence. People who find themselves involved with an emotionally dependent partner and have Fallen out of love should be very careful not to just come home one day and say, "I've found someone else I love, and I'm leaving." Jilting a desperately loving and dependent partner without an opportunity to discuss the matter is an invitation to violence. Such a situation can unleash jealous rage with an enormous destructive potential. This can be avoided by treating ex-lovers with sensitivity and respect.