The Dangerous Passion: Why Jealousy Is as Necessary as Love and Sex (36 page)

Robert and Anne met in their late 20s. Both were attractive, intelligent,
and culturally sophisticated. Anne was a rising star in her field of study. Her
professors respected her for her formidable logical powers. Her charisma, cool
rationality, and concern for social justice attracted many friends. Robert came
from France, was also promising in his field, and radiated an infectious
enthusiasm that charmed women and men alike. He knew all the latest musical
groups and the best bohemian movies. He impressed Anne with his knowledge of
fine wines and cooked exquisite, exotic dishes for her and their friends.

Anne and Robert both had been though several previous affairs,
and neither was new to love. In the early months of their relationship, she had
the upper hand. She did not want to get hemmed in, and refused to give up her
other lovers, so he was forced to see her when she made time for him. On nights
when Robert knew that Anne was sleeping with another man, he drank more than a
few beers, but she had been above board about that from the start, so he
quelled his jealousy.

As the months passed, however, this all changed. She dropped her
other relationships, decided that he was the love of her life, and now wanted
monogamy and commitment. They spent hours together each day, and he brought out
sides of her she never knew existed—a talent for singing, a passion for
theater, and a new-found interest in dancing.

Within weeks of this change, however, she started showing signs
of jealousy. She grilled him about every woman he talked to and forced him to
explain every absence. Robert’s casual conversation with another woman at a
coffee shop would trigger a three-hour argument, with emotional outbursts and
tears, until he was finally able to reassure her that her suspicions were
unjustified and his commitment to her unshakable. Her friends could not believe
Anne’s transformation from the master of reason to a weepy mass of jealous
insecurity.

Anne constantly suspected that he flirted with other women in
her absence and that he was on the verge of betrayal. Her moody episodes grew
worse over time as the cycles of accusations and reassurances became
increasingly common. But her rational side struggled to overcome these bouts.
Since her most emotional moments came when she became premenstrual, she finally
decided to attribute them to her hormones. She convinced herself that her
jealousy had been irrational. She overrode the green monster with logic and
came to believe that she needed to quell her unreasonable suspicions.

Then he dropped the bomb. He was indeed interested in other
women and had no intention of being with her permanently. In fact, he’d already
started sleeping with other women. Her jealousy had been perfectly justified
and not caused by hormonal fluctuations or premenstrual syndrome. Anne had been
picking up on real signals that he dismissed and about which she felt
needlessly guilty. She had added months to her misery by failing to listen to
the emotional wisdom that evolution had given her. Had she not run roughshod
over her internal whisperings with logic and rationality, she could have saved
herself the prolonged agony of trying to make work what was doomed from the
start.

It’s unlikely that love, with the tremendous psychological
investment it entails, could have evolved without a defense that shielded it
from the constant threat from rivals and the possibility of betrayal from a
partner. Jealousy evolved to fill that void, motivating vigilance as the first
line of defense and violence as the last. In its extreme forms, this vital
shield has been called delusional, morbid, and pathological, a symptom of
neurosis and a syndrome of psychosis. Therapists try to expunge it from
patients, and individuals try to suppress it in themselves.

It’s easy to understand why. The spouse who has been falsely
accused of betrayal for the hundredth time by a suspicious partner wants it to
stop. The wife who calls her husband incessantly at work to make sure he’s not
cheating can drive him mad. The wife whose self-esteem is bruised, whose body
is battered, and whose survival is endangered by a jealous husband lives a life
of misery. And the man whose ex-girlfriend stalks him everywhere may have to
resort to the desperate measure of a police restraining order. The rage, shame,
depression, humiliation, anxiety, confusion, suspicion, sorrow, injured pride,
and fear of abandonment that accompany jealousy make it a passion with peril
unrivaled in the human emotional landscape.

The experience of jealousy can be psychologically painful, and
for this reason it has been called a negative emotion. But the principle of
strategic interference explains why we need these painful experiences. They
alert us to real threats by real rivals. They tell us when a partner’s sexual
indifference might not merely mean that he’s distracted by work. They cause us
to remember subtle signals that, when properly assembled, portend a real
defection. We experience pain because pain motivates us to deal with real
strategic interference and solve actual adaptive problems. The painful emotions
that alert us to strategic interference help us by forcing us to deal with the
sources of the problems.

The principle of error management helps to explain why jealousy
sometimes seems so irrational. We live in a world riddled with uncertainty, a
booming, buzzing chaos of cues requiring inferences about an unseen reality.
Over evolutionary time, some errors of inference were more costly than others.
Failing to detect an actual infidelity was more costly than mistakenly accusing
an innocent partner of betrayal. Evolution, as a consequence, forged a hypersensitive
defense system, designed to sound the alarm not just when an infidelity has
been discovered, but also when the circumstances make it slightly more likely.
These adaptive biases explain why we sometimes infer a betrayal when none has
occurred and why these mistakes may not really be “errors” over the long run.

We live in an age where some people bridle at the suggestion
that women and men differ. People worry that discoveries of sex differences
will justify discrimination. If evolution has made women and men different,
this reasoning goes, it might justify keeping women out of certain jobs or at
home barefoot and pregnant. But the findings of sex differences provide no
justification for these inferences. Neither sex can be considered superior or
inferior to the other, any more than a bird’s wings can be considered superior
or inferior to a fish’s fins.

Time after time, the discoveries of sex differences coming out
of our lab have been met with outrage, especially when they have been reported
in national publications such as the
New
York
Times
or on television news
magazines such as NBC’s
Dateline
. The work disturbs so many people
that the field swirls with controversy. But I believe that knowledge of these
sex differences is critical if we are to stand any chance of dealing with the
evolved demons that lurk within all of us.

Some people worry that information about the evolved foundation
of our passions will be misused. Men, for example, might justify sexual
infidelity—“I couldn’t help it; my evolved psychology made me do it.” Although
this concern should not be discounted, I’ve witnessed men use this knowledge,
instead, to help them remain faithful. “When I find myself attracted to another
woman,” one man told me, “I realize it’s just my evolved desire for sexual
variety; it doesn’t mean I don’t love my wife; it doesn’t mean she doesn’t
understand me; knowing this helps me to stay faithful.”

Men are sometimes disturbed when they discover that a partner
has sexual fantasies about other men, but I have yet to interview a woman who
hasn’t had them. They reflect the fact that no matter how good or loving a
current relationship is, ancestral women needed mate insurance because
something can always go wrong. Women’s fantasies don’t reflect a lack of love,
or mean that a woman will begin an affair with a colleague as soon as her
husband leaves town. Knowledge of the purposes of hidden passions may help to
keep our desires in proper perspective.

Evolution has equipped all of us with a rich menu of emotions,
including jealousy, envy, fear, rage, joy, humiliation, passion, and love. This
constellation has co-evolved in men and women, each changing form and function
to respond to novel adaptive challenges created by the others. The knowledge
that comes with a deeper understanding of our dangerous passions will not
eliminate conflicts between lovers, between rivals, or between lovers who
become rivals. But it may, in some small measure, give us the emotional wisdom
to deal with them.

The gulf between the sexes: Buss et al., 1999.

In one study of battered women: Wilson Daly, 1996.

I don’t know why I killed the woman: Carlson, 1984, p. 9.

Sarah Hrdy of the
university
of
California
: Hrdy
Whitten, 1987.

Among the chimpanzees: de Waal, 1982.

As the psychologist Steven Pinker: Pinker, 1997, p. 418.

One key to the mystery of love: Frank, 1988.

Consider the case of John W. Hinckley: quoted in Hatfield
Rapson, 1993, pp. 36–37.

In a recent survey: Baumeister Wotman, 1992.

One of the great love stories: Baumeister Wotman, 1992.

In one of our recent studies: Schmitt, Shackelford, Buss,
under review; many previous studies have confirmed the same fundamental sex
differences; see Buss, 1998, for a review of the evidence.

In another study: Ellis Symons, 1990.

Sexual infidelity causes divorce worldwide: Betzig, 1989.

Indeed, my colleagues: Baker Bellis, 1995.

For the past seven years, Heidi Greiling and I: Greiling
Buss, in press.

Research by Steve Gangestad and Randy Thornhill: Gangestad
Thornhill, 1997.

During ancestral times: Diamond, 1992, 1998; Nesse
Williams, 1994; Tooby DeVore, 1987; Williams Nesse, 1991. For
discussions of these factors affecting tribal or traditional cultures, see
Chagnon, 1983; Hill Hurtado, 1996.

The paleontological and cross-cultural records:
Walker
, 1995.

Ancestral women who failed: Buss, 1994; Diamond, 1992; Fisher,
1992; Smith, 1984.

American divorce rates: Gottman, 1994.

In the most extensive study: Stanislaw Rice, 1988.

A recent survey: Baker Bellis, 1995.

The jealous person: Mowat, 1966; quoted in Sommers, 1988, p.
153.

Consider the case: Odegaard, 1968.

Jealousy is often triggered: Clanton Smith, 1998; Tooby
Cosmides, 1990; White, 1980; White, 1981b.

The man was 35 years old: Shepherd, 1961, p. 732.

Differences in desirability: Clanton Smith, 1998; Tooby
Cosmides, 1990; White, 1980; White, 1981b.

Elaine Hatfield and her colleagues: Walster, Traupmann,
Walster, 1978; Walster, Walster, Berscheid, 1978.

Consider these findings: Mullen Martin, 1994.

St. Augustine noted this link: quoted in Claypool Sheets,
1996.

The psychologist Eugene Mathes: Mathes, 1986.

Contrast this with another finding: Riggs, 1993.

The paradox was reflected in O. J. Simpson’s statement:
Newsweek, Dec. 28, 1998, p. 116.

The emotion of jealousy: Gillard, quoted in Ellis, 1950. p.

The Norwegian psychiatrist Nils Retterstol: Retterstol, 1967.

The psychologist Gordon Clanton: Clanton Smith, 1977.

Jealousy is “sexual”: Daly, Wilson, Weghorst, 1982.

Some writers fail to distinguish: DeSteno Salovey, 1995.

The husband, however, may be jealous of his beautiful wife:
Foster, 1972.

According to psychologist Ralph Hupka: Hupka, 1991, pp. 254,
260.

The psychiatrist Dinesh Bhugra: Bhugra, 1993.

Capitalist society encourages: Bhugra, 1993, p. 272.

Third, since “motives for jealousy”: Bhugra, 1993, p. 273.

Another explanation of jealousy: Bhugra, 1993.

Sometimes jealousy is indeed pathological: Johnson, 1969.

Among the Ache of Paraguay: Borgerhoff Mulder, 1988; Hill
Hurtado, 1996.

Even among the Ammassalik Eskimos: Mirksy, 1937.

And contrary to Margaret Mead’s assertion: cited in Freeman,
1983, p. 244.

To cite one example: Freeman, 1983, pp. 243–244.

In one case the husband: Freeman, 1983, p. 244.

Cultures in tropical paradises: Brown, 1991; Freeman, 1983.

In an important sense, therefore: Symons, 1979; Wilson
Daly, 1996.

This is especially true if there are genetic kin: Alexander,
1987.

Divorced status and the existence of children: Margo Wilson and
Martin Daly, personal communication, 1989.

The children suffer: Daly Wilson, 1996.

Charles Darwin expressed the key insight: Darwin, 1877, pp.
285–286.

The specific array of human fears: Marks, 1987.

Fear of heights and strangers: Scarr Salapatek, 1970.

In one study, 80 percent of infants who had been crawling:
Bertenthal, Campos, Caplovitz, 1983.

Fear of strangers in human infants has been documented: Smith,
1979.

In fact, the risk of infants being killed by strangers: Daly
Wilson, 1988; Hrdy, 1981; Wrangham Peterson, 1996.

As the Harvard psychologist Jerome Kagan: Kagan, Kearsley,
Zelazo, 1978.

Paul Mullen, a psychiatrist at the University of Otago: Mullen,
1990.

Don Sharpsteen, a professor of psychology at the University of
Missouri: Sharpsteen, 1993.

The psychiatrist Mary Seeman: Seeman, 1979.

Gregory White and Paul Mullen noted: White Mullen, 1989,
p. 179.

At the current moment in time: Hall, 1984.