Jealousy
From Encyclopedia of Sex and Sexuality
According to one dictionary, jealousy is rooted both in fears of losing what one has—especially love or affection—to another person and in feelings of resentment about a rival’s successes or advantages. What both have in common is an individual’s inability to control situations involving other people. Jealousy may arise from a real or imagined situation or from an expectation that something will occur. Most people who have experienced jealousy know what it feels like but are generally unable to understand or explain just the emotions they feel—they can only explain what the situations are that precipitate the feelings. Jealousy is clearly a strong emotion with accompanying physiological reactions: a feeling of “gut-wrenching” anxiety, sometimes with a strong sense of depression following an experience or thought involving the sexual or love partner and another person.
In our culture, there is generally social support for jealousy when a spouse or lover displays inappropriate behavior with another person. However, not all people experience jealousy, even in extreme circumstances. This attracted the attention of a number of researchers in the 1960s and 1970s, producing evidence of the important and often destructive role of jealousy in couple relationships. The emphasis in this research is often not on why people do become jealous but rather on why they do not in situations that should call for a jealous response.
What has consistently emerged in this research is that sexual jealousy is most likely to be felt when a person feels that he or she is not in control of the circumstances involving a partner and another person. In the view of one researcher cited in the book The Sex Researchers:
What matters is the feeling of being in control rather than the actuality of being in control. It seems to be sufficient (to ward off jealous reactions) that a person feels that he is in control of the situation even though he is not, whereas it is not sufficient for him to actually be in control if he does not feel that he is.
Some common characteristics of people who experience jealousy have been reported in a number of studies: feelings of inadequacy as a lover or sexual partner; strong feelings about the traditional norm of sexual exclusivity; and a lack of self-esteem.
Some researchers have noted that historically and in some traditional cultures jealousy may have played an important role in curtailing infidelity. In some groups jealousy is taken as a sign of a strong love and a spouse might question the strength of the relationship if a partner did not display jealousy in appropriate situations. Some people feel flattered when a lover is jealous, however, in the last few decades these views have been giving way to the idea that jealousy, if unchecked, may be destructive in relationships.
Most people experience jealousy at some point in their sexual, marital, or love relationships. Some writers contend that jealousy can be minimized when a couple agrees on the boundaries of permissible behavior, affection, or display of the body. Thus, communication about what provokes feelings of jealousy and agreed limits on such behavior can curb spontaneous and destructive jealousy.
