Romantic Jealousy: Causes, Symptoms, Cures (10 page)

Diagnosing Delusional Jealousy

In the Official Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders of the American Psychiatric Association (the DSM-IV) delusional jealousy is described as a subtype of a delusional disorder. The "jealous type" applies

when the central theme of the person's delusion is that his or her spouse or lover is unfaithful. This belief is arrived at without due cause and is based on incorrect inference supported by small bits of "evidence" (e.g. disarrayed clothing or spots on the sheets), which are collected and used to justify the delusion. The individual with the delusion usually confronts the spouse or lover and attempts to intervene in the imagined infidelity (e.g. restricting the spouse's autonomy, secretly following the spouse, investigating the imagined lover, attacking the spouse) (American Psychiatric Association, 1994, p. 297).

Pathological jealousy is also mentioned as one of the seven criteria for a diagnosis of Paranoid Personality Disorder. People with this disorder "may be pathologically jealous, often suspecting that their spouse or sexual partner is unfaithful without any adequate justification (Criterion A7). They may gather trivial and circumstantial'evi- dence' to support their jealous beliefs. They want to maintain complete control of intimate relationships to avoid being betrayed and may constantly question and challenge the whereabouts, actions, intentions, and fidelity of their spouse or partner" (p. 635).

While some clinicians restrict the term delusional jealousy to those cases in which delusions of jealousy are demonstrable and dominate the case, others consider jealousy pathological even in the absence of delusions, where an individual exhibits jealousy with undue haste or intensity in response to events that question, even remotely, the partner's fidelity (Enoch, 1991). Sam is an example.

Sam and Amalya

Amalya describes the problem:

Sam's jealousy is most likely to flare up when we are making love. It happens often. All Of a sudden I feel him withdrawing. The first time it happened I didn't know what hit me. We were in Paris having the most wonderful time. Suddenly, in the middle of lovemaking, he stopped and pushed me away.... By now I've learned what it means. He is disgusted by me. He can't touch me. My body repulses him. lie imagines ►ne having sex with other men I was involved with in the past. Ile can imagine me playing with another man's penis, or the man kissing my nipple, things like that. lie thinks my sex with other men was dirty, and it makes him see me as dirty, cheap, despicable, not worthy of someone as pure and wholesome as he is. Once, during a jealousy attack he blared, "All women are whores, except Mary" Mary is his ex-wife. IIe tells me he didn't love her. They rarely had sex. Mary was dependent on him for everything-she never put gas in their car (which she was the only one to drive) because she didn't know how. When she went shopping, he would follow her on his motorcycle, pay, and carry the bags. Why (lid lie stay with her ten years? Because he was sure she was faithful. Mary couldn't manage without a man around her. She couldn't manage without him.

Sam's parents had a very unusual marriage. His mother-an exceptionally beautiful woman-had an illicit affair with another man for many years. Ills father, whom Sam describes as passive, weak, impotent, and jealous, also had many affairs throughout their marriage.

When Sam was 15 years old, he and his brother went to get his mother a present for Mother's Day. At the bus stop they saw his mother waiting. She didn't notice them. As they watched, a big blue car rolled by and stopped next to her. The door opened. His mother went in. Sam could see her kissing the man in the car. Afterward, he saw the same big car parked next to the house many times when his father was away. He knew not to go in.

In the mornings, after his father left the house, the man used to call. His mother would take the telephone into the bathroom and have long erotic conversations with her lover while Sam listened OUlside the door.

Sam's father must have discovered the affair, because one day he appeared with a gun, while his mother had her women friends over for coffee. IIe started screaming, "I'm going to kill you, you whore!" Sam was in the house at the time and had to rescue his mother from his father's rage.

After the jealousy scene, his father collapsed and had to be hospitalized for what appeared to be a heart attack. Sam, forever the family rescuer, was the one who took him to the hospital.

When Sam was 16 years old, lie fell in love with a beautiful young wo►nan, whom he describes as "the cheap type." lie never went to bed with her, yet he suffered tremendous jealousy. His first sexual experience was with a married woman neighbor much older than himself Ile didn't love this older woman and wasn't jealous of her. He also didn't love Mary, whom lie met when he was 17 years old. But Mary seemed to love and need him and she wasn't the type to provoke his jealousy, so he married her.

It may be worth noting that Sam's sister, who is ten years older than him, is unhappily married to an abusive man who has frequent jealousy attacks during which he beats her. She has many affairs, but still remains with him-thus replicating her mother's infidelity and reliving her father's jealousy tantrums.

When Sam met Amalya, he had been separated from his wife but had not yet gone through the divorce. While he was certain that he was unhappy in his marriage, he loved his two young boys and was reluctant to give up completely the security the family gave him. But Amalya is an attractive and charming woman (eight years older than he is), and he fell in love with her in a way he never allowed himself before.

When Amalya met Sam, she said right away that he was the man she wanted to marry. She had never said that about another man, and she had dated many. Before Sam, Amalya wasn't exactly discriminating in her choice of men. The only thing these men seemed to have in common was their unavailability-whether because they were married or because they were emotionally unavailable. That was just fine with Arnalya. Having grown up with a father and mother who had had a suffocating symbiotic relationship, she valued her freedom and independence. Things started changing after her 35th birthday. Amalya decided she wanted a family. She was ready, and Sam was the man she had been waiting for.

Their affair was passionate. Sam came to Amalya's house every day after work and they made wild, sweet, passionate love for hours. Sex had never been that exciting for Sam, never that sweet for Amalya.

Their trip to Paris was the climax of the affair. Sam had always wanted to visit Paris, and for him it was a dream come true. For Amalya, the chance to be together twenty-four hours a day was the most important thing; Paris was just a wonderful addition. Spending all their time together made her realize that this was what she wanted. She told Sam she wanted to get married and have a child. This was the backdrop of Sam's first jealousy attack. As Amalya recounts the event:

He tells me he can never marry me until he trusts me completely. Ile is troubled by those dark corners in me that are responsible for my past, that might emerge again in the future. Since I was unfaithful in the past, by going to bed with ex-lovers while I dated other men, what guarantee does he have that I'm not going to be unfaithful in the future? After every jealousy attack he feels guilty and remorseful, and apologizes profusely. He tells me he hopes I have the strength and the patience to cope with his jealousy. He asks for my help in dealing with it himself. He knows that it's his own problem and I have nothing to do with it, but when his jealousy flares up, he has no control.

I try to reassure him in every conceivable way. I tell him that I never had such wonderful sex with anyone else. I tell him that my vast experience with other men should make him feel secure-because I have chosen him, and I love him in a way I never loved before. Since I had all those casual sexual experiences, I know what they are like and I have no desire whatsoever to go back to them. Actually, I say to him, I'm the one who should be concerned, because lie has had so few sexual relationships that lie may still be curious and at some point want to experiment. For me, all that is finished.

But nothing I say seems to matter. He knows I love him, but lie can't understand my past. How could I have done the things I've done? They seem so unlike the person he thinks he knows. The fact that I did them makes him distrust nme. The threat he feels is so immense that nothing I say calms it.

The Roots of Delusional Jealousy

When Sam was an adolescent, he discovered that his mother was having an illicit affair. Adolescence is considered the second Oedipal period. What goes on in the mind of a boy like Sam, in this period of heightened sexuality, when he discovers that his mother is unfaithful to his father? Psychotherapists John Docherty and Jean Ellis describe one possible consequence. Docherty and Ellis (1976) treated three couples whose chief complaint was "obsessive-delusional jealousy" in the husbands. A striking coincidental finding emerged in these couples during the course of treatment. In all three cases the husband had witnessed his mother engaged in extramarital sexual relations during his early adolescence.

The jealous husbands' accusations diverged noticeably from a realistic picture oftheir wives. In fact, the accusations more appropriately fitted their mothers. In one case, the husband claimed his wife of twenty-seven years was drinking excessively and having sex with undesirable characters. He monitored her telephone calls, examined her purse, and berated her until she knelt at his feet and begged him to trust her. During the course of treatment it became apparent that the man's accusations didn't fit his wife-but did fit his mother.

The mother was an alcoholic; as an adolescent lie had to bring her home on several occasions because she was too drunk to get home on her own. She had worked as a waitress and fraternized with various unsavory customers.

Having noticed these discrepancies, the therapists pursued the matter further until the man recalled a memory that carried a great emotional charge. When he was 12 years old he had returned home unexpectedly early one clay and found his mother having sex with a strange man. He had not said a thing about it, even though his mother's affairs became the subject of violent arguments between his parents. It had left him feeling bitter resentment toward his mother and guilty disloyalty toward his father.

In the second case, a couple who had been married for two years sought treatment after the husband became enraged by his wife's suspected infidelities. lie had been drinking heavily and had become physically abusive. The husband's suspiciousness had plagued the couple's relationship almost from the start. The wife had learned to be extremely cautious in her interactions with other men. At parties she could only be with her husband or with other women, never with other men. lie needed to know her whereabouts at all times.

In the course of treatment the therapists noticed again that the man accused his wife of things that were not true of her, but were true of his mother, such as gross negligence in her household duties. This led them to pursue the question of the mother's sexual activities. The husband remembered that when he was a young teenager, he had seen his mother at a neighborhood tavern with other men. On one occasion he had come home and seen her having sex with one of those men. He had not told his father, but from that time on had tried to cut himself ofl emotionally from his mother.

In the third case, too, the husband was convinced that his faithful wife was having affairs. Once again it came out that when he was 14 years old, he had returned home one day after having been sent shopping by his mother, and had found her having sex with a strange man.

From Freud's perspective (1922/1955), it's obvious why a mother's sexual infidelity would have such a traumatic effect, especially when it happens in early adolescence-a period characterized by an Oedipal resurgence. As the mother has demonstrated that she can be sexually available to someone other than the father, the adolescent experiences a marked intensification of Oedipal fantasies and drive toward their fulfillment. However, while the mother appears to be more sexually available to the boy, she is not. Her promiscuity constitutes, in effect, a tease.

The trauma can also explain the aggression that at times accompanies jealousy in these cases. Docherty and Ellis (1976) explain:

The rage that the son feels for being second best in the Oedipal situation is exacerbated in a more serious, profound, and damaging way. Now he is not only second best to his father but to a strange man who has no valid claim on his mother at all.

By cuckolding the lather, the mother makes him second best. Thus the son is unable to use identification Willi the father to achieve preeminence. I IC is doomed unalterably to second-rate status" (p. 681).

It is significant that all three men described their fathers as hardworking, long-suffering, and passive. We can add to the list Sam's description of his father as passive, weak, and impotent.

It is not necessary for the adolescent boy actually to witness his mother engaged in sexual intercourse for the trauma to occur. Finding out about her infidelity (the way Sam did) or seeing her acting openly flirtatious with other men can be enough.

The rage the boy experiences upon discovering his mother's infidelity is enormous, and so is his need to undo the trauma. I low does he accomplish this? One way is to marry someone who will never be unfaithful, and then continuously harass her with groundless accusations of infidelity. For these men, the faithful wife represents Mother, the way she should have been in their childhood fantasies. He accuses the wife of being unfaithful, the way his mother was in reality. The accusations enable him to replay his childhood trauma, but with a different ending. His wife's repeated assurances of her fidelity are supposed to help undo the terrible reality of' his mother's betrayal. Yet no reassurance is quite enough because the trauma was enormous, the wife is not the mother, and the situation is not really the same.