Romantic Jealousy: Causes, Symptoms, Cures (17 page)

To prove this point, David Buss and his colleagues (1992) asked students which would distress them more upon discovering that the person with whom they were seriously involved was becoming interested in someone else: "Imagining your partner forming a deep emotional attachment to that person," or "Imagining your partner enjoying passionate sexual intercourse with that other person." Results indicated that more men were upset by the possibility of sexual infidelity, whereas more women were upset by a potential emotional infidelity.

These findings together with Buss's evolutionary perspective on jealousy generated a heated debate and made the study of gender differences in jealousy a hot topic. Among the studies supporting his findings and interpretation was a study by Brain Buunk and his colleagues (among them David Buss) who studied sex differences in jealousy in the Netherlands, Germany, and the United States. In all three counties men showed greater psychological and physiological distress to sexual infidelity, while women showed greater distress to emotional infidelity. However, the magnitude of these sex differences varied somewhat across cultures. It was large for the United States, medium for Germany and the Netherlands (Buunk ct al., 1996).

Very similar findings were reported by David Geary and his colleagues in a study that examined sex differences in jealousy in China and the United States. Once again, findings supported David Buss's evolutionary prediction: A higher proportion of men reported distress to a partner's imagined sexual infidelity and a higher proportion of women reported distress to imagined emotional infidelity. However, a much higher proportion of American men and women reported more distress in response to sexual infidelity compared to their same-sex Chinese peers. This seems to suggest that the predisposition to romantic jealousy is influenced by sexual permissiveness in the general culture (Geary et if., 1995).

Other scholars accepted the findings reported by David Buss and his colleagues, but took issue with their interpretation. Christine I larris and Nicholas Christenfeld (1996a), for example, argued that the fact that men are especially bothered by evidence of their partner's sexual infidelity, whereas women are troubled more by evidence of emotional infidelity, can be the result of what they call "reasonable" differences between the sexes in how they interpret evidence of infidelity. A man, thinking that women have sex only when in love, has reason to believe that if his mate has sex with another man, she is in love with that man. A woman, thinking that a man can have sex without Iove, should still be bothered by sexual infidelity, but less so, because it does not imply that her male has fallen in love as well.

Other scholars challenge Buss's overreliance on the theory of evolution. David DeSteno and Peter Salovey (1996a), for example, agree with Buss that evolution may play a role in determining human behaviors such as jealousy, but they argue that one should not forget that human behavior is also influenced by cultural variables to a much greater degree than the behavior of other species.

In a similar vein, Ralph Hupka and Adam Bank (1996) argue that the findings reported by Buss and his colleagues were due to ascribed gender norms rather than to differences in innate propensities for jealousy between men and women. They support this argument with the findings of a study as well as numerous ethnographic reports that call into question the evolutionary view on jealousy and support a sociocultural perspective. In the study, which involved 745 students, it was found that over 50% of both men and women reported greater upset over imagined emotional infidelity.

In one of my studies of sex differences in jealousy, it was found that while there was no sex difference in the jealousy triggered by the thought ofa sexual infidelity (both men and women reacted very strongly to this) there was a sex difference in response to an emo- tiona] infidelity (women responded more strongly than men) (Pines & Friedman, 1998).

In light of these and other studies, it seemed appropriate for Christine Harris and Nicholas Christenfeld (1996b) to suggest that, instead of proposing a specific innate mechanism to explain sex differences in jealousy, it might be more useful to focus on the fact that both men and women are bothered by both emotional and sexual infidelity.

What did Buss and his colleagues (1996) have to say in response to all this criticism? Their response was simply that by all scientific standards the evolutionary account of sex differences in jealousy "appears to be in good standing."

A Power Perspective on jealousy

According to social psychologists, and other critics of the evolutionary perspective, the differences in jealousy between men and women do not result from an evolutionary process; they are primarily the result of social processes and existing conditions in the society that affect all couples and all individuals. One such social condition with special relevance for jealousy is the power difference between men and women. Power, for the purpose of this discussion, is the difference in dependency on each other within a couple-the partner who is more dependent has less power. The dependency can be emotional, financial, social.

The more powerful person in the relationship, whether a man or a woman, tends to respond to the jealousy-trigger in the "masculine" way-lashing out in anger, leaving, and so on. The weaker person typically behaves in the "feminine" way: crying, sulking, trying to become more attractive, trying to make the mate jealous, etc. Sadly, the person who cares less or has more outside alternatives has more power in the relationship. 16

Many women tend to respond to jealousy in the typically "feminine" way, not because they are women but because they have less power in their relationships. A woman in her fifties who has spent most of her adult life rearing children and supporting her husband's career has far fewer alternatives outside the marriage than does her successful husband. When she discovers that her husband is having an affair with his young secretary, her jealousy is not only a response to a perceived threat to a valued love relationship; it is also a response to a threat to a marriage that defines her entire life.

A nice demonstration of the impact women's vulnerability has on their jealousy was provided in a study by Ada Lumpart. Vulnerability was defined in the study as the fear of being abandoned and willingness to accept hurtful behavior from one's partner. Lumpart asked men and women: What would you do if you discovered that your mate is unfaithful? She found that women who had the highest scores of vulnerability said such things as, "t would accept it. What other choice do I have'?" Women who had an average vulnerability score said such things as, I would give him an ultimatum-it's either me or her." Women who had low vulnerability scores said, "1 would leave."

Women's vulnerability was not an innate characteristic, but a result of' their life circumstances. Vulnerability was low when the woman had no children, highest when she had young children, and low again after the children left home Men's vulnerability was similar to women's before the children were born, but went down with the birth of the children, and up again after investing time and energy in them. After the children left home, the vulnerability of men and women became similar again (Lampert & Friedman, 1992).

This brings us back to the difference between men's and women's involvement in relationships. Women are socialized to care more about relationships and to desire commitment more than men. The result is their loss of power to men. These power differences are not innate. They are primarily a result of power differences in the society, which are reflected in power differences within the couple. A wife who creates alternatives for herself outside the marriage and is less dependent on her husband emotionally, socially, and financially is less likely to take on the role of the jealous mate. One couple, both in their early fifties, is an example of this kind of role reversal.

The wife, Laura, had been a homemaker from the time her oldest child was born until the youngest finished high school. At that time she felt that she could afford to do something for herself, so she went back to school and got a business degree. With the help of high grades and excellent recommendations from her teachers, she was able to get a job in a large pharmaceutical company. There, her enthusiasm and hard work earned Laura one promotion after another. Soon she was managing the state office of the company, traveling often, meeting interesting people, and coming home late.

Her husband, Adam, was an engineering manager in a small industrial company, and hadn't advanced much in his career during those years. At about the time Laura started flying up the career ladder, he started feeling bored with his work, frustrated, and angry. Just when she was finding success and great significance in everything she was doing, he started asking himself, "What's the meaning of it all?" While neither one of them acknowledged the change, Adam was now more needy of Laura than she was of him, and felt very threatened by the people she interacted with at work. Whenever Laura came home late, which was often, Adam demanded to know where she had been, with whom, what they had clone, and what they had talked about.

At first Laura tried to be patient and understanding. Whenever possible, she called Adam if she was going to be late, and explained in detail what she did during her absence. She also tried hard to ignore his hostile tone when he interrogated her. But after a while she started to lose her patience and resent his jealousy. She was having a wonderful time at work and was doing nothing to justify his jealousy and rudeness.

The happier Laura was with her world outside the marriage, and the more unhappy Adam was with his own world, the more jealous he became. He didn't trust Laura's explanations, and continued to feel hurt and excluded even when he knew she had spent an evening with her women friends. Indeed, he was excluded from her world, just when lie needed her most.

According to sociobiology, there was absolutely no reason for Adam to be jealous. First, Laura was spending time with women friends, so there was no chance of his being cuckolded. Second, Laura had already gone through menopause, so there was no chance she could become pregnant and carry someone else's genes. Furthermore, they had finished rearing their children, and he was as assured of his genetic survival as anyone can be.

From the power perspective, however, there was a good reason for Adam to be jealous. Throughout their life together lie had been "the man" in the family and, as such, had more power than Laura. Now suddenly their roles were reversed and lie was the one with less power in the relationship.

Adam, who is a handsome, masculine, and successful man, responded to the perceived threat to the quality of his marriage in a traditionally "feminine" way. IIe became depressed, sulked, bought himself new clothes (hoping Laura would notice), and tried to make her jealous by seeing friends without her. The problem was that Laura didn't mind at all. She even encouraged him to see his friends more often.

Adam had to realize that as long as he was doing things to gel a response from Laura, he was still dependent on her. He also had to come to terms with the fact that at the core of his jealousy were feelings of powerlessness and dependency.

In order to overcome his dependency, Adam renewed contacts with people he liked but with whom lie hadn't kept in touch. Since Laura had been responsible for maintaining social contacts in their marriage, when she didn't like some of Adam's friends and colleagues she had arranged to avoid seeing then socially. Now that Laura had her own social world, Adam could choose the people he wanted to have as friends, independent of those he and Laura were seeing as a couple. The task was not an easy one for Adam, who had relied on Laura throughout their marriage to do the social talking for him. In fact, Laura's social skills and high energy were the things Adam had found most attractive when they first met. Each time he called someone, he was afraid lie would discover that the person was surprised and not happy to hear from him after all this time. This never happened.

When Adam became involved with his own friends, interests, and activities-he loved hiking, for example, so he joined the Sierra Club and started mountain hiking regularly-he stopped perceiving Laura's work as a threat. I f is increased satisfaction with his life and an increased sense of power in the marriage led to a decrease in jealousy.

We've seen that men can respond to jealousy in a way that is typically female, and women can respond in a way that is typically male. Yet research shows that couples like Adam and Laura are the exception, ('specially during the child-rearing years. Most men and women tend to respond to jealousy in the way that is characteristic of their sex. As Ron and Carol's case demonstrated, knowing about these differences can help couples break their own fallacy of uniqueness and work toward resolving their jealousy problem.

The fact that there are exceptions, however, suggests that the differences between "male" and "female" jealousy are not innate, as the sociobiologists claim. Genetic programming is not all-powerful, especially in a creature as sophisticated as a human being. Instead, these differences result from the working of evolutionary forces in combination with a variety of other forces in the society.

This brings us back to the notion of jealousy as a result of an interaction between a certain disposition and a certain trigger. Genetic programming and power differences prescribed by society each influence men's and women's predispositions to jealousy. Whether or not these predispositions will manifest themselves depends on the dynamics of the relationship on and internal processes in the mind of the individual.

An Evaluation of the Evolutionary Approach