The Dangerous Passion: Why Jealousy Is as Necessary as Love and Sex (35 page)

During the early days of the workshop, Ben brought up Stacy’s
insecurity and jealousy, indicated his disapproval of her problem, and proceeded
to flirt with the other women in the group. During one of these sessions, Stacy
was being berated by the group for being so jealous. Tears streamed down her
cheeks and the others in the group responded with hugs and affection. The most
attractive man in the group was especially supportive. He continued to comfort
her, even after the session ended and Ben and the others left the room. Hugging
turned to kissing, and eventually they had passionate sex right on the floor.
They did not use contraceptives.

When Ben discovered the infidelity, he became furious, saying,
“You hurt me more than any other woman has done, and I trusted you to protect
my feelings.” Over the next two days, the therapy group focused now on Ben’s
jealousy. But when asked by the therapist whether any good had come of the
event, he replied: “When we made love afterward, it was the most passionate sex
we had ever had. It was unbelievably intense and exciting. I can’t figure out
why.” Stacy agreed. Ben’s jealousy revived the sexual passion in their
relationship. Why?

Astute readers already have clues to the most probable
explanations. A man whose partner has just been inseminated by another man is
most at risk for genetic cuckoldry. By having sex with Stacy immediately
following her infidelity, he reduced the odds that she would become pregnant
with another man’s child, although he obviously did not think about it in those
terms. The passionate nature of the sex implies that she had an orgasm, which
causes the woman to retain more sperm and release less “flowback.” Increased
sperm retention, in ancestral times, would have meant an increased likelihood
of conception. Ben was merely a modern player in an ancient ritual where men
competed with each other in the battle for successful fertilization.

There is another reason for the sudden revival of passionate sex
between Ben and Stacy. The other man’s attentions reaffirmed Stacy’s
attractiveness and evoked jealousy in Ben. When it penetrates men’s minds that
other desirable men are interested in their partners, they perceive their
partners through new eyes as more sexually radiant. As a consequence, erotic
attraction ignites, sparking passionate love. I’ve witnessed this mechanism
firsthand. For several years I played tennis with a very attractive married
woman. One day after our match she announced to me: “You’ve been the best thing
for our sex life. Dan is incredibly jealous of you. On days that you and I play
tennis, Dan and I have the greatest sex!” From outward appearances, Dan was a
calm and cool guy who was not easily ruffled. But once his jealousy was
aroused, he perceived his wife as more sexually radiant, leading to a surge of
passionate lovemaking.

Clinical cases also testify to the increased ardor following
episodes of jealousy. In one study, Mary Seeman found that 17 percent of women
reported enhanced sexual desire as a result of their jealousy: “Visions of what
the spouses and the rivals might be doing together occupied much of their
thought and, they reluctantly admitted, ‘sexually excited’ them.” One woman in
Seeman’s study “seemed to be in continuous states of sexual arousal, which were
both pleasurable and agonizing. This state contributed to frequent and massive
pleasure in sex, which bonded the pair more closely and which accounted for much
of the secondary gain derived from jealousy.” In his book
The Kreutzer
Sonata,
the great Russian writer Tolstoi observed: “Our arguments were
terrifying . . . and so much more striking in that they were followed by
equally incensed paroxysms of animal sexuality.”

In one unusual case in Florida, a husband actually paid other
men to come to his home and have sex with his wife. He hid in the closet and
secretly watched his wife in the other man’s embrace. His jealousy inflamed
sexual passion, apparently the only way that he could sustain an erection.
Going to such lengths to stimulate sexual interest is unusual, and using
jealousy in this manner can backfire, often evoking disgust or violence. But
for some couples, jealousy provides the sexual spark that can renew the passion
that has dwindled over time. And sometimes it intensifies love.

One testament to the universality of love and its obstinate
refusal to be extinguished can be found in societies that have attempted to
banish it. In the 19th century, the Oneida Society articulated the view that
romantic love was merely disguised sexual lust, and saw no reason to encourage
such deceit. The Shakers, to take another example, in the 18th century declared
romantic love undignified and threatening to the goals of the larger community,
and so sought to banish it. The Mormons of the 19th century also viewed
romantic love as disruptive, and sought to discourage it. In all three
societies, however, romantic love persisted among individuals, sometimes underground,
refusing banishment, hidden from the harsh eyes of the group’s elders. Within
cultures, as the story of Romeo and Juliet declares with universal resonance,
love can be fueled by the efforts of others to suppress it. Lovers have no
choice; they can quell their feelings temporarily or muffle their expression,
but they cannot exorcise them entirely.

Cultures that impose arranged marriages and permit polygyny
provide a test case, for what system could be better designed to undermine
love? Does love have any place within a mating system where a man’s first wife
is chosen for him? Even when his elders choose a man’s first wife for him, such
as in polygynous Arabic cultures, men often marry a second wife for love. Taita
women in fact prefer to be the second or third wife, believing that they will
more likely be married for love and hence will receive more favorable treatment
from their husband and experience more emotional closeness.

Another testament to the universality of love comes from studies
that simply ask men and women whether they are currently in love. Susan
Sprecher of
Illinois
State
University
interviewed 1,667 women and men from three different cultures. Seventy-three
percent of the Russian women and 61 percent of the Russian men confessed to
being currently in love. The comparable figures from
Japan
were 63 percent for women and
41 percent for men. Americans reported roughly the same levels, with 63 percent
of the women and 53 percent of the men admitting that they were currently in
love.

Why would love be such a universal emotion—a temporary insanity
that drives people to distraction, causes a loss of appetite, and creates
obsessional thoughts that crowd out everything else? Why are we all fools for
love? The most plausible theory proposes that love evolved in order to solve
the related problems of commitment and abandonment. A rational analysis of the
mating market tells us that somewhere in this world of billions of people there
is someone who might be a better mate than you are—someone who may be smarter,
funnier, more exciting, more dependable, more intelligent, or more beautiful to
behold. From your persepctive, you risk getting dumped every time your partner
meets someone else. This leaves you vulnerable. The odds are that sooner or later
your partner will meet someone who might be a bit better than you on the harsh
metric of mate value, someone who also wants your partner just as much as you
do.

The costs of getting abandoned are severe. We risk losing all of
the effort we devoted to searching for and courting a mate. Anyone who’s been
frustrated, impatient, and bored with the singles scene knows what a drag it is
to have to start from scratch to form a new relationship. You need some way to
ensure that a partner is unswervingly committed to you and won’t leave you when
someone new moves to town. It would be foolish to enter a relationship
otherwise.

If commitment and the risk of abandonment are the problems, love
is the solution, since it’s a passion that defies rationality. It tells you that
your partner only has eyes for you, that you’re the only one. It tells you that
your partner is swept away in a sea of emotion that’s beyond control.

To test the evolutionary function of love, we asked several
hundred women and men to describe the behaviors that signal that a person is in
love. A separate sample then rated each of the love acts listed on how much it
indicated being in the thrall of love. Signals of commitment emerged as most
diagnostic of love, but commitment can take many forms. Lovers commit material
resources such as food, shelter, and physical protection to a partner over the
long term. Lovers commit sexual resources by remaining sexually faithful and by
making love with wild abandon. Lovers commit reproductive resources to their beloved,
as in successful conception, pregnancy, and childbirth. And it follows that
lovers commit parental resources to their children, the natural result of the
love union.

Many of these acts convey self-sacrifice: putting one’s own
interests aside for the greater needs of the loved one, making significant
sacrifices for the partner, and giving up a great deal of time to be with the
mate. Other signals involve a sexual openness and trust that may be lacking in
lesser relationships: trying out different sexual positions and acting out the
lover’s deepest sexual fantasies.

Emotional commitment emerged throughout the acts of love,
including listening with real attention and interest, giving up fun activities
to be with the lover when needed, and showing concern for a partner’s problems.
Several people described how a partner had gone out of his or her way
emotionally when they were in the most desperate psychological state. Several
lovers described how their partner provided solace during their darkest hours, reaching
down to pull them out of a deep depression when all seemed hopeless.

These findings all support the theory that love is a singular
signal of commitment. Acts of love convey that a partner won’t leave you when
your desirability dips momentarily through sickness or setbacks. We know a
partner’s love through their actions, but the actions must reveal underlying
emotions that defy rationality. One of those emotions is jealousy.

Jealousy is one of the most commonly found correlates of being
in love. It evolved to protect love not merely from the threat of loss but from
the threat of loss to a
rival
. Consider which of the following
scenarios would make you more jealous:

Loss due to fate:
Your [partner], with whom you are
deeply in love, is killed in an automobile accident.

Loss due to partner’s destiny:
Your [partner], with
whom you are deeply in love, obtains a promotion and moves to a faraway city.
You know that you will never see him (her) again.

Loss due to rejection:
Your [partner], with whom you
are deeply in love, explains that he (she) does not love you anymore and ends
the relationship. You know that you will never see him (her) again.

Loss due to a rival:
Your [partner], with whom you are
deeply in love, falls in love with another and ends his (her) relationship with
you. You know that you will never see him (her) again.

In an experiment, Eugene Mathes asked men and women, “If this
happened to you, would you feel jealous?” Out of a possible range of 4 to 28,
loss of a love due to fate scored only 7 on the jealousy scale; loss due to
destiny scored nearly double at 13; loss due to rejection came out at 16; but
loss to a rival provoked the greatest jealousy scored at 22. Because evolution
is an inherently competitive process, jealousy evolved not just to protect the
loss of love but also to prevent the “double-whammy” of the loss of love to a
rival.

In my studies, I discovered that some signs of jealousy are
accurately interpreted as acts of love. When a man drops by unexpectedly to see
what his partner is doing, this mode of jealous vigilance functions to preserve
the safe haven of exclusivity while simultaneously communicating love. When a
woman loses sleep thinking about her partner and wondering whether he’s with
someone else, it indicates simultaneously the depth of her love and the
intensity of her jealousy. When a man tells his friends that he is madly in
love with a woman, it serves the dual purposes of conveying love and
communicating to potential rivals to keep their hands off.

The abysmal failure of most “open marriages” that became popular
in the late 1960s and early 1970s is stark testament to the failure of
experiments to expunge jealousy from the lives of lovers. Few marriages can
endure third-party intruders. One of the positive benefits of jealousy is to
preserve that inner sanctum, protecting it from interlopers who have their own
hidden agendas. According to Ayala Pines, protecting love is the primary
function of jealousy: “jealousy aims to protect romantic relationships. It is
not a useless flight of irrationality, but a useful signal people can learn to
interpret correctly. . . . Jealousy makes people examine their relationship . .
. It teaches couples not to take each other for granted . . . ensures that they
continue to value each other and . . . indicates that people value the love
relationship it protects.”

Safe havens, however, are rarely possible in the modern world.
As journalist Judith Viorst noted, “Unfortunately there is an endless supply of
women out there in the big world—secretaries and dental assistants and
waitresses and women executives . . . And wives with traveling husbands have an
even wider selection of potential temptations to get aggravated over—TWA
stewardesses, San Francisco topless dancers, old flames in Minneapolis, new
models in Detroit.”

The maintenance of love, ironically, may hinge on the
ever-present threat of rivals and the jealousy they evoke. “On those days when
I happen to be feeling mature and secure,” Viorst observes, “I’m also going to
admit that a man who wasn’t attractive to other women, a man who wasn’t alive
enough to enjoy other women, a man who was incapable of making me jealous,
would never be the kind of man I’d love.”