It's one of the currently most used memes, and we all know what the girl on the right is feeling in that moment.
My favorite version of it is actually this one (you only get it if you watched Netflix' 'Love is Blind')
We all know the feeling. We may often interpret the attached feelings as anger, insecurity, anxiety - sometimes we know right away that in this moment, we’re jealous. There are different kinds of jealousy. We can be jealous of a colleague who got a promotion, of our sibling who is allowed to do or have things we can’t or didn’t, or of a potential competitor when it comes to the attention, affection or fidelity of a potential, current or past romantic partner.
Romantic jealousy has been characterised as one of the most prevalent and potentially destructive emotions within relationships.
There are cognitive (awareness), emotional (feelings) and behavioural (coping behaviors) aspects of jealousy. First, we must become cognitively aware of a potential (real or imagined!) threat to a valued romantic relationship. This does not have to be super conscious, often this process happens subconsciously and we feel upset before we exactly know why. We may experience an ingrained response to certain stimuli. This could be when we feel jealous of the new boo of an Ex-partner even though we don’t even value that relationship anymore and are ourselves happy in a new relationship. Thus, we don’t necessarily need to consciously perceive a threat - but some part in us, maybe a primal one, may.
But usually, we first at least suspect that there is a threat, and then we feel the emotion. Finally, we take actions or devise strategies to deal with the threat, i.e. to reveal it, or to protect us from it. We ask more questions (of course veeeery innocently), search phones or belongings, hire our friends to become FBI agents stalking them on social media, or we step in and demonstrate our presence when the partner is interacting with the “threat”.
In the scientific scholarship, jealousy is primarily regarded as an emotional reaction, and not a single one but rather a combination of negative feelings (see above: feeling angry, hurt, scared can all be rooted in envy). We could just generally say that jealousy makes us feel upset. Jealousy may become pathological, meaning it involves imagined threats, paranoia and a very high degree of negative emotions. In this case, jealousy may have really destructive consequences, and affected people should ask for help.
Normal jealousy, on the other hand, can also have some positive effects - up to a certain degree. It can be seen as an indication for caring, may lead to increased attraction to the partner, and sometimes may actually keep some potential threats from realizing.
In multiple experiments conducted decades ago, American men and women with “normal jealousy” did not appear to differ in their likelihood of admitting to jealousy. But although both genders do experience jealousy, exactly what they experience evidently differs. There were several sex differences in subjects’ descriptions of the feelings associated with envy. Men considered themselves likelier to become angry, drunk, threatening, and aroused than did women, and likelier to start going out with others.
Women, on the other hand, were likelier to anticipate crying, feigning indifference, or striving to increase their attractiveness. Furthermore, these studies found that men focused more on possible sexual contact with a rival while women were primarily concerned with their boyfriends’ expending time, money, and attention upon the rival female.
In one study hired associates of the experimenters approached couples, sustained eye contact with the opposite-sexed person, spoke to that person (apparently mistaking him or her for someone familiar) and ignored the like-sexed partner. Of the participants, the women who reported feeling jealous were less likely to look at or speak to the female approacher, but fixated their partners immediately after the encounter. Jealous men instead looked directly at the confederate and avoided eye contact with their partner afterwards. These results show some behavioural differences in jealousy (and forgiveness) between the genders as well.
Thus, there are actually some differences between women in men in how they experience jealousy, and why feelings of envy emerge in the first place. But why?
Let’s start at the beginning - with biology and our first ancestors.
In species with internal fertilization (to which humans and most other mammals belong), males cannot identify their offspring with full confidence. This uncertainty of paternity is a selection pressure that was supposed to prevent the investment of the male species in their offspring, after procreation itself (Trivers, 1972). In some species, paternal investment has nevertheless evolved - yay, we defied natural selection! Thus, nature thinks of other ways to protect against investing resources in offspring that isn’t the own.
Male lions for example systematically kill other males’ offspring. Bluebird males "just" neglect them. Doves discriminate against females as potential mates who betrayed the species by having the possibility of prior fertilization (well, we did, not too long ago, too). In many other animals we can observe a strict guarding of the female by her mate during her fertile period. In yet another species, some females are required to be completely covered when in contact with anyone but their family, to "keep privacy" from non-related males' attention and demonstrate piety. These various strategies may raise the males’ confidence of their paternity of those young in whom they invest.
In us humans, certain propensities that exist to defend paternity confidence may have manifested, as well. These include the emotion of sexual (because it's not always romantic 😉) jealousy: the inclination of males to possess and control (their) females, and the use or threat of violence to achieve sexual exclusivity and control.
Females, on the other hand, are not susceptible to accidentally misidentify their own young and misdirect parental care. They still compete for the best possible chance for survival of their own offspring - males’ investments and resources are a big help in that. Thus, while women may be expected to be jealous of their mates’ allocation of attention and resources, they should not be as concerned as men with specifically sexual fidelity.
Research actually suggests that males are more sensitive to their partner’s sexual infidelity whereas females more to emotional infidelity. In an exemplary study, men, relative to women found it more difficult to forgive a sexual infidelity than an emotional infidelity; and were more likely to end a relationship after they've been cheated on sexually than emotionally. But when their partner’s infidelity might pose the risk of having to share her partner’s resources with another woman and her offspring, or, even worse, that he might leave her (and her kids) for the other woman, females become more worried. An emotional bond seems like a reliable indicator of the potential loss of their partner’s investment.
Now, I know many of you might say “I'm not scared of losing his money, I’m scared of losing his love!”. Please remember, these are evolutionary theories that try to explain why we even fear losing someone’s love. They are more interested in explaining why emotions such as love or jealousy exist, than to take them for granted. They may often neglect the many sociological factors that of course also played a role in our evolution of societal norms and behaviors. So see it this way: Yes, you’re scared of losing his (or her) love, but this fear (or jealousy) may have developed within us by nature - to make sure we keep our species alive.
But even without the evolutionary lens on, we can see and interpret some sex differences in jealousy.
When we think that our partner is showing a romantic interest in someone else, that person is perceived as a potential rival for the partner’s attention and may therefore give rise to social comparison processes. In particular, we will try to assess if the “threat” is better than us - with respect to certain characteristics. These characteristics are the ones we consider important for our own self-esteem, for our partner (or object of desire), or those of one’s general attractiveness as a partner.
This is where men and women differ again - what makes someone attractive is different for someone of the opposite sex. Thus - in heterosexual relationships, that is - the two partners may experience jealousy because of a rival based on different dimensions on which a threat is perceived.
Previous research has shown that for men it’s more about a rival’s status-related characteristics, whereas women’s jealousy is evoked more by physical attractiveness.
This is because the value of women as partners is determined more by their physical attractiveness than the value of men, whereas the value of men as partners is determined more by status-related characteristics than the value of women.
In summary: Unlike for men who have developed a tendency to be sensitive to the possibility of unknowingly investing parental resources in offspring that is not genetically their own, which is what sexual infidelity of the female partner poses a risk for, for women it is comparably less important who the rival is in a purely sexual fling of their partner, but when they become more scared of losing their male partner's investment in their own family, this could change.
Of course, we may often infer from the sexual infidelity of one’s male partner the possibility of emotional infidelity, and we may infer the increased likelihood of sexual infidelity if we see our female partner becoming emotionally invested in a rival. Thus, on the surface, women can be as jealous in response to sexual infidelity as men, and men to emotional infidelity. But in the case that it is clear that such emotional infidelity does not occur (which may be difficult to know with certainty), purely sexual infidelity may matter less for women than it would for men in the same situation.
This may explain these findings: Using imaginary scenarios, researchers found that relative to women, more men said they would breakup due to their partner’s sexual infidelity than due to emotional infidelity. More men than women found it more difficult to forgive sexual infidelity than emotional infidelity. Another study found that more men (68%) than women (47%) reported that they actually broke up with their partner after they were cheated on sexually. Men, compared to women, seem to find sexual infidelity worse than emotional infidelity. Furthermore, men do not only seem to be more willing to forgive emotional infidelity, they also tend to believe more that their own emotional infidelity will be forgiven. Be careful there, guys!
Well. Lots of gender differences when it comes to infidelity, jealousy, forgiveness. Where does that leave us? You may be able to understand your own, and the differences to your partner’s feelings of and coping with jealousy a bit better now.
Even though this all seems to be rooted in evolution and selection processes from when humanity began, I think there is still some truth to it. After all, have you ever heard the sentence “You’re not wearing this when you’re going out!” said to a man, because his outfit was too revealing and might attract the attention of some potential rivals to his partner? Me neither, only to girls or women.
So maybe we can be a bit more understanding to our partner's jealousy. After all, that's a sign that they fear to lose you - in one way or another. After all, as Will Penn said it:
The jealous are troublesome to others, but a torment to themselves.
xx
Valli ♡
PS: I just want to say, I am trying my best to be sensitive and avoid any sexuality-biased language - which can be hard in the case of evolutionary theories, as they are very much based on procreation between a male and a female. These papers have also been written decades ago where politically correct language was not such a standard as it is today. I am just summarizing other people's studies and don't just want to put “heterosexual” in from of “women” or “men”, at least not before I found studies that actually separate different sexual preferences from the findings. So please bear with me and stay aware of this, and that we have evolved so much since the Stone Ages that we care for much more than just procreation in its purest sense.
Sources:
Bendixen, M., Kennair, L. E. O., & Grøntvedt, T. V. (2018). Forgiving the unforgivable: Couples’ forgiveness and expected forgiveness of emotional and sexual infidelity from an error management theory perspective.Evolutionary Behavioral Sciences,12(4), 322.
Daly, M., Wilson, M., & Weghorst, S. J. (1982). Male sexual jealousy. Ethology and Sociobiology, 3(1), 11-27.
Pfeiffer, S. M., & Wong, P. T. (1989). Multidimensional jealousy. Journal of social and personal relationships, 6(2), 181-196.