Jealousy – Love’s Destroyer

From heresy, frenzy and jealousy, good Lord deliver me ~ Ludovico Ariosto.
Not only is the feeling of jealousy not conducive for relationship building and effective communication, but it just doesn’t feel very good. Are you familiar with that uncomfortable tightness in your stomach? Why do we put ourselves through it? If jealousy impacts humans negatively, then why do we continue to behave this way? Cultural psychologists tend to believe that humans are inherently jealous, simply because our jobs, relationships and material goods mean a lot to us, and we don’t want to lose them. Conventional wisdom holds that jealousy is a necessary emotion because it preserves social bonds, but it more often destroys them. And it can give rise to relationship violence. More often than not, feelings of jealousy flare with such intensity that they burn a hole in the brain, obliterating rational thought and setting off behaviors that create a self-fulfilling prophecy by pushing away the very person one desires, or needs, the most. Think of astronaut-in-training Lisa Nowak, who in 2007, at the age of 44, drove a thousand miles nonstop from Houston, Texas, to Orlando, Florida, with a diaper on, the quicker to kidnap the new girlfriend of a fellow astronaut with whom she had had an affair. Ironic that an impulse that arises from love can so easily destroy it. As emotions go, jealousy is neither subtle nor kind, but it is definitely complex. No one can say for sure what jealousy is; attempts to define it are elusive for a reason. As a complex emotion it involves, at a
minimum, such distressing feelings as fear, abandonment, loss, sorrow, anger, betrayal, envy, and humiliation. And it recruits a host of cognitive processes gone awry, from doubt to preoccupation with a partner’s faithlessness. It may take much of its primal force from activating the attachment system of the brain, a genetically ingrained circuit that is the foundation of our social bonds and that prompts widespread distress when they are threatened. People have different reasons – in different cultures – for being jealous. But jealousy is a universal emotion. Evolutionary psychologist David Buss (in The Dangerous Passion) makes a good case that jealousy has evolved as a mechanism to defend our interests. After all, our ancestors who drove off competitors were more likely to have their genes survive. Indeed, intruding males (whether among lions or humans) have been known to kill off the infants or children of the displaced male. Jealousy was a way in which vital interests could be defended. In fact, jealousy – in some cases – may reflect high selfesteem: “I won’t allow myself to be treated this way”.

Read the full article here: HOW TO HEAL JEALOUSY

Author: Dr Susan Kriegler