When jealousy takes over the relationship

1. Before you begin

He came home twenty minutes later than planned. She smiled at a message. An unknown name appeared on the screen. And the machine starts up: the scenarios, the racing heart, the questions asked in a falsely casual tone, then a less casual one. You check the phone while he's in the shower. You find nothing, and it doesn't reassure you: maybe he deleted it.

Or perhaps you are the one living with a jealous person. You justify every outing, you have stopped seeing certain friends to avoid scenes, and you are exhausted from proving a faithfulness you have never betrayed.

Three things, straight away.

Jealousy is a normal emotion. Almost everyone feels it at some point. It signals a fear: losing a relationship you care about. There is nothing shameful about it in itself.

The problem is not the emotion, but the room it takes up. When it occupies your thoughts for hours, pushes you to check, question, forbid, it damages the very relationship it wants to protect.

Invasive jealousy can be worked on. But not by finally obtaining definitive proof of the other's faithfulness: that proof does not exist, and looking for it feeds the problem. It is worked on by changing the way you respond to suspicions.

2. What jealousy is

A mix of emotions

Jealousy is not a simple emotion. It mixes fear of loss, anger at the partner or the rival, humiliation, sadness, and often self-doubt: "what does she have that I don't?"

Jealousy and envy

The two are often confused. Envy is wanting what someone else has: a success, an appearance, a situation. Jealousy is fearing the loss of a relationship, or of part of the other's attention, to a third party. The two can mix, but they are not worked on in quite the same way.

Three dimensions

Researchers distinguish three dimensions of jealousy:

• Jealous thoughts: suspicions, scenarios, doubts about the other's faithfulness, sometimes without any evidence.
• The emotional reaction: the pain, anger or fear felt in response to a real threat — learning that your partner is flirting with someone, for example.
• Jealous behaviours: checking, searching, questioning, monitoring, following.

The emotional reaction to a real threat is a normal, even expected, response. It is mainly suspicious thoughts and checking behaviours that are associated with dissatisfaction and difficulties in the relationship.

What it is for

Evolutionary psychologists such as David Buss see jealousy as an ancient mechanism that helped our ancestors protect important bonds. It was long claimed that men were more sensitive to sexual infidelity and women to emotional infidelity; these differences are now debated, and seem to depend a great deal on how the question is asked. What is certain: jealousy has a function, and its alarm can sound far too loudly, or too often.

A continuum

• Ordinary jealousy, occasional, proportionate, which calms down when the situation is clarified.
• Invasive jealousy, anxious, which keeps coming back, feeds on minimal cues and does not calm down despite reassuring words.
• Controlling jealousy, which works through prohibitions, surveillance, threats.
• Delusional jealousy, rare, in which the conviction of being cheated on is absolute and resists all evidence.

This guide is mainly about the second. It explains how to recognise the third and fourth, which call for a different response.

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