Romantic Jealousy: Causes, Symptoms, Cures Read Online Free PDF Page A

are so natural that a person who doesn't show them seems in some way "not normal." Think, for example, about a man whose wife has just informed him that she has fallen in love with another man, and who says in response, "How wonderful for you, darling."
    Other reactions seem so excessive that one doesn't need to be an expert to know that they are pathological. An example is the man who is so suspicious of his loving and faithful wife that he constantly spies on her, makes surprise visits, listens in on her phone conversations, checks her underpants for stains, records the mileage in her car for unexplained trips, and, despite her repeatedly proven fidelity, continues to suspect her and suffer from tremendous jealousy.
    While the responses of these two husbands seem completely different from each other, there is an important similarity between them. Both are very inappropriate. In one case the husband is not responding to a real threat to his marriage: His wife might leave him for the other man. In the other, the husband is responding with jealousy when there's no real threat. Indeed, both cases are considered pathological. The first is an example of "pathological tolerance," the second an example of "pathological jealousy."7
    For most people, even if jealousy produces tremendous pain and distress, it remains an inner experience that does not cross the boundary to violent action. The woman I described earlier, whose estranged husband started dating her best friend shortly after their separation, said:
    I have daydreams in which I go into her apartrnenl with a sledgehammer and start destroying things, furniture, records, windows. I can virtually hear the glass breaking.... These fantasies have a way of calming ine down, even if I know I will never carry them out.
    Does that seem like an appropriate response? What if the other woman were not her best friend? What if she knew that her husband left her because of that "best friend"? And what if, instead of imagining the sledgehammer destruction, she were actually to do it?
    The more a response seems (in Freud's words) to "derive from the actual situation" and be "proportionate to the real circumstances;" the more "normal" it is (Freud, 1922/1955). Freud, and modern-day psychologists, differentiate "normal" from "delusional" jealousy. Normal jealousy has its basis in a real threat to the relationship, while delusional jealousy persists despite the absence of real or probable threat. The husband who suspects and spies on his wife, despite her faithfulness and devotion to him, presents a good example of delusional jealousy.
    Why would someone "choose" to suffer the incredible pains Of delusional jealousy if there is no basis for it in reality? One explanation is that through jealousy the person is trying to overcome an unresolved childhood trauma of betrayal. Another explanation focuses on couples' interactions that help maintain such a jealousy problem. A third explanation views the roots of the jealousy problem in behaviors that were learned earlier in life and that persist even when no longer appropriate. An additional explanation, which will not be discussed in this book, emphasizes the role of different organic, neurological, and physical disorders.8
    In addition to the distinction between a real and imagined threat, another distinction can be made between a "normal" (which is to say, appropriate) and an "abnormal" (meaning inappropriate, "pathological," "morbid;") response to a jealousy trigger.9
    Instead of the negative and judgmental connotation implied in the ordinary usage of' the word "abnormal" (that is, crazy, pathological, sick), it is more useful to think of "normal" as a statistical term that describes what is typical or average. People experience as broad a range of jealous responses as the range of different physical and emotional characteristics they possess. The vast majority fall in the middle range and are thus defined as normal. A small minority fall in the