The Dangerous Passion: Why Jealousy Is as Necessary as Love and Sex (33 page)

Derogation tactics exploit the evolved desires of partners
predisposed to seek specific qualities in a mate. A man who tells his partner
that his rival lacks ambition would only be effective if she were disposed to
reject slackers. Similarly, a woman pointing out her rival’s unattractive
qualities would only work if a man were disposed to reject women with these
qualities.

In our initial study, we found that, contrary to our
expectations, it was not particularly effective for women to derogate their
rivals by labeling them as promiscuous sluts. In our follow-up study, we
figured out why. We evaluated the effectiveness of this derogation in both
casual and long-term mating contexts. Once we separated out these
circumstances, the mystery evaporated: It proved highly effective for women to
derogate their rivals by impugning their loose sexual codes of conduct
only
if the man was seeking a long-term relationship, such as a wife. For men
seeking a temporary sex partner, a woman’s casual sexual attitudes did not
dissuade them in the slightest.

When Hillary Clinton was interviewed about a rumor about her
husband’s infidelity with Gennifer Flowers, she declared that she was no “Tammy
Wynette,” standing by her man no matter what. But when President Bill Clinton’s
affair with Monica Lewinsky become public knowledge, Hillary gained
near-universal respect by doing precisely that. There are two related coping
strategies behind loyalty of this sort: how a woman copes with a husband’s
infidelity and how she wants to be perceived by others as coping.

How do people really feel about remaining in a relationship
after an infidelity surfaces? Jeff Bryson of San Diego State University asked
women and men to imagine how they would react to a partner’s infidelity. One of
Bryson’s female respondents said, “I would feel that I had invested too much of
myself in this relationship to break it off, and would hope that he would come
back to me.” Another woman thought that, “I would love my boyfriend enough that
I would try to overlook what he had done. What would be important to me would
be how I feel, not what others feel or say about my boyfriend, so I would stick
by him. I would try to ignore what my boyfriend was doing and hope that he
would see how foolish it was and come back to me.”

One common refrain I’ve heard from women whose husbands have
strayed is echoed in the loyalty-coping cluster: “I’ve already put so much into
this marriage, I can’t bail out now.” This sentiment may reflect a
psychological glitch known variously as the “Concorde Fallacy” or the “sunk
cost fallacy.” The term
Concorde Fallacy
originated when it became
clear that building Concorde airplanes would not be profitable, and a rational
economic analysis suggested abandoning the project. But since so much money had
already been invested in its development, the decision was made to push through
to completion. The project was continued after arguments were advanced that “we
have already spent so much on it that we cannot back out now.” More abstractly,
the Concorde fallacy describes a decision to continue to invest in a project
because of the resources you have already invested in it, rather than making
the decision according to its yield in the future. According to economists,
what should drive the decision is future yield, not prior investment. Yet
psychologists have documented that humans are highly susceptible to
overweighing their previous investments when making critical decisions. It
turns out that even digger wasps commit this fallacy, for they fight for
burrows with other wasps not in proportion to the true value of the burrow, but
rather in proportion to the amount of time they have already invested in the
burrow.

Although technically correct, the economists often overlook one
important fact about this supposed fallacy when applied to human relationships.
The amount of prior investment is often the single best guide to how much
future investment will be needed to abandon the current project and acquire
another relationship with sufficient depth and emotional commitment. Starting
from scratch can be an enormously costly endeavor—in the search for a new mate,
attracting and courting that new mate, and developing the relationship to the
point where the couple becomes an intimate union.

The effectiveness of sticking it out as a strategy to cope with
a partner’s infidelity, of course, hinges on a variety of factors. How good is
the current relationship apart from the infidelity? Will the infidelity destroy
trust permanently, or can trust be regained? What are the costs to the kids?
Are there good prospects for finding someone else? If the relationship is
tenuous to start with, if trust is irrevocably destroyed, if the costs of
leaving are minimal, and if alternative desirable mates beckon, then it’s
perhaps best to drop off the key and make a new plan. If not, it may pay to
stay.

When Jeff Bryson studied a wide variety of responses to
jealousy-evoking situations, he found that one revolved around revenge,
retribution, and getting involved with others. The core components of this
coping strategy, as articulated by the particparints, were “flirt or go out
with other people,” “do something to get even,” “do more than my partner has
done and then tell him/her about it,” and “do something to make my partner
jealous.”

In one case, a professional couple, Amber and Marc, had been
married for 16 years and had several children. The marriage suffered a fatal
blow when Amber discovered that her husband had been sleeping with his young
research assistant, an attractive woman 13 years his junior, the last in a long
series of affairs she uncovered when he finally confessed. Marc, a successful
professor of anthropology, refused to terminate the affair. He declared that
Amber should understand that, given his professional success, he was “entitled”
to be a polygamous man. Amber refused to tolerate the affair, and instead,
immediately started an affair of her own with a man eight years younger than
she, and started divorce proceedings.

Although her affair with the young man turned out to be
transient, it served several important functions for her. It immediately
signaled to her partner that she was sufficiently high in mate value to attract
desirable alternative mates, which would help with a reconciliation, an option
she wanted to keep open. It helped her self-esteem, for she realized that she
was highly attractive to a wide range of men and had many other mating
alternatives that might serve her better than her philandering husband. It
helped to salvage her honor and social reputation with mixed success—some
cheered her on and others frowned on her involvement with a younger man. After
a few months, Marc grew tired of his young mistress and tried to get back
together with his wife. But by this time, Amber realized that she was better
off without him, got a divorce, and eventually married a man with whom she had
a wonderful relationship. As of this writing, Amber is happily remarried and
Marc has gone from one transient relationship to another, never having fully
recovered from the loss of his wife.

Some marriages cannot be salvaged after an infidelity, and so
the best strategy of coping is to move on. Extracting revenge on a mate who
strayed by jumping into another’s arms is not necessarily the most effective
mode of coping, for it can backfire if a person is attempting to salvage the
marriage. But in some circumstances, it succeeds in launching the process of
remating—a coping strategy that takes emotional wisdom.

Emotional Wisdom

Give me that man that is not passion’s slave.

—Shakespeare,
Hamlet

I
N
1931
,
M
ARGARET
M
EAD DISPARAGED
jealousy as “undesirable, a
festering spot in every personality so afflicted, an ineffective negativistic
attitude which is more likely to lose than to gain any goal.” Her view has been
shared by many, from advocates of polyamory, a modern form of open marriage, to
religious advisors. Kathy Labriola, a leading advocate of polyamory, calls
jealousy the “biggest obstacle to creating successful and satisfying open
relationships.” Social scientist Jan Wagner denounces jealousy because it
supports the institution of monogamy, destroys freedom, and undermines living
in the present. Even Zen Buddhists argue that “jealousy is the dragon in
paradise; the hell of heaven; and the most bitter of all emotions.” And so,
perhaps, it is. But these views focus on only one side of the dangerous
passion, ignoring its potential benefits. Consider the following case, which
illustrates one of the benefits of jealousy.

The husband, a physician in his mid-forties, sought help because
his marriage of twenty-one years was in trouble as a result of his wife’s
jealousy. His wife expressed her unfounded jealousy by raging at him and
harassing him on the telephone at the hospital where he worked, which caused
him a great deal of embarrassment.

The husband was instructed [by the therapist] to act the part
of the jealous spouse and to keep this strategy from his wife. Having learned
over many years how a jealous person behaves, he was able to perform the role
of the jealous husband so skillfully and subtly that his wife didn’t realize he
was role-playing. While he had seldom called home in the past, he now called
his wife frequently to check on her, to see whether she was home and to ask
exactly what she was doing. He made suspicious and critical remarks about any
new clothes she wore, and expressed displeasure when she showed the slightest
interest in another man.

The result was dramatic. The wife, now feeling flattered by her
husband’s attentiveness and newfound interest, stopped her jealous behavior
completely. She became pleasant and loving toward her husband and expressed
remorse over her earlier behavior. At an eight-month follow-up, the husband
reported that his wife continued to behave more lovingly toward him, but as a
precaution he still played the role of the jealous husband from time to time.

The husband in this episode exercised emotional wisdom,
implementing his knowledge of the dangerous passion to save his marriage.
Properly used, jealousy can enrich relationships, spark passion, and amplify
commitment. It is an adaptive emotion, forged over millions of years, linked
inexorably with long-term love. The total absence of jealousy, rather than its
presence, is a more ominous sign for romantic partners. It portends emotional
bankruptcy.

This book has explored the destruction jealousy can create: the
severing of social ties that make life meaningful; the psychological torture
that torpedoes self-esteem; unwanted stalking; the battering that terrorizes a
partner; and the paradoxical killing of a loved one. We have identified many of
the key triggers of jealousy, signals that currently are, and historically have
been, associated with a partner’s sexual infidelity or outright defection. We
have explored the hidden passions that impel people to betray their partners
and the strategies that men and women deploy to cope with the torments of
jealousy and infidelity.

This final chapter turns to a brighter side—the positive uses of
jealousy, the co-evolution of sexual harmony, and the cultivation of emotional
wisdom.

Why do children hang on their parents to the point of annoyance?
Why do lovers intentionally start fights with their partners? Why does a
girlfriend lean up against her boyfriend just as he begins talking to another
woman? Why do couples early in their relationship hold hands for hours and put
their arms around each other until their limbs grow numb? And why do lovers
kiss, placing their tongues in each other’s mouths, thereby putting each other
at risk of transferring diseases?

All these puzzling phenomena may have a common function—the
testing of the bond. Humans (and other animals) who form relationships confront
a profound problem: knowing just how committed the other is to the
relationship. Mistakes inflict misery. A woman who overestimates her lover’s
commitment risks abandonment, damage to her reputation, and the hard work of
raising a child alone. Overestimating commitment also leads to opportunity
costs; the time spent with an undercommitted partner reduces the chance to
attract a better-matched mate.

Underestimating the true level of a partner’s commitment can
also be costly, leading to a self-fulfilling prophecy. Miscalculating, for
example, could cause you to reduce your own commitment, impelling your partner
to do the same, thereby producing a downward spiral of mutual retreat and
resentment. The bitter result could dissolve the relationship as both partners
search their social world for deeper, more meaningful engagement.

Accurate evaluation of a partner’s psychological involvement is
also critical, because commitments can change from month to month, day to day,
and even moment to moment. Many forces modulate commitment. A partner’s
reputation can rise or fall. Physical appearance can change over time as a
function of age, health, stress, and status. Even temporary absences, something
all relationships endure, can lead a partner to a “lost weekend” or the lure of
a new love. For all these reasons, testing the strength of a bond is not merely
a useful tool when forming a new relationship, it’s an adaptive necessity over
a life span. As the detective in the Coen brothers’ film
Blood Simple
notes: “I don’t care if you’re the president of the United States, the Pope of
Rome, or Man of the Year; something can always go wrong.”

It’s difficult to test the strength of the bond because
commitment is a state of mind and therefore cannot be observed directly. It
must be inferred in the face of ambiguous and uncertain signs. Amotz Zahavi, a
biologist at Tel Aviv University, offers a surprising and paradoxical answer to
the question of how best to gauge commitment: inflict pain intentionally. “The
only way to obtain reliable information about another’s commitment,” he argues,
“is to impose a cost on that other—to behave in ways that are detrimental to
him or her. We are all willing to accept another’s behavior if we benefit from
it, but only one truly interested in the partnership is willing to accept an
imposition . . . all mechanisms used to test the social bond involve imposing
on partners.” We hurt the ones we love, Zahavi proposes, to test the strength
of the bond.