How Does Jealousy Work?
Different types, different reasons
Dear mental health advocate,
I often love the subtle and not so subtle contradictions that make us human. For example, many people love to emphasize the existence of their logic brain, their rational part and pretending as a grown-up that their emotions do not interfere with their daily lives. But I know that even as adults, we are more strongly influenced by our emotions than we try to let on. This is why, in today’s free article of The Present Psychologist Paper I want to discuss a human emotion that fuels a lot of adults’ behavior - and more than you might think. The one that I am talking about is jealousy. Often I hear that people think of it as a useless one to have, because you are an adult right? Why would you be jealous? You are responsible for your own happiness? Well, it is much more complicated than that. Jealousy can take many forms. And it is much more common than you might realize…
Six Types of Jealousy
As humans, we have numerous emotions we need to deal with. The tricky part here is that they can suddenly come up and completely overwhelm you. There are definitely techniques that could help with this, but you cannot always control what you feel. Some emotions we enjoy feeling more than others. I mean, you’d rather be happy than sad, right? Well, they all have a function. They are supposed to signal that something is happening or that something should change. Such emotions might not always be enjoyable, but in some cases they occur to tell you something. Being in touch with your emotions can help with dealing with them in a healthy, sustainable way.
An emotion that is often seen as complicated and not always useful is jealousy. It is a feeling we all deal with from time to time and it is quite a challenging one to navigate. When people perceive a threat (whether it is real or not) to a relationship they have with someone, jealousy occurs. This could be because a person believes someone else loves them or will take the person away from them. It tries to signal to us that a relationship we value might be threatened, so we should act to fix it or make it better. The goal is to preserve and maintain social bonds and relationships. Clearly, it can be needed sometimes. But, jealousy often has impacted relationships negatively…
Which different types exist?
Jealousy is an emotion that can put enormous pressure on a relationship, whether this is a romantic or platonic relationship. Many people do not really know how to properly deal with these feelings. Although some jealousy might be a bit more reasonable than others, it nevertheless can be a huge problem to discuss or communicate jealousy especially when this is with someone you love dearly. In this article today I want to share several types of jealousy, like they have been defined by psychiatrist Dr. Gonzalez-Berrios. I will provide examples to help you understand what they mean.
Type 1: Romantic jealousy.
This type of jealousy occurs when you are dealing with the feeling that someone you love might either be romantically or emotionally involved with another person. An example of this would be that you believe your partner has developed feelings for their colleague at work that they have been collaborating closely with.
Type 2: Power jealousy.
This one can best be explained as a form of jealousy when you are actually insecure or are feeling like you miss something that someone else is having. You compare your own situation to the one the other person finds themselves in and this then frustrates you. For example, your colleague at work is getting a promotion that you wanted.
Type 3: Sexual jealousy.
If you are dealing with sexual jealousy, it likely means that you fear the person you love is being physically intimate with someone else without your consent or discussing this as an option in your relationship. For example, when you think that your partner has cheated on you by having sex with someone else.
Type 4: Pathological jealousy.
Some people that are dealing with a mental illness might develop as a symptom pathological jealousy. This means that there are patterns of extreme and irrational jealousy caused by delusions or insecurity. For example, being obsessed with checking your partner’s text messages on their phone all the time, even though there is no clear reason to.
Type 5: Rational jealousy.
There are of course cases when the feelings of jealousy are based on evidence that has been presented to you. If the situation occurs that there is a real threat that you for example might lose your partner to someone else, it can be considered reasonable that you feel this. An example would be finding proof that your partner has cheated on you.
Type 6: Family jealousy.
One that might be familiar to people who grew up with siblings or any other family dynamic where one person is jealous of one family member. This could be parents being jealous of their children, or a brother jealous of his sister, anything within a family is possible. For example, when a father is being jealous of his son’s success.
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