Many of us mistakenly believe that showing jealousy is a sign of true and passionate love. However, it is not. Jealousy is a feeling to which both women and men are susceptible due to their personal characteristics. Love is based on trust, respect, mutual understanding, care and, of course, sexual attraction. A loving person is ready to sacrifice his interests for the sake of his other half. He recognizes her right to personal space and does not interfere with self-development and career growth. Otherwise, we should talk not about love, but selfishness. Jealousy is a prison for love. A deep feeling withers and dies forever. Only true love is free from the torment of jealousy. In our article we will try to find out the causes of jealous illness and consider methods of getting rid of it.
What can cause female jealousy
The reasons for this phenomenon are due to multiple factors, including characteristics of upbringing, society, and psychological problems. Why are girls jealous?
- The most common reason is low self-esteem. It is often caused by a lack of attention from the opposite sex in youth or the costs of upbringing in a family where an authoritarian style of communication with children was encouraged. Such a woman regards marriage even with not the most enviable groom as great success. She idealizes her husband and is afraid of losing him, believing that she will no longer be able to meet a person who will agree to condescend to her and connect his life with her. Surrounding women are perceived as potential rivals. The jealous woman is confident that if she loosens her grip a little, her husband will have the opportunity to consider the merits of other contenders, and he will understand how imperfect she is. Therefore, she is forced to control his every move.
- Paradoxical as it may seem, an overly self-confident woman, accustomed to always being the center of attention, can also be tormented by the pangs of jealousy, torturing her husband in the process. She knows her worth, is self-sufficient, often successful in her career and is spoiled by male attention. Therefore, even a slight glance towards the other can become a catalyst in this situation and provoke a scandal. Usually such a woman makes every effort to improve her appearance, so her pretty and smart head can’t wrap her head around the idea of how someone could be preferred to her. Jealousy causes her to feel indignation and indignation. To get satisfaction, such representatives of the fairer sex can resort to rather sophisticated methods of revenge on their husband and rival.
- Almost every woman has a fear of loneliness. The only difference is the degree of its manifestation. More confident women have less of it, but they still have it. Everyone knows examples when beautiful and smart women are left alone. Therefore, impulsive attacks against the husband may well be a consequence of this fear.
- If a man's income is the only source of a woman's well-being, this may cause her jealousy. Lack of work, low wages, the presence of children - all this forces a woman to pursue mercantile goals and fight with contenders for her husband’s material resources. She is wary of everyone around her: not only existing lovers, but also former girlfriends, work colleagues, relatives, friends and acquaintances.
What causes jealousy?
You are not confident in yourself
Licensed clinical psychologist Seth Meyers writes 3 prime reasons why people get jealous / Psychology Today that people with low self-esteem can also feel insecure in relationships. They believe that they are not good enough to attract a partner and maintain his interest over time.
You need to control everything
One partner worries about his place in the world of the other. Perhaps a person had a disturbing experience as a child and now thinks that he cannot be trusted, because at any moment someone else may be chosen over him.
Anastasia Popova
Psychologist, systemic family psychotherapist at Family Medical Center.
But it's not just anxiety. This is an attempt to control the actions of the other party. Fear of other people's freedom and rebellion against it.
You are too attached to your partner
Constant groundless jealousy can arise due to excessive attachment, when one cannot separate from the other and lives his life.
If you constantly interfere in the life of your partner, prohibiting you from meeting with friends and spending time separately, there is a high chance of ruining the relationship. There is nothing wrong with a couple having common interests. But everyone should also have their own hobbies.
You project your own repressed desires onto your partner
Family psychotherapist Anastasia Popova notes that jealousy can arise due to the projection of one’s own state and suppressed sexual desires onto another person. Without admitting it to ourselves, we want to go to the left, but we attribute this to our satellite.
You have obsessive thinking
Jealousy can be a consequence of obsessive (obsessive) thinking. Psychologist Seth Meyers recalls 3 prime reasons why people get jealous / Psychology Today a case with a patient who was jealous of her partners in all her relationships. She also showed some signs of obsessive-compulsive disorder. When her husband came home late and stayed late, she could not come to terms with not knowing what and where he was doing. So I filled in the gaps and thought it out myself. She took the facts from her head, and then she was jealous and worried. She herself created disturbing thoughts and reasons for worry when she was faced with the most terrible circumstance for this type of person: the unknown.
Also, according to the specialist, jealousy can be caused by a person’s general paranoid state.
There is a real reason for jealousy
Perhaps the most logical reason: there really is a justified reason for jealousy. Maybe this is unambiguous correspondence with someone else, an unforgotten betrayal, or irrefutable evidence of infidelity.
Painful female jealousy
Women suffering from pathological jealousy believe that they have a valid excuse: love. They justify their excessive and groundless suspicion with a sincere and strong feeling for their partner. In fact, this is self-deception. Her behavior is driven by a panicky fear of losing her husband. He causes an irresistible desire to control all areas of his life, forces a woman to frantically rummage through his address book, check SMS messages, correspondence in e-mail, on social networks, for example, VKontakte. The pathological manifestation of female jealousy needs correction, so in such a situation it makes sense to seek help from a psychologist.
Pity kills love
Reproaches, hysterics, scandals, the cause of which is pathological jealousy, cause the death of true love. In a situation of constant emotional stress, a man begins to feel irritation or pity for his wife. It is believed that the second outcome is much worse than the first. After all, a pitiful creature can hardly be considered an object of sexual desire. It is in a woman’s perception that love and pity can intersect and flow from one another. For a man - never.
There are more objective reasons why a jealous woman stops arousing her man: the permanent expectation of scolding on his part and the eternally dissatisfied, joyless face with dull eyes on hers. Therefore, if a man was accused of treason without reason, a woman’s jealousy and conflicts may well push him to seek adventure. By the way, jealousy also affects the health of both: chronic stress in which spouses find themselves can become a trigger for a number of serious diseases.
You need to understand where pity is appropriate and necessary, and where it causes harm. When love is replaced by it, it makes both spouses unhappy: they are forced to live in relationships that do not satisfy them.
Fear of loneliness
Many women cannot bear the thought of being alone. This fear is caused by a feeling of insecurity, of not having a shoulder to lean on. It comes from childhood. For any girl, her father is a symbol of security. In adult life, the place of the protector is taken by the beloved man. Along with his disappearance, the strong walls of the fortress called family collapse, and the woman feels alone with the world around her and her problems. Sometimes a woman herself does not realize the presence of this fear, since it hides behind anger, resentment and other negative emotions.
In this case, psychologists advise realizing that childhood is long gone and not associating yourself with a little helpless girl. An adult woman is capable of solving her problems on her own. Is the faucet leaking? Call a plumber. Are you sick? Seek help from your doctor. Even if betrayal happens in your life, followed by divorce, this is not the end of life, but just its next stage. And you want to be close to your man not because he is a panacea for all your troubles, but because you love him. If you realize this, anxiety will decrease, and attacks of unreasonable jealousy will be significantly reduced.
Imagination
Sometimes jealousy arises in a situation where in fact nothing threatens the relationship and there are no objective reasons for its occurrence. Due to their emotionality, women are susceptible to anxiety states, the source of which may not be a real story, but an obsession, for example, about a rival trying to take her husband away from the family by hook or by crook. A spouse’s banal delay at work can provoke wild flights of fancy. And so: the inflamed imagination is already creating the image of a beautiful, sexy, attractive rival with the appearance of a supermodel. This can lead to mistrust. For the seed of doubt to germinate, all it takes is a little irritation and dissatisfaction from the husband, a feeling of inferiority, season the dish with the fear of loneliness, and the cocktail called “Jealousy” is ready. And the reason for everything is not the actions of the beloved, but the woman’s imagination.
Psychologists advise married women not to be led by their imagination and not to look for problems where there are none. Women who have too much free time often find themselves in such situations. Basically, these are ladies who can afford not to think about their daily bread, because their husband thinks about it.
It's hard to be a girl in a relationship2
It only seems that they are courting her, they are bringing her flowers and gifts, and they are trying to seduce her. In fact, women’s “work” at the very beginning of a relationship is the hardest. How to behave so as not to scare away the guy you like?
Where can I get funds for all these cool modern beauty procedures and ways to improve my appearance so as not to look like a gray mouse in a crowd of beauties? How to bring things to a date if the guy, for example, doesn’t realize that the girl is single and likes him?
Many people think that modern people do not have such questions. This is in Europe and the USA. We have a patriarchal country. If you just come up and invite him to a movie or drink coffee, not every guy will agree. What can we say about older men? Or the meeting will immediately have a hint of availability and sex for one night. Also not an option if you want love.
Just imagine, after going through all these tests, the girl gets... No, not a prize. And not a calm and happy relationship, but a handsome man around whom other hunters hover. Of course she will be jealous. And manifestations of jealousy depend more on temperament than on anything else.
Treatment methods for morbid jealousy
A painful sense of ownership is characterized by obsession, irresistibility and irrationality. A person becomes a victim of strong and destructive emotions. It is not possible to completely get rid of pathological jealousy, but it is quite possible to alleviate the symptoms. To do this, it is necessary to include methods of psychological protection.
- A socially active woman from a family with a matriarchal structure must direct her struggle towards the main grain of jealousy - all-absorption. She should find a hobby for herself that can become an outlet and will bring positive emotions. A successful solution could be to pursue a career or engage in creative activities: drawing, clay modeling, handicrafts.
- For a woman with nerves of steel, the denial method is suitable, which will help minimize mental pain. You need to abstract yourself from the situation, try to convince yourself that nothing bad happened. Once you have even the illusion of control over the situation, you will feel significant relief, which will give you the opportunity to think more logically and rationally. This will increase the chances of getting out of a difficult situation.
- Another effective technique is based on the principle of compensation. It lies in the fact that a woman who suspects her husband of cheating concentrates on his positive qualities, forcing herself to remember them every time she wants to pour out everything she has accumulated on him. Among the advantages may be good earnings, his thriftiness, love for children, caring for you.
- The mirroring method is associated with projecting the situation of betrayal onto oneself. A woman thinks about what would have happened if she, and not her husband, had turned out to be unfaithful. In some cases, it helps to understand what the spouse is experiencing, get closer to him and make it easier to accept what happened.
An inadequate and unfounded feeling of jealousy, which interferes with the normal life of a person and the people around him, is a psychological pathology. Among the common causes of this phenomenon, medical workers note paranoid schizophrenia, depression, neurosis, personality disorder, alcohol or drug addiction. If measures are not taken in time, jealous people may develop hallucinations and delusions. Also, constant anxiety and emotional stress causes increased production of stress hormones, which undermines the immune system and negatively affects the functioning of the body as a whole. Jealous people often suffer from headaches and problems with the digestive system.
For most women, deviation from the norm is expressed in the form of attacks of aggression. Scientists have found that when the level of the happiness hormone - serotonin - decreases, to replenish it, a woman provokes a scandal. A surge of emotions leads to the release of dopamine, the pleasure hormone. Getting used to this way of solving problems leads a woman to groundless quarrels. In this case, a woman’s behavior can become uncontrollable and reach a state of passion, which can result in an uncontrollable thirst for revenge.
In some cases, when treating pathological jealousy, psychological correction of behavioral reactions is sufficient. In others, the approach should be comprehensive - psychological and psychiatric. Psychologists will help you understand your thoughts and actions and teach you how to manage them. Psychiatrists will prescribe a course of medication if necessary. Typically, patients are convinced that there is nothing wrong with them and do not want to accept help from specialists. Therefore, relatives must take care of the woman and convince her of the need for treatment.
Frequent mistakes of men
A guy's behavior can also make a girl talk to other men and flirt with them. Common male mistakes:
- Frequent communication with the opposite sex.
- The girl is not given due attention.
- Treason.
- Disrespect for your partner.
- The girl is not satisfied sexually.
- Lack of emotions in everyday life.
- Allegations of infidelity against a partner.
There can be many reasons, but it is important to identify the true one. To do this, you need to talk to the girl and ask her about problems and grievances.
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Why is female jealousy dangerous?
If a girl is jealous, this does not always mean that she experiences deep and strong affection. The roots of this pathology lie in a sense of ownership towards a loved one. A jealous person feels a lack of attention, care, and love. In her opinion, all this, which is due only to her, is received by someone else. She sometimes sees her rivals where in fact they are not there. This could be the man's mother, his sister, brother, friend. This type of jealousy, of course, will not have a sexual connotation, but this will not make it any less toxic.
Worry, anxiety, and resentment eat away at a woman’s soul, raising from her depths the most negative and aggressive emotions - anger, rage, hatred. The poison of jealousy can be destructive, first of all, for the woman herself. He is capable of provoking her into reckless illegal acts that can become a threat to the life and health of her loved one.
A woman becomes a victim of her own jealousy due to the fact that she gives a man the opportunity to manipulate her. After all, it is known that he behaves with his soul mate the way she allows him to do so. Why should the chosen one compromise if he knows that in order to preserve the relationship, the woman agrees to anything? The lover, without a twinge of conscience, begins to take advantage of a woman’s greatest fear - the fear of losing him. This turns the girl into a puppet in his hands.
Women's jealousy, like rust, corrodes relationships. It is a rare man who is ready to endure constant attacks from his woman, often unfounded ones. Therefore, relationships in which she cannot control manifestations of jealousy are unpromising.
Psychologists have come to the conclusion that female jealousy is not just a negative emotion, but a pattern of behavior that tends to move from one relationship to another. A woman who cannot give herself an objective assessment, in despair, may feel that her new partner has the same flaw as the previous one - he constantly provides her with endless reasons for jealousy. In fact, it is not he who is to blame, but her reluctance to work on character flaws and personal psychological problems, in which, most likely, the true causes of a jealous illness are hidden.
Jealousy - the companion of love?i
Let's not get into the highly spiritual jungle. Of course, any such source will tell us that:
- Jealousy has nothing to do with love, it is a base possessive feeling;
- Jealous people are not capable of love at all;
- If you do not want to connect your life with a psychopath, it is better to stay away from the jealous person or the jealous person;
- Jealousy will not help build a family, but will only destroy it.
Great, right? But here you need to understand that guys tend to exaggerate the scale of the disaster and underestimate their true motives. If you sincerely believe that you can manage your life with several women at the same time, jealousy is a completely justified retribution. And also rivalry, competition between friends and constant drama.
Let's say this girl is beautiful. But she's terribly jealous. Why?
As a result
When you yourself create reasons for jealousy, and then lament that your girlfriend is jealous of you, then this is funny. Decide for yourself who you want to be with, because a healthy reaction to your adventures is a sign of adequacy, which is extremely rare in our time. You can forget about these relationships and go out with a lot of girls - that’s great and cool. But having a permanent relationship, subjecting your chosen one to suffering while continuing to hang out with several others is not good. You spoil the opinion not only of yourself, but also of men in general. But we don't need this. Figure out what you need and go ahead!