Here is a 5 page Psychology Today article titled Ten Politically Incorrect Truths About Human Nature that follows very closely what I have read in the book about Evolutionary Psychology titled Why Beautiful People Have More Daughters. Evolutionary Psychology is a very interesting as always.

Note: This article is nowhere near comprehensive. I am not a licensed psychologist or a therepist, and this writing comes from what reading I have done on this topic and my own experience, so take this for what you will. If you have references or other things that may increase the usefulness or accuracy of my writing then feel free to post me about it. I am more than happy to adjust my writing to reflect a new understanding on this topic or to make this page much more useful.

This article assumes, for simplicity, a heterosexual monogamous romantic relationship that is having bad jealousy issues, but could be equally applied with adjustment towards homosexual/poly relationships when view through those glasses. Close friends not getting enough time or other less serious situations are not the focus of this writing, but may be just a appllicable with in that context.

Jealousy is something that we have to deal with, and is something that we are taught is OK. In many forms our culture, unfortunately, supports and perpetuates its existence. How are we to manage or understand this “green-eyed monster” that can destroy relationships and our happiness, so that it is not allowed to do so, even when cultural support for it is so prevalent?

Understanding exactly what jealousy is, and how and why it affects us can help us to not only tame it, but to advance and evolve our sense of self and our relationships. I am going to cover a bit here today about jealousy so that we can start the journey to defeat the “green-eyed monster”together, and to evolve our happiness and security to the next level.

All of what I am about to write is predicated on there not being a definitive reason for the jealousy such as a history of infidelity or lying and so on. That is a totally difference scenario which I will not cover here, but in that case you will most definitely require a seek a qualified therapist. There are also many more links at the bottom of this page that will cover jealousy in much more detail and in a much more educated and qualified manner than I ever could. This page might be consider more of a primer on dealing with jealousy.

Understanding Jealousy

What is Jealousy?

Jealousy is not an emotion in-and-of-itself. It is a cacophonous and yet subtle amalgamation of baser negative emotions such as insecurity, low self esteem, subconscious or repressed pains, and fear of loss, abandonment, or inadequacy that surfaces and affects us in ways that we may not fully understand or be able to describe when it happens. We just know that we feel bad or that it hurts when something triggers it, and we may get angry and frustrated because we do not, or find it very difficult to try to, understand it.

Jealousy is also rooted in the starvation economy (starvation model) of love, which essentially means that if my love cares for someone else then they will care less for me, which greatly increases the level of fear, anxiety, and possesiveness. We love our parents, our children, close friends, and other extended family, so you do not necessarily need to be afraid that they are going to love someone else and not you. Your partner has room for you in addition to their close friends and family. Humans just keep on loving. It is said that fear is the opposite of love; and by letting go of fear (jealousy) you will foster love in your life.

These self doubts, insecurities, and fears can lead us to question and pressure our partners in an agressive and untrusting manner which can damage the relationship, or push them away. Gaining an understanding and control of jealousy will be important to the happiness and harmony of all your current and future relationships, especially the most important and intimate ones.

This frustration and difficulty of understanding these emotions perpetuates and hinders exploration and comprehension of what exactly is happening. Cutting our way through the pain and confusion is what will be important to defeat the ‘green-eyed monster’ and the havoc it wreaks upon our lives and relationships. Ultimately, bouts of jealousy indicate that there is some unresolved issue with yourself or with your relationship. It signals a moment to learn about ones self, which, of course, can be a mixed blessing.

Your Triggers

Jealousy triggers typically involve ’someone’ of the opposite sex of your partner. Your partner does something and you feel jealous and hurt, and you may or may not understand why. The action that started this process is the trigger. Examples of common triggers are: someone calling your partner or oogling at them, your partner staying our late, or wanting to spend time with friends, spending time with people in a very social setting where there are many individuals of the same gender that your partner could be attracted to.

You will need to pay special attention to your triggers. The triggers themselves may be revealing as to the underlying issue you may be having, especially if one trigger is fairly consistent and others are either non-existent or limited in their prevalence.

Your Emotional Repsonse

Your emotional response to a jealousy trigger is going to be very important to monitor and understand. Try to search your emotion and figure out exactly what you are feeling. This is perhaps the most difficult part. You will need to try to distinguish between individual fears and insecurities, and potentially trust issues. Take the time to think about you feelings to try to refine what exactly is going on. The more you can know about this the easier it will be to understand what your underlying issue maybe and how to deal with it.

Your Reasons

If you are able to know you triggers and the emotional response to that trigger, then the next step is the take that information and try to find out why that trigger elicits that emotional response. Is it projected unresolved issues from the past, or perhaps you need more reassurance from your partner, or there may be any of a plethora of other things that may cause a specific type of trigger to generate a specific emotional response. Try to think about the relationship between the trigger and your emotional response.

Again this may be something that you will want a qualified therpist to work through. These are very complicated and potentially deep seated issues that some simple self exploration and talking may not deal with. Plus we are working against some very trong cultural and evolutionary programming.

Managing Jealousy

Responsibility For Our Emotions

Something that is very key to understanding and dealing with this issue is that no one can make you feel any emotion. You are an individual and you have a choice as to how you feel and react to situations. This is not what we are typically taught, but it is one of the most valuable things you can realize for yourself and you life. You have a choice to determine your reaction to a situation, albeit, until your realize this you may find yourself a helpless slave to your emotional whims. People typically go through their lives allowing their initial emotional response to bubble forth and then they go with it because that is all they know, but in the case of jealousy, or even any other negative emotion, it is not such a good idea to do so.

If you work at it you can separate the ‘action that triggers an emotional response’, the ‘emotional response itself’, and the ‘underlying reasons for the emotional response’. Keep in mind ‘underlying reasons’ does not mean triggers themselves. The trigger, emotional response, and the reason are all separate and need to be inspected that way otherwise you may start mixing them up and call the trigger the reason, when it is not.

No one can make you feel specific emotion. We are, in many ways, programmed via Evolution and Culture to respond a certain way to certain situations, but this is something that we can, with effort and desire, to control and modify it. This process can be a very painful, since it will require introspection, self evaluation, a radical honesty with one’s self and their partner, trust, and vulnerability. All of which can be scary and difficult in-and-of-themselves, but to combine them into one process makes this not for the weak of heart, but in the end it can be one of the most rewarding things you can do. =O If you are not keen on going-it-alone with you partner in dealing with jealousy, then there are many qualified therapists that would be happy to assist you in this endeavor.

It is important to say to yourself  that ‘I will not allow my emotions to control or effect my life in a negative way and I will decisively choose to address them when they come up.’ You emotions are your responsibility and you need to evaluate how they affect your life and address them appropriately. I will cover some communication techniques later on that will address taking responsibility for you emotions.

Dealing with Jealousy Through Writing

Writing can be a very theraputic and revealing method to help you deal with jealousy and other issues too. Writing a journal will help you to keep track of and get out those negative feelings. In these days you could also record them via a small recording device if that serves you better. In either case you will want to keep your recording medium safe from others because rarely is such a painful and deep seated emotion pretty. Things may be written or said that can be quite personal and painful not only for you, but to those involved. If you are pursuing this process with your partner you may want to inform them that you are doing this and for them to respect your privacy if you wish it.

When you do feel a bout of jealousy starting you may want to take some time to write down the specifics of the situation that is triggering the jealousy. Keeping track of what situations or actions that triggered you to feel jealous can help you greatly in your pursuit to banish jealousy from your relationship.

As you are keeping track of your triggers, you will also want to also to write down your emotional response to that trigger. Write as much as you can and just let the thoughts and emotions flow so you can thoroughly explore and open them. Explore this state of mind and write down what you are feeling.

Once you have that recorded you can revisit it and explore your triggers and feelings and then you might be able to find a trend in your triggers or what it is that you are feeling. Perhaps you will find a reoccuring theme in your feelings and writings that may point to the underlying reason for your jealousy.

Dealing with Jealousy Through Talking

When talking to you partner form your thoughts along these lines: “I feel ‘this’ when ‘that’ happens” because ‘of this’.; and NOT “You make feel this way when you do this, because you ‘reason’.” since that wording puts the responsibility for your emotions on the other person and assumes that you know the other persons thoughts and intentions.

You have the right to feel how you feel, and the first wording reinforces you are taking responsibility for your emotions, which seems to be an affront to the common thinking of our emotional states, especially when it comes to jealousy and possesiveness with our partners. Jealousy seems to be treated like a crime that is inflicted on others, when it is something that we allow to fester within us do to a lack of open and honest communication and taking responsibility for our emotions.

Sentences such as  ”You make feel this way when you do this.” you are creating an antogonistic environment, putting responsibility for your emotional state to your partner, and may potentially be putting your partner on the defensive, even though your emotions are yours and your partner may not have done anything wrong. Doing so may put your partner on the defensive and may greatly inhibit communication and your progress towards resolution and understanding what you are going through.

Enabling Jealous Actions

This is more for the jealous person’s partner than for the jealous person. If you both know that you have jealousy issues then by not talking about it or confronting them, albeit calmly, cooly, and with compassion, you are enabling and reinforcing this behaviour and allowing it to continue. Once you start to do that you are reinforcing for them that this behaviour is acceptable and that you will just deal with it, which leads to not only a break down in communication, but also in bad feelings for both of you, and potentially resentment.

Take the time to care enough to talk about and address jealousy in your relationship. Ignoring it is not going to make it go away, and is only going to allow it to fester and grow stronger potentially creating a chasm between both of you with a lof of pain.

Pain and chasms – bad. Calm and honest communication – good. Realize that it is going to take two of you to address jealousy, so help to be apart of the solution, by not enabling this behaviour. Perhaps you can be the one to suggest counseling if your partner is reluctant to.

References and More Info

What I have written is a pretty good start to this topic, but please do peruse these references for more information. If these do not suffice, please seek a qualified professional to assist you. I also will appreciate recommendations for any other pertinent and useful resources that you may find or know of. I did not include articles on therapy through writing. If you are interested google has plenty, of a therepist can help you with that as well. =)

Articles

• Center for Non-Violent Communication
• Jealousy: A Voice of Possesiveness Past (Psychology Today)
• Jealousy: Monster with Dangerous Passion (Sexpresso)
• Managing Jealousy (Hello Good Love)
• Loving without Jealousy: As We Becoming More Authentic, Jealousy Disappears (University of Minnesota)
• Controlling Jealousy (Dr. Phill)
• Dealing With Jealousy Issues (Bea Wehrla, Counseling and Human Development, 2002)
• Fixing the Refridgerator: Practica Jealousy Management (Polyamory, 2009)
• Green-Eyed Monster, the (California Psychics)
• How to deal with jealousy (Romance Class)
• Jealousy (The Inn Between, Polyamory)
• Jealousy, The Green-Eyed Monster (Dr. Gail Saltz, March 2007)

Books

• Men Are From Mars, Women Are From Venus (Amazon Book)
• Radical Honesty (Amazon Book)
• Books on Non-Violent Communication (Amazon Books)

I have written a huge page in support of the the Legalization of Prostitution and I thought would announce it to everyone so that they may rant or rave about it.

OK, not that anyone cares so much to hear about this topic, but I am going to write about it anyhow. I have wanted to write this little post for quite some time, but I have not had the time.

I have written a little about my little diet experiment in a previous posts having gone from 164 lbs down to 150 lbs, and now after having returned from Belarus (and off the diet) I am back up to 162 lbs. I have been thinking a lot about how my hunger and my desires to eat manifest, how losing and gaining weight happened, as well as thinking about how evolutionary psychology might apply in this situation. I know you are thinking ‘A strange combination.’ or ‘Isn’t there something more interesting he could be doing?’.

The Shangri-la diet crushed my snacking or munchies almost completely. It was such a freeing and wonderful feeling to look at a chocolate bar, candy, or something else sweet and tasty and think ‘I do not need that’ and just walk away. This got me to thinking about how and why we all have these desires to eat things that we do not need to eat, and that may not even be good for you. I have come up with a little theory here. We have 2 modes for eating: the ‘eating to live’ mode and the ‘eating to eat’ mode. The first one is necessary and the second one may serve a purpose that is not needed and perhaps even detrimental in a first world country like the United States.

Eating to Live

This section is going to be fairly short as it will be pretty much self explanatory. The body lets you know that you need to eat by making you feel feint, giving you that hungry feeling, as well as an anxiousness to find food. Once you find food you eat until you do not need it any more. This ensures that you have enough calories to keep on living and allow you to find more food for survival

This provides for you the instincts and feedback via psychological and biological feed back in order for you to stay alive and take care of your bodies needs right now. I have found that while on the Shangri-la diet that I pretty much always decided to eat healthier and chose to not eat unhealthy foods when the ‘eating to eat’ was crushed. I was in much more control of and much more conscious of my bodies needs and the food I ate.

Eating to Eat

The previous one is not so interesting, well this one I find a little more interesting. Eating to eat. Snacking munchies. This part sucks!

So, you have eaten. You are not really hungry and you just have this desire to eat something. You do not have an urge for anything specific, but you find yourself looking through the cupboards or the refrigerator for something that will sate this desire to just eat. This is an annoying feeling that you just want to get rid of.

Now your body looking around and will have you sating yourself on foods that are most likely fattening. You body has food in it and is not really hungry, but now it is moving into fat storage mode since it has time in order to ensure that you will survive longer. Why on earth would you body do that in this world?

Lets think about it like this. Evolution takes thousands and thousands of years in order to make changes. Our bodies and minds are stuck with the instincts and bodies wrought in an old, old world where humans are hunting mammoths on the plains in small packs or tribes. Gathering what fruits they can find as they go. Nomadic tribes who hunt prehistoric creatures. In that day and age humans may go weeks without food and the human body has developed a mechanism to enhance its survival for those lean times. That survival mechanism is the ‘eating to eat’ process. Searching out foods especially fattening foods such as those with a lot of sugar, fat, partially hydrogenated oils, and high fructose corn syrup. Things that when eaten the body can turn to fat and store it for the potential lean days ahead greatly increasing your survivability.

I do not know about you, but in my little town of Baraboo where we have a super Walmart I have never found myself wanting for food or even close to truly starving. This ‘eating to eat’ is an outdated evolutionary psychological adaptation that is causing us so many problems leading us to obesity and other health issues since it is something that is really hard to control for many people. Controlling those urges and allowing ourselves to eat food that is health is not so easy and is a battle that is not easily won when evolution is against us.

Conclusion

I do not have a really profound conclusion for you, just that eating to eat is bad for us. We need to find a way to crush that deep and instinctual urge so that we can eat healthily and happily; to eat to live and not live to eat. The Shangri-la Diet experience helped me do that and it was quite the liberating experience.

In my previous post about this topic I mentioned that I will start the Shangri-la Diet again. I did not then since I was curious where it would take me, but I want to again now. I just need to find a not-so-nasty oil to partake.

I like the answers that the book and evolutionary psychology bring to the table. In many ways I can see how their answers make a lot of sense, especially in light of the empirical evidence they provide. Evolutionary Psychology almost seems Freudian in nature, no – not the you want to sleep with you mother side, but everything is about sex side.

I think that they are are trying too hard to be the be-all-end-all definitively answer to all of life’s questions. I think that no specific field of scientific endeavor will ever be able to answer all of those questions. As living creatures we are too complex to be reduced to ‘it is all about sex and reproduction’ for each and every ‘question’ out there. I do believe that evolution is a large part of many answers, but I also think that there are many answers that will be sociological in nature and cannot be answered via evolution.

Just a few random thoughts brought on by this book. Thanks for reading. =)

I have just finished reading “Why Beautiful People Have More Daughters: From Dating, Shopping, and Praying to Going to War and Becoming a Billionaire– Two Evolutionary Psychologists Explain Why We Do What We Do“. Hows that for a really long book title.

This was a very interesting read. This book gives a 2 chapter intro into Evolutionary Psychology and then it is off to explaining many of humanity’s cross-cultural universal behaviors from an evolutionary psychological perspective. I think that this book is a wonderfully enlightening read. I would suggest that everyone pick it up (if you are into that sort of reading). In some cases I think that they maybe trying to hard to come up with answers, but their empirical evidence is telling.

I was previously on the ‘nurture’ side of the ‘nature vs nurture‘ argument, but with the books that I have been reading such as this plus Anatomy of Love: A Natural History of Mating, Marriage, and Why We Stray (Paperback) a (sociocultural look at mating in humans and other creatures) and The Myth of Monogamy: Fidelity and Infidelity in Animals and People (an evolutionary biological look at mating in humans and other creatures) I am seeing that our evolution greatly affects what and why we do things as humans today.