Green-eyed monster in love : Romantic jealousy

Dr Mohendra Irengbam *

My definition of green-eyed monster or jealousy approximates to a hostile feeling towards someone for what the person is or what the person possess. Simplified, you can be jealous of someone who has a car while you do not have one yourself.

Romantic jealousy is an extreme negative thought due to a perceived or real threat to a romantic relationship. It is a very painful feeling of inadequacy or lack of confidence in the quality of relationship, like a woman in a relationship, asking herself, what has the other woman got that she hasn't? Romantic love on the other, connotes confidence. Notwithstanding, romantic love often ends in romantic jealousy.

Romantic love is a very pleasurable feeling of 'love', or in my definition (of love) 'a strong desire' towards another person of the opposite sex. In this century, it is no more between a man and a woman. It can be very much in Homo as in Binary relationship. Though the same sex relationship always existed, it has only become accepted in the last half of the last century, because of societal change to liberalism. It was illegal in the UK until the 1960s.

Liberalism in the UK has gone to the extent that, now, Virgin Airlines allows a man steward with feminist inclination to wear a skirt and likewise, a trans woman to wear trousers. It is the same in some English schools.

In the UK, Oscar Wilde, the Irish writer (1895), was most famous for his philosophy of 'The importance of being earnest', meaning we should treat all trivial things of life very seriously, and The Picture of Dorian Gray (1891), - a fanciful story of a young man who sells his soul for eternal youth and beauty.

Oscar Wilde was pivotal in bringing homosexuality or gay identity, after his trial in 1895 for homosexuality. Actually, he was bisexual. He was married with two sons. He was sentenced to two years of hard labour for his crime of "Gross indecency". He was pardoned for his 'Consensual same sex relationship' in 2017.

On an evolutionary basis, heterosexuality connotes an instinct that contains the propagation of the species. A pair of opposite sexes fall in love and give physical sexual expression to their erotic desire and babies are created as a by-product. Or reproductive intercourse to leave offspring behind. Homosexuality on the other, is not conducive to creating babies, and is thus anti-evolution.

Geneticists have been looking for a gene or genes that would make some people gay or lesbian. So far, with no success. It is assumed that they are born with it, rather than due to life-span choices.

Homosexuality is a common occurrence, but its genetic and evolutionary basis is still poorly understood. I think it is a mutation in the parenteral gene or genes. It was Hungarian journalist Karl Maria Kertbeny, who coined the four terms in 1860s, to describe sexual experiences: (1) heterosexual, (2) homosexual, (3) monosexual [masturbation], and heterogeneity [bestiality]. The last two are now forgotten. Well, almost.

On September 18 2022, an Englishman Shane Waters was jailed for 30 months for having sex with 15 chickens (all dead later) In Burnley, England. Another Pakistani British Rehan Baig in Bradford (my city) in England, was also sentenced for 3 years, in October 2020 for having sex with 29 chickens (all dead later) while his wife was filming the acts. The sentences were for cruelty to animals.

In this article I am talking exclusively, about heterosexual love and romance – the one I have had experience with. So, let me begin with romantic love – the counterpart of romantic jealousy, as eternalised by the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam in Persian, with the first verse: "Underneath the Bough, A Jug of Wine, A Loaf of Bread – and Thou Singing Beside me" – immortalised by Edward Fitzgerald who first translated it in English.

Rubaiyat is a series of poems of 4-line verses. It's like Ghazal (Persian-Urdu) that has series of 2-line verses (couplets), usually songs of unrequited love (Sad Bollywood songs). As an example, a humorous Urdu couplet comes to my mind: Na Ibadat me lazzat, na peen me maja; Yeh keisi hai jindagi, na jeena ya na marna – There is no fun in praying, nor is there pleasure in drinking (alcohol); what kind of life is this, neither living nor dead?

Omar - a Persian (Iranian) wrote Rubaiyat. He was also a mathematician, astronomer, and an early exponent of Algebra. He was a hedonistic wine-lover. His romantic life was not free of jealousy as that desert idyll in the image, above, made out.

Romantic love is pure delusional Viagra, carrying with it serious crumbs of jealousy. Jealousy is a very hurtful negative feeling with varying intensities. Like love it is difficult to describe jealousy. You must experience it. I had my experience only once in my entire lifetime, many years ago, though luckily only for a short time. It was like a burning, gnawing, knurling sensation inside the chest.

Jealousy is a common emotional reaction. We all have it. Infants get jealous of its siblings and the elderly get jealous for many things in life. Siblings get jealous compelling for parental attention. It can reveal a lack of trust someone has in his/her relationship with another.

Here is a true medical history. It is American as one could guess. A husband brought his young wife to see about her pregnancy. The doctor having confirmed the pregnancy, asked the woman if she was going to breast-feed her baby. Whereupon the husband jumped up from the chair and shouted: 'No, they are mine'.

Romantic Jealousy is something to do with a deep-seated possessiveness, insecurity, shame, or fear. It is something we can't control as it is a natural instinctive emotion that everyone experiences at one point or the other.

Jealousy is poison to a relationship. A relationship infected with jealousy will soon become bitter and self-destructive. According to Aristotle: "Jealousy is both reasonable and belongs to reasonable men, while envy is base and belongs to the base, for the one makes himself get good things by jealousy, while the other does not allow his neighbour to have them through envy."

As far as I know, I do not see any difference between jealousy and envy. It is only a question of intensity, from the point of view of its effects. Both can do the same harm to themselves. Both make you feel inadequate. However, there are some subtle differences. Jealousy is when someone is trying to take what you have, such as your girlfriend or wife or in the case of a married woman, her husband. It requires a third party. And when a third party is involved, jealously rears up its ugly head destroying soul and body.

Envy on the other, does not need a third party. You may envy your friend who has a beautiful wife, or his convertible Mercedes car, while you can afford only a mini car. That also is second hand.

A friend of mine – a woman, now 80, who is very jealous (all in the head) of her equally old husband because of a past incidence in infidelity, is now living in a hell of a matrimonial life. Frequent rows follow and they hardly speak to each other.

On a Valentine's Day in 2003 in Texas, a woman killed her husband in a "sudden passion". She encountered her husband in a hotel with his mistress. In a jealous rage she drove her Mercedes car repeatedly over his body. She was sentenced to 20 years in jail.

About 20 years ago, a very good-looking receptionist of mine in her early thirties was struck with an uncontrollable jealousy and rage. One night, while driving home she saw her husband's car in a car park of a pub. She turned around and walked into the pub and saw her husband with a younger woman drinking and flirting. Back home, late at night they had a terrible quarrel. Next evening after her work, she made herself attractive and went to a pub and picked up a man. She went to bed with him. She told her husband. Eventually they were divorced.

It seems that these couples have been wasting their time, saying to each other 'I love you' since they first met, as if they were saying - I love paratha or pizza and then, changed their minds.

Romantic love is conditional unlike paratha that does not answer back. Love gets weather-beaten and rusty with the passage of time and romance slackens. In the face of trials and tribulation in life, love often goes out of the window.

I have a friend, a good-looking woman who works hard to have a good life. When her first husband became redundant with no job for a couple of years, and she was the only breadwinner of the family, she threw him out. As bad luck would have it, she did the same with her second husband. In her old age now, she is struggling alone.

Two young people or adults feel attracted to each other, which is fancifully called love. What actually cause the attraction to each other, according to Clair Hart, professor of psychology at the University of Southampton, England, are due to five determinants: (1) physical attractiveness, (2) proximity, (3) similarity, (4) reciprocity and (5) familiarity.

I will not go into them. In short, to me, extreme attraction to be with each other is love. As an evolutionist, I believe it has a lot to do with biology and evolution. All animals have an evolutionary instinct to breed for the continuation of their species. Otherwise, we will become extinct. Evolutionary theory would argue that men care more about physical attraction and women more about emotional ties that stem back to our evolutionary past.

Evolutionary psychologists have developed a theory that from the evolutionary perspective, human sex differences reflect the pressure of differing physical and social environs between females and males in primeval times. The two sexes developed different strategies to ensure their survival and reproductive success. They would argue that men care more about physical attraction and women care more about emotional ties.

Jealousy is used by William Shakespeare in Othello, as a term - "green-eyed monster". Since then, the colour green has been associated with jealousy and envy, from which the expression "green with envy" is derived. In Christian mythology jealousy is also "a green-eyed monster which mocks the meat that feeds on."

The most dangerous and soul-destroying jealousy is 'Romantic jealousy' that is here, defined as a complex of thoughts, feelings, and actions which follow threats to self-esteem and/or threats to the existence or quality of the relationship, when those threats are generated by the perception of a real or potential attraction between one's partner and a rival." (White, 1981, p. 24) .

Over the centuries, the stupefying energy generated by 'sexual jealousy' (without romance), such as burying alive of a young nubile girl, Sanjoubam Mangang chanu Thambalnu in a fish net, made of bamboo strips, inside a dam across the Imphal river and drowning her to death. This happened in the village of Yairipok in Manipur during the reign of Maharaj Gambhir Singh (1825-1834 CE).

Thambalnu became known posthumously as the legend of Yairipok Thambalnu, which has inspired poems, songs, dramas, and novels. I went to see a theatrical performance after the Japanlan at the MDU Hall.

It was the sexual jealousy of a much older Ponamsingh, a petty official (selungba) of her young boyfriend Mohansingh. Ponamsingh was jilted by Thambalnu. His unrequited love turned him into a green-eyed monster. He conspired with an oracle that led her to her untimely death. Further, he was stabbed to death by Mohansingh, who soon jumped into the turbulent water escaping from the breached dam and drowned himself.

In the mid-19th century, a few thinkers began to wonder about the nature of jealousy. The most well-known is Sigmund Freud – an Austrian Jew, a neurologist doctor to begin with. We have been taught Freud in our medical college. I have no time for him as his psychoanalysis is all based on sexual approach, such as infantile sexual trauma, Oedipus complex and so on, as the central tenet of his psychoanalytical theory.

He postulated the existence of 'libido' – an energy that generates erotic attachments and a death drive – the source of hate, aggression, jealousy, and neurotic guilt.

His theory is now discarded by many psychologists. Now, new research is following in a different direction to find the mystery of this exceedingly painful and dangerous counterpart of romantic love - romantic jealousy. Scientific definition of jealousy is very difficult, and it can only be expressed in many abstract terms.

As an evolutionist, I believe jealousy is an innate module in our brain based on Darwin's theories of human behaviour. Someone suggested - jealousy might have been instrumental in human fitness drive towards survival in our ancestral environment.

Why does a man or woman have to be jealous about the spouse's infidelity. It is for survival. If you do not feel jealous you might lose your partner whom you married for life. However, there is a theory that a fundamental difference exists between man and female experience of jealousy in romantic relationship because of our ancestors' matting strategies.

According to evolutionary psychologists, Jealousy evolved a million or so years ago in African Savannah. A man had to guard constantly against unwittingly feeding children who were fathered by someone else. And as men and women had differing survival pressures, they think, the brains of modern men and women were programmed to respond differently to the infidelity of a romantic partner. Men have become more jealous over their wives' sexual infidelity. Women have become more distressed by emotional betrayal, which could leave them without resources, in case the husbands leave them.

Remember this is just a hypothesis. And hypothesis is for researchers. What I want to talk about is what jealousy can do to us. In short, the answer is it can do anything as illustrated by the above examples. In simple terms, it can ruin you without traces.

A jealous person especially a woman, apart from the perceived threat of a third party, bears an inner torment – a voice berating her with critical thoughts of inadequacy, such as 'what does he see in her that I don't have'. This will eat away her inner self.

Distrust of one's spouse causes a lot of inner pain. In the West, 'having an affair' is common as women are very independent, mobile, and capable of supporting themselves. So, couples must live with each other in trust. But the path of married life does not always run smooth.

During the early part of my marriage, I used to have tinkling of jealously at times. Experience and rationalisation convinced me to trust my wife. That I did. It then eased any inner insecurity that would have been awakened my jealousy of a perceived third party.


Author's website: drimsingh.com