The Dangerous Passion: Why Jealousy Is as Necessary as Love and Sex (14 page)

Historically, a man’s ability to reproduce was directly linked
with his ability to inseminate a fertile woman regularly, which of course
required recurrent erections. Ancestral men who consistently experienced
impotence with one woman may have been motivated to leave her for another woman
with whom he was more virile. A woman whose mate consistently failed to become
erect may have been motivated to have affairs on the side or to leave him
entirely, or else risk failure at reproduction herself. If impotence by a man
motivated his partner to stray then we expect men to become jealous after a
bout of impotence. This is precisely what we find in clinical cases of the
Othello syndrome.

In one study of 36 clinical cases of the Othello syndrome,
sexual problems were reported in 19. One was due to the loss of sexual desire
entirely, six were due to erectile dysfunction, and 12 were due to premature
ejaculation, a condition that is closely linked with impotence. One man
reported: “Because of my impotence, my wife must be losing interest in me . . .
She must therefore be transferring her affection to other men.”

Another case involved a 68-year-old man whose long-term marriage
was harmonious until he had a stroke, causing him to become impotent. He began
“putting together” the pieces of evidence from a variety of sources that
“proved” his wife was unfaithful. He noticed an open window, and concluded that
his wife had intentionally opened it to let her lover creep into the house
while he was asleep. He noticed tracks in the snow under the window. He heard
voices in the kitchen, but when he checked, the voices vanished, and he
concluded that her lover had fled just before he arrived. He accused his wife
of infidelity and tried to restrict her activities, insisting that she not go
out of the house. He became sexually aggressive with her, despite his
impotence, making sexual advances so persistently throughout the night that she
was forced to move into a separate bedroom. He noticed his neighbor performing
routine chores, such as mowing the lawn, that he could no longer perform
himself. He concluded that his wife was sleeping with the neighbor, despite the
fact that the neighbor was 25 years younger than he and his wife and was a
newlywed. The wife finally convinced him to see a psychiatrist when he tried to
strike her with his cane and threatened to assault her, all because of his
intense jealousy over her suspected infidelities.

As far as the psychiatrist could determine, the wife had
remained sexually faithful throughout their marriage. But the husband’s
impotence triggered in him sexual jealousy, set off by what would have been a
reliable signal of partner defection in ancestral environments.

As Jed Diamond, author of the book
Male Menopause,
noted: “A lot of midlife breakups are due to the projection of the men’s
changes onto their wives. They blame the wives for what’s happening to them . .
. One man, a taxi-cab driver, told me, ‘I’m losing my sexual desire, my erections,
and my mind. I’m afraid my wife will lose interest in me.’ ”

It is unlikely that one episode of impotence will impel a woman
to leave her husband. But multiple episodes raise the odds. Men in our
ancestral past who erred by assuming that their impotence might lead to a
wife’s infidelity would get jealous, prompting action designed to prevent her
defection. A man who erred in the other direction, by assuming that his wife
would remain faithful when she was leaning toward leaving, would have suffered
more costs in the currency of reproductive success. Modern men are descendants
of those who erred in the jealous direction, even when this error produced some
marital friction.

The sexologist Krafft-Ebing was the first to report in 1905 on
the link between alcohol and jealousy. He reported that 80 percent of the male
alcoholics in his study were consumed by delusions of jealousy. Krafft-Ebing
argued that jealousy arose in the later phase of alcoholism and was marked by a
highly organized pattern of suspicions of infidelity, believed to be delusional
in nature. Once the jealousy delusion had developed, Krafft-Ebing observed that
it became “extremely fixed” and highly resistant to change.

More recent studies reveal a more modest role of alcohol in
triggering jealousy. A study in 1968 revealed that 18 percent of a sample of 55
alcoholics displayed pathological jealousy. Paul Mullen found in 1985 that only
11 percent of his sample of 138 alcoholics exhibited the Othello syndrome. A
1991 study in Germany of 93 cases of “delusional jealousy” found that 12
percent were alcoholics.

By far the most systematic study, however, was an interview
study in 1985 of 100 alcoholics, in which 35 percent of the men in the sample
were diagnosed as extremely jealous. In 8 percent of the men, however, the
man’s jealousy was regarded as “justified” when it was revealed that the spouse
was indeed having an affair. When this figure is subtracted from the 35 percent
judged to be extremely jealous, the researchers concluded that 27 percent of
the male alcoholics were “morbidly jealous.” We must regard this figure with
some skepticism, however, because an unknown percentage of these men might have
been picking up on authentic cues to an infidelity that had been more or less
successfully concealed by their wives.

A number of possible explanations exist for the modest link
between alcohol consumption and jealousy. First, alcohol may lower a man’s
inhibitions, causing him to vent suspicions that he already has. Second, men
who are concerned about their troubled marriages may be more prone to drink
heavily, thus creating a link between alcohol and jealousy. Third, alcohol may
directly affect jealousy, creating suspicions that were not previously present
by distorting perceptions, producing errors in logic, or twisting the
interpretation of facts.

Although all of these explanations may have some partial truth,
there may be another explanation: the link between alcohol and impotence. To
paraphrase Shakespeare, alcohol may enflame desire, but it weakens the flesh.
Alcohol is clearly linked with potency problems. Since we know that impotence
triggers jealousy, anything that produces impotence should be linked with
elevated jealousy. And since impotence may incline a partner to leave, the fear
of a partner’s defection may fuel a man’s jealous rage.

The wives of alcoholic men may, over time, come to find sex
unpleasant. Women may develop an “aversion to the rough, brutal husband, often
drunk at the time of intercourse, . . . whose pathologically tardy ejaculation
causes pain through persistent and frequent attempts . . . The brutal,
irritable, mentally enfeebled husband, who otherwise lives in a state of
quarrel with his wife seeks and finds the cause of his sexual dissatisfaction
in the infidelity of the wife.” A vicious cycle is created. The husband’s
alcohol abuse leads to unpleasant sex, causing the wife to decline his sexual
advances, which then triggers jealousy and suspicions of infidelity.

Another circumstance that might evoke a man’s jealousy is his
inability to sexually satisfy his partner. Over evolutionary time, women mated
to men they found sexually wanting sometimes sought satisfaction in another
man’s arms, either temporarily through an affair or permanently through divorce
and remarriage. This ancestral condition may have sculpted a psychological
sensitivity in men to their ability to sexually satisfy their wives. A man’s
concern over his wife’s sexual orgasm is sometimes attributed to “masculine
insecurity.” But it may instead reflect an accurate perception that her lack of
satisfaction may lead her to leave. The phenomenon of women “faking orgasm” may
symbolically assure the husband of sexual fidelity. The psychiatric record is
filled with cases depicting men’s insecurity about their ability to satisfy
their wives.

In one case, an aging man started to become concerned about the
quantity of his semen, which apparently had been considerable in his youth. He
became increasingly jealous over time. He insisted on having sex with his wife
every night, tried to prevent her from going out, and even tried to stop her
from attending her weekly women’s group. He insisted on reading every letter
and card she received, and in one case, took a letter to a handwriting expert
to analyze hidden messages. Daily he checked his wife’s underpants for
“evidence” of infidelity. He restricted his wife’s activities. He increasingly
complained that his erections were smaller than they had been and that sex with
his wife was too infrequent. He asserted that his wife’s vagina had changed,
and believed that he could detect the “mark” of another man’s penis in her
vagina! He admitted all of this to the psychiatrist, but denied vehemently that
he was jealous.

Similar examples abound in the psychiatric records. In one case,
a man became jealous when he concluded that his penis was too short to satisfy
his wife, since he assumed that she was used to a larger size from her previous
partners. Another man believed that his wife had committed adultery with at
least three different men. He believed that he was incapable of satisfying her
sexually because one of these men, he thought, had such a large penis that it
had widened his wife’s vagina. His jealousy got so bad that he concluded that
he must not be the father of any of his children. The jealousy tore apart the
marriage. His psychiatrist was unable to contain the man’s jealousy, and
eventually the couple divorced.

Another case involved a 45-year-old man who was described by his
wife as hardworking, sensitive, and reserved. The couple had five children, but
despite this, the husband began to accuse his wife of being a “whore.” He
believed that she betrayed him with a bus driver, who could perform “sexual
tricks” for his wife that he insisted he lacked the knowledge to do. He
discovered these “tricks” by reading a book on sex. He noticed the bus driver
giving his wife “fixed looks,” and noticed his wife swaying her buttocks when
she boarded the bus. He began to wonder whether his children were his own. He
thought that only one looked like him. He wanted his wife to take blood tests,
but she refused and would not allow any paternity testing, which fueled his
jealousy further. She gave the impression of being trustworthy and honest, and
denied having intercourse with other men. But she declared that she had not
experienced orgasm in the marriage. She also stated that her husband did not
understand her, which the husband interpreted as meaning that “he doesn’t know
how to satisfy me sexually.” Treatment was unsuccessful, and the man
subsequently abandoned his wife and children.

A man’s inability to satisfy his partner sexually, real or
imagined, appears to be a powerful trigger of sexual jealousy. The therapist of
one couple entering treatment for the husband’s pathological jealousy noted
that the wife talked about her former lovers “all of the time and speaks
disdainfully about the sexual performance of her husband.”

Sexual dissatisfaction is linked with marital unhappiness, which
is a good predictor of divorce. In my study of 107 married couples, we found
that some women and men expressed a variety of complaints about their partner’s
sexual behavior. Some complained that their partner refused to have sex with
them, declared a lack of interest in having sexual relations, and rebuffed
their sexual advances. All these sexual complaints were linked with marital
unhappiness.

Since an inability to satisfy a partner sexually causes marital
unhappiness, and marital unhappiness causes divorce, it is reasonable to
conclude that sexual dissatisfaction raises the likelihood of breaking up.
Sexual jealousy, triggered by a perceived inability to please a partner
sexually, may be a coping device designed to fend off this impending threat—an
evolved product of error management, helping to prevent a permanent defection.
By getting jealous when a partner is perceived to be sexually dissatisfied, a
man effectively steps up his mate guarding tactics in an attempt to ward off
the threat of losing her.

When a woman’s desire for sex with her regular partner declines,
it may signal marital problems. Women sexually bored by their husbands may seek
stimulation from other men. A recurrent thought among men diagnosed with
“conjugal paranoia” is: “If she is not achieving sexual satisfaction with me,
she must be achieving it with someone else.” A woman also may be bored with the
relationship itself, an ominous indicator of impending divorce. Whether the
boredom is merely sexual or extends to the entire relationship, a drop in
sexual interest portends trouble in a previously harmonious relationship. As
Mae West once said, “It’s not the men in my life that count—it’s the life in my
men.”

Case reports of pathological jealousy contain many examples of
jealous symptoms triggered by a wife’s decrease in desire. In one case, a
married man 43 years old was admitted to a psychiatric hospital. His complaint
was that he was “tensed up” because he believed his wife to be unfaithful. He
provided no evidence to support his suspicions, but reported that the idea of
his wife’s infidelity had been planted by a coworker, who casually asked him
one day whether he had ever suspected his partner of fooling around on him. His
suspicions escalated when his wife failed to provide a satisfactory explanation
for an attractive pair of boots she was wearing. His jealousy became so extreme
that once he attempted to strangle his wife, which failed when neighbors
intervened. Another time, dressed only in underwear, he ran out into the street
in a vain attempt to catch his wife with her suspected lover. Upon further
probing, the psychiatrist discovered that the husband’s jealous symptoms
started shortly after his wife had a hysterectomy operation, which resulted in
a sharp decrease in her sexual desire. The decline in her desire whispered into
the man’s Stone Age brain that she might leave the relationship, triggering a
massive jealousy reaction.