The Dangerous Passion: Why Jealousy Is as Necessary as Love and Sex (20 page)

“You see, we were always arguing about her extramarital affairs.
That day was something more than that. I came home from work and as soon as I
entered the house I picked up my little daughter and held her in my arms. Then
my wife turned around and said to me: ‘You are so damned stupid that you don’t
even know she is someone else’s child and not yours.’ I was shocked! I became
so mad, I took the rifle and shot her.”

“We got married on a Saturday. She took the whole reception as a
joke. She was really vulgar and nasty all day and she wanted to take her
clothes off in front of everybody. I think she was hurt because her parents did
not come to the wedding. Later that day I saw her being friendly with an
ex-boyfriend of hers whom she had invited to the wedding. I started having
doubts about her. I know she was a prostitute before. Anyway, that night when
we went to bed I asked her why she acted that way during the reception. Then
she replied to me: ‘You are a bloody $20 trick just like the others.’ At that
moment I was so ashamed of her and felt so humiliated that I couldn’t take it
anymore. Then I put my hands around her neck and choked her to death.”

In this study, 76 percent of the killers issued threats to the
victims on the day of the killing, and 47 percent stated that their quarrels at
the time of the homicide centered on sexual refusals or extramarital affairs.
Infidelity and sexual rejection figure prominently in many spouse killings. Not
all lethal violence is directed at the mate, however, nor is all lethal
violence committed by men. Consider the following case.

In the small North Texas town of Mansfield near Fort Worth,
Diane Zamora and David Graham lured Adrianne Jones to a remote lake road where
they beat her with a dumbbell and shot her in the head. Diane Zamora had
apparently convinced her boyfriend, David, to collaborate on this lethal act.
The catalyst was sexual jealousy. Adrianne Jones had had sex with David,
fomenting a ferocious rage in Diane. In order to continue the relationship,
Diane insisted that David help kill her sexual rival. They were both convicted
of premeditated murder and sentenced to life in prison.

These are individual cases, of course, but a wide variety of
studies point to jealousy as the primary motive for killing partners and
rivals. The discovery of infidelity and the finality of ending the relationship
are the most common catalysts.

Martin Daly and Margo Wilson compiled evidence from a variety of
sources to support this conclusion. In a study of 58 marital conflicts leading
to murder in Detroit, they discovered that two-thirds were committed by men. Of
these, 16 men killed their wife for infidelity or suspected infidelity.
Seventeen men killed their rival or suspected rival. Two men killed their
wives, allegedly in self-defense. And two gay men in the sample killed their
male lover because of his infidelity.

Women kill because of jealousy, but at a far lower rate. Only
six women in the sample killed their husband because of his infidelity. Three
killed a rival woman. Nine women killed their husbands in self-defense, after
the men became violent after accusing them of sexual infidelity. And the family
members of women killed two men while defending the women against their violent
partners.

Other studies report similar results. Peter Chimbos conducted
intensive interviews with 34 perpetrators of spouse killings in Canada. The
primary source of conflict, according to his summary, was “sexual matters
(affairs and refusals),” which occurred in 29 of these cases, or 85 percent.
The majority of these couples (22) had been separated as a result of infidelity
and had either reconciled or had talked about reconciling. Combined, these two
studies point to sexual jealousy as a key cause of partner killing in North
America.

Do these findings generalize to other cultures and countries? In
one study of court records in the Sudan, 74 out of 300 cases of
male-perpetrated spousal homicide were explicitly attributed to jealousy. In a
study of Ugandan homicides that included, but were not restricted to, spousal
homicide, sexual jealousy and adultery ranked as the third leading motive, just
short of robbery and property disputes.

The most extensive cross-cultural study examined the court trial
transcripts of 533 homicides among a variety of African cultures, including the
Tiv, Soga, Gisu, Nyoro, Luyia, and Luo. Ninety-one of these cases explicitly
reported extreme sexual jealousy, infidelity of the spouse, or the wife leaving
the husband as the primary motive for the homicide. This is surely an
underestimate of jealous homicides, however, since in many cases a large
percentage of the killings are attributed merely to “drunken arguments,” with
the real issue of contention left unspecified.

The second most extensive non-Western study examined the court
records of 275 homicides occurring in the Belgian Congo. In many cases, no
motive was explicitly recorded, but for those that did specify a motive, male
sexual jealousy dominated the accounts. Of these, 59 were due to the man’s
jealousy, and only one to the woman’s jealousy. These 60 cases were broken down
into subtypes: 16 husbands killed their wives, her affair partner, or both as a
result of sexual infidelity; 10 killed partners who had either deserted them,
or were threatening to leave the relationship; 3 killed former wives after
those wives had succeeded in obtaining a divorce; and 3 killed the new husbands
when their ex-wives remarried. Mistresses and engaged partners do not escape
the wrath of male sexual jealousy, as the deaths of 13 such women attest. The
one woman who killed as a result of jealousy murdered her husband’s mistress. Male
sexual jealousy was
not
implicated in only 20 cases in the entire
sample of spousal homicides. In all these instances the motives were left
unspecified, leading one to suspect that some were probably provoked by sexual
jealousy as well.

Jealousy, the dangerous passion spurred by infidelity or
desertion, unleashes a fury against the partner or interloper unrivaled by any
other emotion. Sometimes it results in dead bodies.

How can we comprehend the repulsive act of killing a mate?
Martin Daly and Margo Wilson offer an explanation that may be labeled the
“slip-up hypothesis.” According to this explanation, spousal homicide is not
adaptive, nor has it ever been adaptive for the perpetrators. Instead, dead
bodies result from slips in a dangerous game of brinkmanship. Men use violence
to control women and to prevent them from leaving, according to this argument.
In order to make threats credible, actual violence has to be used. Sometimes
the violence gets out of hand and results in a dead spouse. To quote Daly and
Wilson directly: “Men . . . strive to control women . . . women struggle to
resist coercion and to maintain their choices. There is brinkmanship and risk
of disaster in any such contest, and
homicides by spouses of either sex may
be considered slips in this dangerous game
.” They elaborate in a later
publication: “the fatal outcome in these homicides [spousal killings] is
hypothesized to be
an epiphenomenal product of psychological processes that
were selected for their nonlethal outcomes
.” Men use violence to control
women, and the psychology behind violent control has served a useful purpose
for our male ancestors. But sometimes the violence gets out of hand, and
results in “dysfunctionally extreme manifestations” that are “clearly
counterproductive.” Does this explanation square with the facts, or is a more
disturbing conclusion warranted?

Joshua Duntley and I have proposed an alternative to the
Wilson-Daly ‘slip-up’ hypothesis. We started by examining the known facts about
spousal homicide and asking whether the slip-up hypothesis explains them. Many
homicides are premeditated, for example, and do not seem like mere accidents or
slips.

A common refrain of killers to their victims while they are
still alive is, “If I can’t have you, nobody can.” One Australian man, who
killed his wife a month after she left him, said: “I was in love with Margaret,
and she would not live with me anymore. I knew it was all finished so I bought
the rifle to shoot her and then kill myself. If I can’t have her, nobody can.”
In another case, an Illinois man issued the following threat to his wife after
she had filed for divorce but before the divorce became official: “I swear if
you ever leave me, I’ll follow you to the ends of the earth and kill you.”
Unfortunately, this man made good on his promise and killed his wife in her
home.

If spousal murders are really just slip-ups in a dangerous game
of coercive threats and control, why do many spousal homicides seem planned and
premeditated? Duntley and I argue that men have evolved a mate-killing module,
a psychological mechanism whose function is not threat or deterrence, but
rather the literal death of a mate. How could killing one’s mate ever have been
advantageous to our ancestral forefathers? We suggest several possible benefits
that would have flowed to killers under some circumstances. First, in a
polygynous mating context, where a man might have several wives, killing one
wife as a result of an infidelity or defection could prevent other wives from
cheating or leaving.

Second, in some cultures, a man’s reputation would have suffered
so extensively as a result of a wife’s infidelity that killing her would be the
only means of salvaging lost honor. Killing an unfaithful wife sometimes restores
a man’s honor. As Daly and Wilson note, “Not infrequently, men salvage some of
their lost honor by killing an unchaste wife . . . and the male seducer.
Shrinking from such vengeance may even add to their dishonor.”

Third, a sexual infidelity may have inflicted such a severe cost
on a man in the currency of paternity uncertainty and the associated
misdirection of his investments, that killing the woman may have been a viable
means of stanching the costs. If she is pregnant with another man’s child, he
also hurts his rival’s reproductive success.

Our fourth argument hinges on the fact that one of the major
triggers of mate killing is an irrevocable loss of the relationship. When a
woman finally convinces her partner that she’s leaving for good, the loss may
be so substantial that it pushes the man over the edge into entertaining
homicidal thoughts.

The final end of the relationship, in sum, historically may have
put the man in triple jeopardy in the currency of reproduction. He lost
entirely his access to her reproductive capabilities. He suffered severe and
possibly irreparable reputational damage as a result of the loss. And if the
woman was at all desirable, it was likely that she would remarry, so that a
man’s loss would have been his rival’s gain. His same-sex rival benefited in
direct proportion to the original man’s loss.

According to this theory, over the long course of human
evolutionary history, it has been reproductively advantageous for men
in
some circumstances
to kill an errant partner, especially when the finality
of her departure sinks in. A key prediction follows: Women should be most at
risk of being killed when they have actually defected from the relationship, or
when they have stated unequivocally that they are leaving for good.

Ironically, Wilson and Daly, the proponents of the opposing
slip-up theory, provide the most compelling data in support of our Evolved
Homicide Module Theory. In their analysis of the 1,333 mate homicides in
Canada, estranged or separated wives are from five to seven times more likely
to get killed by partners than women who are still living with their husbands.
The separation time appears to be crucial. Women are at greatest risk in the
first two months after separation, with 47 percent of the women homicide victims
being killed during this interval, and fully 91 percent within the first year
after separation.

Research conducted in three separate countries—New South Wales,
Australia (1968–1986), Chicago (1965–1990), and Canada (1974–1990)—confirms
these patterns.

In Chicago, for example, 44 percent of the women homicide
victims who had separated were killed within the first two months of departure,
and 78 percent were killed within the first year. Similar percentages were
found for Canada and Australia. These results convey a warning that should be
heeded by all women on the verge of separation: the first few months after
estrangement are especially dangerous, and precautions should be taken for at
least a year. Men do not always act on threats to kill estranged wives, of
course, but such threats should always be taken seriously.

Wilson and Daly interpret these results to mean that men
threaten their wives in order to control them and prevent their departure. In
order to make such a threat credible, actual violence has to be carried out.
They are undoubtedly correct that men sometimes use threats and violence to
achieve control and deter defection. Here is what one Chicago woman declared,
when asked by a friend why she did not leave her husband after he had battered
her many times: “I can’t, because he’ll kill us all, and he’s going to kill
me.” Men undoubtedly use violent threats to prevent women from leaving.

Nonetheless, there must be more to the story of lethal violence,
something beyond the desire to exert control. This evidence supports the theory
that estrangement, especially when the husband’s loss is compounded by a
rival’s gain, may have been one of the most severe costs that a husband could
incur. Homicide may have been an adaptive method of reducing this cost. As
disturbing as this idea is, we must confront the demons of human nature if we
are ever to understand and prevent the abhorrent act of wife-killing.

In trying to come to a conceptual grip on the problem of mate
murder, another source of evidence comes from laws throughout the land that
have codified lethal violence against partners. It is clear that the laws on
the books throughout the world implicitly acknowledge that the discovery of a
partner’s infidelity is sometimes viewed as a “justifiable cause” of mate
killing, and hence deserving of less severe forms of punishment than other
murders. As Daly and Wilson state, “adultery is widely construed to justify his
resorting to violence that would in other circumstances be deemed criminal.”
Among the Yapese, for example, a husband who caught his wife in bed with
another man “had the right to kill her and the adulterer or to burn them in the
house.” Similar provisions historically have been made in China, Japan, and
other Asian countries.