The jealousy is one of the most remarkable problems in the relationships of almost all kinds of psychological profiles. It is a phenomenon that arises from unsound beliefs about reality and that not only negatively affects the person who experiences this jealousy in the first person, but also the person towards whom the obsessive thoughts are directed, and that with the passage of time can become entrenched, forming a stumbling block that is difficult to overcome.

However, jealousy does not always have to be due to the same triggers , and can appear in a wide variety of situations, even in cases where there is no relationship or even an intimate one. The existence of this great variability of "sources" of the lattice does not mean that, in general and grosso modo , some basic patterns in the appearance of jealousy cannot be found. Next you can know more about the main reasons why jalousies appear, and from there you can understand better how to face them.

Main reasons for jealousy

1. confusing the "we" with the "I"

An important part of jealousy is usually due to a bad management of the uncertainty about what the couple does and thinks . In the most extreme cases of jealousy, the simple fact of not knowing as much about one’s partner as one knows about oneself is something that irritates and produces anguish, but there are also many cases of moderate jealousy that feed on this same fear of ambiguity. The belief that in a couple there must be some sort of telepathic communication through which two minds merge into one can only lead to frustration and desperate attempts to eliminate the other person’s individuality.

It is hypothesized that traditional romantic love promotes the emergence of this type of belief, although it is not proven that other models of love (such as polyamor ) reduce the propensity for this source of jealousy to appear.

2. Insecurity

Insecurity is usually one of the main reasons for jealousy in all kinds of relationships. Insecure people tend to believe that in certain aspects of their day-to-day life they are at a disadvantage with respect to other people , and this leads them to be constantly looking for strategies to try to compensate for this supposedly disadvantaged situation.

As far as relationships and jealousy are concerned, someone who is insecure may come to think that he or she is not valuable or attractive enough to keep the other person for a long time without making great sacrifices and subjecting him or her to a certain amount of vigilance. Of course, this is a serious problem that must be addressed by addressing this person’s self-image and self-esteem.

3. Some tendency to paranoid personality

It is possible to show certain characteristics related to the paranoid personality without strictly having a Paranoid Personality Disorder , let alone having paranoid schizophrenia. This means that there are a lot of people who are prone to paranoid thoughts and therefore show some difficulty in trusting others.

As a result, they may give malicious intent to their friends, partners and family, and thus be on the defensive. In this case, jealousy would be a symptom of a somewhat broader problem that affects other areas of the person’s social life .

4. Selective attention

Jealousy can also be part of a pessimistic view of relationships . That is, it is possible that someone who is jealous is focusing his or her attention only on those cases in which he or she remembers that the jealousy has ended up looking like accurate intuitions about reality, either because they have anticipated situations of infidelity or because they have been a sign that the relationship was coming to an end.

This may be due to the fact that these cases are more remarkable because of their uniqueness than the ordinary cases where jealousy is totally removed from what objectively happens .

5. The couple’s reaction to our own jealousy

Jealousy is often expressed through relationship crises or small conflicts. Jealousy is usually more expressed than communicated, or in other words, the person involved only comes through it from the interpretation of our own acts, not because we talk about this jealousy in a sincere and open way. This causes the other person to change his or her attitude towards us, usually being more defensive and claiming his or her individuality, doing things on purpose that “bother” us even without realizing it.

Beyond moral considerations about whether this type of reaction is right or wrong, the combined effect of this change in attitude and our jealousy attack generates a loop of expectations and conflicting interests that often aggravates the problem.

Concluding

These are some of the reasons that are useful to explain the appearance of jealousy, but it never hurts to remember that each case is unique. They can be taken as guidelines for self-reflection and check to what extent the jealousy felt follows the logics described here, but they are not rigid descriptions of reality.