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Speaker 1: From House to Works dot com. Hey, welcome to the podcast.
Speaker 1: This is Molly and I'm Kristen. Kristen, I have something
Speaker 1: pretty cool to brag it up. Okay, So before we
Speaker 1: came in here, I was taking a little quiz on
Speaker 1: Discovery Health dot Com about my levels of jealousy, and,
Speaker 1: as it turns out, based on a ten or so
Speaker 1: question uh quiz, I am not a jealous person. Apparently
Speaker 1: on a scale of one hundred, I am only three
Speaker 1: jealous twenty three out of a hundred. Apparently according to
Speaker 1: the test results, it says you appear to have a
Speaker 1: complete lack of jealous feelings. Um, that sounds kind of inhuman, Molly,
Speaker 1: But I guess, uh, kudos, because I took that same
Speaker 1: quiz and I scored a twenty eight, So it looks
Speaker 1: like I am being more jealous of the two five
Speaker 1: points more jealous. I will say I had a few
Speaker 1: problems with some of the questions. Um. There was a
Speaker 1: question that said, accidentally you find out that your boyfriend
Speaker 1: slash husband confided confided in his friend that he had
Speaker 1: a sexual dream about his favorite actress, and you're asked
Speaker 1: to rate how much would it bother you? From extremely
Speaker 1: do not at all. Now, it's not gonna bother me
Speaker 1: if a guy has a dream about his favorite actress,
Speaker 1: because he's probably never going to meet his favorite act
Speaker 1: it could have been a dream about his ex girlfriend.
Speaker 1: I mean I might have rated it a little higher
Speaker 1: than I did. Yeah, I found a problem with the
Speaker 1: question asking what would you do if you were at
Speaker 1: a party with your boyfriend and you notice that he
Speaker 1: was flirting with a girl. I said that I would.
Speaker 1: I would approach them and make a sarcastic comment about
Speaker 1: them flirting, which, once again, it all depends on the girl.
Speaker 1: You know. If it was, like you said, like an
Speaker 1: ex girlfriend, I would probably fly into his screaming rage
Speaker 1: and leave the party, and i'd I did find some
Speaker 1: of the options they provided for us a little humorous.
Speaker 1: Um For example, would you uh tell your mate that
Speaker 1: you were not feeling well and leave the party with
Speaker 1: or without him? No? Would you find someone to flirt
Speaker 1: with but not really enjoy it? Could be would you
Speaker 1: approach them? Is this what you had to make an
Speaker 1: ironic remark about their flirting exactly. Yeah, that's what I
Speaker 1: would like myself to do. That's what I'd like the
Speaker 1: cool Christian to do. I would like to get up
Speaker 1: and beat the crap out of the woman, which is
Speaker 1: a direct quote from the quiz by the way, Um.
Speaker 1: But before we get into things, I would beat the
Speaker 1: crap out of Why don't we talk more about what
Speaker 1: jealousy is and why some people think that women experience
Speaker 1: it differently than men. Okay, well, I think the first
Speaker 1: thing that we have to talk about, Molly, is a
Speaker 1: difference between jealousy and envy, because those words are used
Speaker 1: interchangeably a lot, and and the fact of the matter
Speaker 1: is they are completely different. Right. Jealousy comes from the
Speaker 1: Greek word zelos, meaning ardor intense desire or eagerness, or
Speaker 1: as envy is in short, you know, a desire for
Speaker 1: something that's not yours. Right. It's basically what you have
Speaker 1: and what you're afraid of losing versus what someone else
Speaker 1: has that you don't have. That's envy. And losing a
Speaker 1: potential like job or partner or possession that you already
Speaker 1: own to someone else, that's jealousy. So now that we
Speaker 1: know the difference between jealousy and envy. Well, the next
Speaker 1: question is our women more jealous than men? Because I
Speaker 1: think that that's a cultural stereotype. It that I at
Speaker 1: least hear a lot sure, And I found on AskMen
Speaker 1: dot Com that my cultural will go to for men
Speaker 1: the top time, top ten sign, she's psychotically jealous. There's
Speaker 1: not any sort of equivalent for males on cosmos. So
Speaker 1: I think that it's more a problem that men worry
Speaker 1: about um in terms of their ladies than vice versa.
Speaker 1: What's the number one sign just out of curiosity? It's
Speaker 1: she keeps tabs on you. For example, if your man
Speaker 1: comes in and says that he was late because of traffic,
Speaker 1: and then you get on the computer to check traffic reports. Um,
Speaker 1: that's a sign apparently that you're psychotically jealous. M hmm.
Speaker 1: But you know, while that's sort of um aggravating behavior
Speaker 1: that ask men dot Com recommends that men get rid
Speaker 1: of jealousy is actually pretty hard to study. Um, you know,
Speaker 1: it's hard to do sort of a long range study
Speaker 1: about an emotion like this. But right now, the theory
Speaker 1: is that women are more inclined to be jealous because
Speaker 1: this is sort of a compliment. We're more honest and
Speaker 1: in touch with our emotions than males. And I have
Speaker 1: to take a point though, with that, with that rationale
Speaker 1: behind women being more jealous, because I think just because
Speaker 1: we might be more inclined to be in touch with
Speaker 1: our emotions and express jealousy, I don't think that in
Speaker 1: any way that means that we experience jealousy more than men. UM. Well,
Speaker 1: you know, you might be onto something because men and
Speaker 1: women get jealous over the same thing. They have the
Speaker 1: same jealousy triggers. Basically, anything valuable to them is going
Speaker 1: to trigger jealousy. One difference, though, that people have noted,
Speaker 1: is that when let's say relationship is threatened, women are
Speaker 1: more likely to aim their jealous behavior at the other
Speaker 1: women than at their partner as a way to sort
Speaker 1: of protect their relationship by getting rid of all known enemies, right,
Speaker 1: And those results tend tend to stay the same across
Speaker 1: younger age groups as well. That that study was dealing
Speaker 1: with jealousy and adult women. The similar study of ninth
Speaker 1: graders found that UM girls have higher standards of loyalty, kindness, empathy,
Speaker 1: and commitment than boys, and so they exhibited more jealousy
Speaker 1: towards um friendship relationships as well. Right, So if you
Speaker 1: know you're supposed to go shopping with your friend and
Speaker 1: all of a sudden she shows up, but another friend,
Speaker 1: this higher level of loyalty and commitment feels violated and
Speaker 1: you act out in a jealous way as opposed to
Speaker 1: have like a guy shows up with another guy, they're
Speaker 1: more likely just all go shopping together to the arcade.
Speaker 1: So why do you think that this is smally, why
Speaker 1: do you think that they're these under ring gender differences
Speaker 1: between jealousy and men and women. Hormones, that's our answer
Speaker 1: to everything. It's actually not hormones. According to some of
Speaker 1: the older studies about gender differences and jealousy, scientists used
Speaker 1: to just chalk it all up to natural selection, evolution, evolution. Yeah, Basically,
Speaker 1: the rationale was that women were more um emotionally jealous
Speaker 1: and romantic relationships because they wanted to prevent the resource
Speaker 1: loss of you know, the man straying and um being
Speaker 1: unfaithful hook to her, whereas men's jealousy triggers or focus
Speaker 1: more on physical infidelity in order to prevent um, you know,
Speaker 1: in order to protect there I guess, um, reproductive success. Right,
Speaker 1: they can't have their women running around and being impregnated
Speaker 1: by everyone. But these those types of theories have largely
Speaker 1: been discredited because of like you said, jealousy is a
Speaker 1: really difficult emotion to you to actually study, because it's
Speaker 1: a pretty complex combination of fear, shame, anger, self esteem,
Speaker 1: and just general life events at all maybe lead up
Speaker 1: to adult patterns of jealousy. Right, But you know, I
Speaker 1: know one guy who would say that, um, we can
Speaker 1: track a specific moment at which women might start acting
Speaker 1: a little bit more jealousy. Would that be Sigmund Freud?
Speaker 1: It would apparently. Old Sigmund has a theory that you've
Speaker 1: probably heard of called penis envy, which is when the
Speaker 1: female envy's male characteristics are capabilities, especially the possession of
Speaker 1: a penis. So as soon as young girls figure out
Speaker 1: that they don't have a penis, they spend the rest
Speaker 1: of their life over compensating for it. And Old Sigmund's
Speaker 1: theory has also been pretty widely discredited, beginning um particularly
Speaker 1: in the nineteen seventies with the with the feminist movement.
Speaker 1: At some point, if if Sigmund Freud's penis MV theory
Speaker 1: was correct, that would mean that girls would have to
Speaker 1: understand and be able to relate to the experience of
Speaker 1: having a penis, which is kind of impossible. But isn't
Speaker 1: that Isn't that what he's saying The whole root of
Speaker 1: our deficiency is, and that's why we're so compelled to
Speaker 1: have children and overcompensate in other areas well. Molly, I
Speaker 1: think that um, Stigmund Freud's kind of concept about women
Speaker 1: having to overcompensate is sort of not valid these days,
Speaker 1: because women really don't have to. Um. You know, there
Speaker 1: are more options open to us to you know, make
Speaker 1: our own way rather than just bearing children. So um.
Speaker 1: And another study in two thous published in two thousand
Speaker 1: four in UH the Journal of Evolutionary Psychology, found that
Speaker 1: when asked about sexual versus emotional infidelity, both men and
Speaker 1: women reported more jealousy about their partners emotional infidelity. So
Speaker 1: it looks like at some point this whole idea of
Speaker 1: women being the more jealous set isn't necessarily true. It
Speaker 1: all kind of evens out, is what you're saying. Well,
Speaker 1: we've been talking a lot, mainly about romantic jealousy, but
Speaker 1: there are a few other types of jealousy we should
Speaker 1: probably mention. Um, it's very common. Sibling rivalry all comes
Speaker 1: from jealousy of your siblings, and that's perfectly normal and natural.
Speaker 1: Unfortunately there's not much you can do about it. Um,
Speaker 1: there's also work jealousy. I mean, if Kristen were to
Speaker 1: find a new partner for this podcast, I'd be extremely jealous.
Speaker 1: And then, um, there's friend jealousy that we kind of
Speaker 1: talked about earlier with the with the studies of the
Speaker 1: ninth graders with you know, if you think that a
Speaker 1: friendship is in jeopardy, you'll become jealous if you know,
Speaker 1: so your best friend starts hanging out with with a
Speaker 1: new girl or God, if you found a new friend,
Speaker 1: I'd beat jealous Christens. And then there is family jealousy,
Speaker 1: which I think ties into sibling rivalry and things like
Speaker 1: that if you think that one, um, you know sibling
Speaker 1: is being favored by parents more than you. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: especially in blended families, there's gonna be some thing that's
Speaker 1: very tricky to navigate when you know new families are
Speaker 1: coming together and they're sort of competition for a stepfather's
Speaker 1: time and things like that, and I think the thing
Speaker 1: to remember about jealousy when we're going over all these
Speaker 1: different types of it is the fact that jealousy is
Speaker 1: a very innate human emotion. Um. There's evidence of um,
Speaker 1: jealous feelings in children as young as six months old.
Speaker 1: I mean, I think that it's something that that we're
Speaker 1: almost born with. But um, even though it's a natural
Speaker 1: emotion for ux to experience, it can tend towards the
Speaker 1: abnormal side, psychotically jealous, as ask men dot Com would
Speaker 1: put it, right, although that's probably a little bit of
Speaker 1: an exaggeration, right, but I mean, people do exhibit abnormal jealousy. UM.
Speaker 1: And this you know, you know for better for where
Speaker 1: some of these issues are tied to women, like extreme insecurity, UM, immaturity.
Speaker 1: I'm not going to count them because most women, I
Speaker 1: think I'm mature, but being a control freak. I mean,
Speaker 1: that's something that sometimes we associate with women is they've
Speaker 1: got to have things their way, and when doesn't happen,
Speaker 1: then jealousy can occur. Right. And the higher students of
Speaker 1: body image cultural standards like that I think can also
Speaker 1: play a big role. But the good thing about jealousy
Speaker 1: is that when experienced sort of in a normal scenario,
Speaker 1: it can drive you to kind of accomplish greater things,
Speaker 1: sort of like anger can be a useful emotion. It
Speaker 1: can be a very motivating force if you use it
Speaker 1: for the right reasons, if you use your powers for
Speaker 1: good and not evil. Right. If you, for instance, with
Speaker 1: workplace jealousy, if I think that one of my co
Speaker 1: workers is going to be up for promotion that I
Speaker 1: think that i'm due instead, that will probably make me
Speaker 1: come into work earlier, get more done, get my boss's
Speaker 1: attention more hopefully in good ways. Um, that will make
Speaker 1: me compete more for for that promotion. Right. And it's
Speaker 1: really more interpersonal jealousy within friendships and relationships that can
Speaker 1: be a little harder to navigate. And the advice we
Speaker 1: have for that is kind of simple. It may not
Speaker 1: always sound like the most practical advice, um, but it's
Speaker 1: it's pretty reckon and buy experts that if you do
Speaker 1: have jealousy that's sort of interfering with your relationship with someone,
Speaker 1: you really just have to sit and talk it out
Speaker 1: and explain what's making you upset, um, how you can
Speaker 1: deal with it. And I think that's what the quiz
Speaker 1: that we were talking about earlier was trying to get
Speaker 1: at um with some of their options, even though a
Speaker 1: few of them were things that were kind of silly,
Speaker 1: like eating the crap out of another woman. Yeah um.
Speaker 1: Over being overly aggressive or completely passive aggressive not healthy
Speaker 1: with good ideas to Jella Chelsea. So if you want
Speaker 1: to learn more about jealousy and the other complex human emotions,
Speaker 1: you can go read about that on how stuff works
Speaker 1: dot com. For more on this and thousands of other topics.
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