Jealousy: The green-eyed monster

Jealousy is a common human weakness that many people find difficult to get over. Most women feel jealous when they see well-dressed and more beautiful women than them. Men are no better. They feel jealous when others occupy higher positions in life and move about in limousines. On most occasions, when you are jealous of another person, you crave for the other person's qualities or possessions. However, this is something humanly impossible.

When you find that you cannot have the other person's qualities or possessions, you begin to hate him. Suppose you are a clerical servant in a government department. What happens when you meet one of your classmates who is now an eminent surgeon or lawyer? Instead of congratulating him you will begin to think of him in a most unpleasant way. In such a situation you will fail to reason out how he came to such a high position in life.

Jealousy raises its ugly head in most romantic affairs. Sometimes, the boyfriend tries to restrict his girlfriend's movements and behaviour. While keeping his freedom to flirt with other girls, the girlfriend will not be allowed even to talk with another boy.

When your love is not reciprocated you feel jealous of that person. If the girl opens her heart to a third person, the dejected lover will feel hurt. Eventually, he might want to teach a lesson to his assumed girlfriend. When jealousy turns to anger and hatred, you come to the conclusion that she has no right to reject you. If you really love her, you will allow her to select her life partner without any hindrance.

The situation in some marriages is no better. Once I went to meet a friend of mine who had got married after a stormy love affair. He never introduced his wife to me saying that she was busy in the kitchen. After sometime when I wanted to leave, he offered to drive me to the nearest railway station. Before leaving he locked the front door and put the key in his pocket!

Jealousy is not confined to romantic affairs and marriages. It can even be seen in friendships. It is very common to see men and women insisting that you cannot have any other friend. This means you are trying to possess your friend like an object. I always wonder whether human beings can be possessed or owned like fountain pens, houses or automobiles!

As one philosopher says, "no one owns anyone". Therefore, even in love and marriage, we do not own our partner. Romantic relationships and marriages should be founded on mutual trust.

When you are jealous of somebody else's success, you begin to shoot arrows of ill will towards him. Strangely, these poisoned arrows fail to strike him. They very often boomerang on you. In other words, you will feel the effects of ill will yourself. This is not something fictional. It has been scientifically proved that your ill feelings will be the cause of your own suffering.

In villages you hear the familiar saying, Okunta hena gahanna one! (Let lightning strike them!) Fortunately, lightning will never strike them. But one fine day lightning will strike you in the form of mental or physical disorders. They say that curses come home to roost. So, there's no point in cursing others simply because they are better off than you in some respect.

Whatever form jealousy takes, it is certainly a very dangerous negative feeling. It can affect not only the person who harbours jealousy but also others close to him.

Psychologists who have been doing research on jealousy argue that evolutionary forces lead to certain differences between men's and women's behaviour. David Buss and colleagues point to differences in the nature of jealousy between men and women. According to them, men are jealous in cases of sexual infidelity than in cases of emotional infidelity.

On the other hand, women are more jealous in cases of emotional infidelity than in cases of sexual infidelity.

This is a controversial view put forward by Buss. He says that for males sexual infidelity represents a threat to their ability to ensure that their children are actually their own. Females, on the other hand, have no doubt that the children they give birth to are their own. They also know who fathered them. For them maintaining the males' emotional attachment is more crucial than sexual infidelity. Although Buss's theory seems accurate, he has been challenged by contemporary psychologists.

Apart from such psychological theories, jealousy remains a potent negative feeling that will not bring any happiness to anyone.