An Attempt at Clear Thinking on Relationships

As I alluded to in the previous post, recently I've been thinking a lot about how relationships work, and how they could possibly work. The result is a critique of monogamy, of sorts. Really what I'm criticizing is what I consider our outdated interpretation of the jealousy we feel when our partner engages in infidelity. Monogamy just sometimes wanders into the crossfire. Let's get started: an attempt at clear thinking on relationships.

In the ten years or so that I have been interested in having romantic and sexual relationships, I have picked up on some norms. This is a shaky place to begin because the resulting line of reasoning rests on my somewhat subjective observations and experiences. Is it possible I have misconstrued how our society behaves? Certainly. I don't think I have but I'm open to arguments that I'm not seeing the reality of the situation. So this is what I've noticed: people desire multiple partners. This is expressed in many different ways, and most explicitly by males. This desire leads us to suffer and as I hope to show, unnecessarily. Why does this make us suffer? We suffer because we get jealous.

We get jealous when our partner flirts with another potential mate, and we positively lose our head when we learn they have been unfaithful. Upon noticing this, there are (at least) two questions that should be asked, 1) Why do we get jealous? and 2) What is this process like? The following are humble attempts to explain the origin and process of jealousy. Finally, I offer some proscriptive ideas for overcoming this problem which I hope to be criticized so we can work toward understanding how to more effectively and more frequently make people happy.

The Origins of Jealousy


Human beings, like every other organism, evolved to their current form over the long and haphazard process of evolution driven by natural selection. If ever there were a strongly supported scientific idea, this is it. Evolution is a fact as well as one can be attested to. In my opinion, the best evidence for this idea is found in two places: the fossil record and genetics. The fossil record contains many incomplete entries, but absolutely no inconsistencies. Not a single contradiction has ever been found, no rabbits in the Precambrian. But even if it were impossible for animals to leave behind fossils for us to find, the genetic evidence is sufficiently convincing. Every organism ever studied has the same DNA base pairs: Guanine + Cytosine and Adenine + Thymine. The genetic evidence tells a story of a planet that began with very simple and similar life forms that branched out into countless forms with increasing genetic variety as we move through time. Human beings are a part of this process, and will always have a part in this story as it continues into the future for as long as there are reproducing agents.

Here a crucial point must be made: for the vast majority of the time Homo Sapiens have been a unique species, they have lived out their lives in a very specific environment, learning to solve very specific problems. The point in time when we branched off from our last common ancestor with the chimpanzee has been estimated to have taken place between 6-8 million years ago. The hominid species to which we belong is thought to have become distinct between 100-250,000 years ago. The agricultural revolution, which is essentially when civilization as we know it began, took place only 15,000 years ago (roughly). This means that human beings were hunter gatherers for potentially hundreds of thousands of years longer than we've grown our food and lived in groups larger than small tribes. Maybe as little as 6% of our species' lifetime has been spent living in ways we might recognize today. It may never be possible for us to have an intuitive sense of this kind of timeline. We live decades, a century at most. One hundred thousand years is a stretch of time we simply do not have the cognitive tools to comprehend in the same way we comprehend one year's time. But in that stretch of time, human beings lived and learned. The problem solving mechanisms we picked up on the plains of Africa, because they were essential to our survival for so long, are with us still. One of these evolved psychological mechanisms is jealousy.

Appealing to the findings and theorizing of evolutionary psychology has its limitations to be sure, and it deserves criticism for them. Nothing about the evo psych ideas presented here are original to me. They have been put forth by scientists, are being argued over and no doubt will continue to be for some time. So take this line of reasoning for what it is: a hypothesis that could be disproved.

Let's now return to jealousy. Using this framework, how is jealousy to be understood? Is it an adaptation to solve a recurrent problem of our ancestors? Is it a byproduct of some other adaptation? Or is it simply noise, a detail only tangentially related to an adaptation? In my opinion it is an adaptation, selected by the environment because it motivated individuals to solve the problem of infidelity. Infidelity was (and is) a problem for human mating. (From here on I'm going to exclusively refer to heterosexual mating.) Males are motivated to make sure its their genes that combine with the female's, and not another male's. Females are motivated to make sure their partner is willing to devote his resources towards the development of their offspring, and not some other female's offspring, seeing as how she is going to be incapacitated by childbirth and less able to acquire resources herself. Infidelity puts both of these goals in jeopardy. If the male's partner copulates with another male, he can no longer be sure the resulting offspring carries his genes, and there is powerful cognitive machinery at work in his mind establishing a preference for his genes. (We are literally machines designed for just this purpose.) Females do not have this problem. When they get pregnant, they know it's theirs. There is no anxiety over cuckoldry. Females are on their guard for another form of infidelity. They became sensitive to the correlation between the male's affection for a female and his willingness to devote his time and resources towards the development of her offspring. In fact, social psychologists consistently find that instances of sexual infidelity more reliably inspire jealousy in males and instances of emotional infidelity more reliably inspire jealousy in females.

But how exactly did jealousy solve the problem of infidelity in ancestral humans? It stands to reason that any emotion which motivated an individual to act in the face of potential infidelity, and thereby increase the chances of getting its genes copied into the next generation, would have been selected for by the environment. Jealousy does just this. Jealous females are less likely to grant a male sexual access, instead entering into a standoff where she will withhold until she is convinced of his exclusive emotional investment. Jealous males are more like to engage in "mate guarding" (following his mate around and being physically present when his absence might allow her to mate with another) or "possessive ornamentation" (adorning her person with displays of resources).

It is not difficult to see why these behaviors may have led to the adoption of an assumed monogamous courtship process. As a strategy, monogamy got both parties what they wanted. The male was allowed sexual access so long as he did not develop a romantic relationship with another, the female was granted resource allocation so long as she did not mate with another. This strategy has been so successful that it has guided our species into the present situation. (This is why it is not surprising that we use language like "cheating" to describe infidelity. It is true that many cultures do not practice monogamy, and have adopted widely different dynamics for childrearing, but because I lack the personal exposure to the effect these strategies have upon the happiness and suffering of the societies and individuals engaging in them, I am going to keep my comments focused on the dominant dynamic of my society: assumed monogamy.)

The Process of Jealousy

We have entertained a possible explanation for the origin of the emotion (or emotion complex) we call "jealousy." Now let's see how this maps on to twenty-first century courtship. What happens when a female comes to learn that her boyfriend has been unfaithful to her and has entered into a romantic relationship with another female? She becomes jealous, a suite of unpleasant feelings overcome her: anger for the betrayal, sadness for the humiliation. But how does she interpret these emotions, what account does she give of this process? It is obvious that people interpret these emotions in a number of ways, probably far too many to list here, but I wish to point out (as it seems to me) the most prominent interpretation of jealousy and the two directions it typically takes. The jealousy one feels is interpreted as a deficiency, either in oneself or in one's partner. In one instance, jealousy prompts anger at the betrayal and is interpreted as a deficiency in the parter. "He's just so perverted! He's just so selfish! I should be enough for him!" In other words, the problem is with the partner: his character suffers some deficiency. In the other direction, the jealousy prompts sadness at the humiliation/loss and is interpreted as a deficiency in oneself. "She had to go outside our relationship to get what she wanted. She couldn't get it from within our relationship because I couldn't provide it." In other words, the problem is with me: my character is somehow deficient. What determines which direction someone will take when confronted with infidelity? Here I am genuinely uncertain. The details of the relationship and the personalities involved must play a role though. Someone's self confidence/esteem must surely have some predictive potential, however these traits may be measured.

The Incongruence between the Origins and Modern Interpretation of Jealousy

So what is the problem? It is certainly possible that one person could simply be deficient and cause an instance of infidelity. He may not have been a good listener after all, she may not have been willing to explore more novel sexual activities. But consider: What if neither party was deficient? What if both had a healthy, normal sex drive and both personalities were compatible? This also seems possible, perhaps even common. Two people like each other and begin a romantic relationship, but somewhere down the road one or another hooks up with someone outside of the relationship, leading to the original relationship to collapse under the weight of jealousy. Even in this instance, the overwhelming force of jealousy still tempts one party to interpret their emotions in one or even both of the described ways. (In fact, it seems possible that someone may bounce back and forth between these two interpretations, fluctuating with their raging emotional state.)

This is where I think the problem can be identified. This interpretation of jealousy is a rationalization. People are trying to make sense of the flood of emotions that accompanies an instance of infidelity. In reality, we have merely been programmed to react to infidelity this way, the reaction doesn't always make sense. Remember, why was jealousy selected for by the environment in the first place? It was selected because it was adaptive, that is, it helped get one's genes into the next generation. But this is no longer the goal of modern couples. We know this implicitly: as we enter our teenage years and begin dating others, we know we are not going to mate and have children with everyone we have sex with (perhaps not with anyone). Yet, our minds are functioning as though this is the case, because this was the case for the vast majority of our species' career. One hundred thousand years ago, no form of contraception existed. Every instance of copulation carried with it the risk of pregnancy, and if a steady parenting setup had not been arranged, the risk of the offspring dying from neglect was very real. Our minds simply have not, and may never, intuitively grasp that contraception is available to prevent pregnancy and allow us to engage in sex purely for its emotional and physical appeals, largely without risk. Because a missed opportunity used to mean the difference between having a stable family and not, we are still assessing every mate as a potential partner with which we may start a family. Should someone come to the conclusion that she is not interested in serious relationships and just wants to have more causal ones (for a year or forever), she is still assessing everyone as a potential mate, thereby priming herself to be jealous should infidelity arise. We do this because it was adaptive for the majority of humanity's existence. I would argue that it may no longer be adaptive for us to think or behave this way. It is simply hard to see because jealousy is such a successfully motivating mechanism.

The Illusion: Someone's Everything

It seems to me that at the heart of jealousy there is an illusion that must be dispelled. When people enter into a romantic relationship (or a platonic friendship for that matter), its the result of one or more things: physical attraction, a shared sense of humor, similar interests etc. When one of these similarities exists, we are essentially conducting an experiment. We wish to see whether or not we're compatible. If we're not, we move on, and if we are, we see where it goes. I think it is helpful to visualize this process with a Venn diagram of a couple's interests. The tool doesn't allow for much nuance, but for our purposes here it is sufficient.

Person A and Person B meet at a coffeehouse and begin chatting about what they like to do on the weekends. Person A likes to stay home and read, play video games, and watch films. Person B likes to go out hiking, swim in the ocean and read on the shore. These two groups of activities have differences but potential similarities. While A is the stay-in type and B the outdoorsy type, their book preferences could have considerable overlap. This may be enough to start a friendship, perhaps even a romance. What we wouldn't expect is for their interests to overlap perfectly, because in reality this just doesn't happen. We know this is true implicitly. We have different groups of friends because we're all interested in different things. There are friends you dance with and friends you go to the cinema with. Nothing about either relationship precludes the other. Yet somehow, in romantic relationships, we expect to fulfill the entirety of our partner's romantic interests. Saying that this is an impossible task seems almost a truism, because however our partner satisfies us, by definition they can't satisfy our desire for novelty. It is true that some couples adopt various strategies (role playing for instance) to keep it fresh, but just attempting this is to say through your actions that it is true. 

An Example and Analogy

Racism

The penchant for racism within the human personality seems instructive. Why are we innately racist? Racism can perhaps best be explained by the same line of reasoning as jealousy. Ancestral humans lived in tribes. These tribes must have come into contact with one another. The difficulty in procuring resources and securing sexual access to females must have made the prospect of theft very appealing. So, when a member of an alien tribe is spotted on the horizon, should you invite him or her into your group, you ran the risk of being ransacked and your resources stolen. It therefore seems likely that denying an out-group member the benefit of the doubt, if not meeting them with outright hostility, became remarkably adaptive. So any mechanism that allowed for the quick identification of in-group or out-group status was probably selected for by the environment. After all, retaining your resources was of grave importance for your ability to rear children and advertise status to females. Various forms of identification would have sufficed, but skin color may have simply been the easiest.

So why do we abhor racism today? There are many reasons, I would suggest that these include cooperation between races on mutually beneficial projects. This has been found to reduce out-group hostility and allows  groups to expand the circle of sentiments to include more people, as "honorary members" of your tribe. Additionally, no good evidence has been found that different races have anything more than negligible differences at the genetic level. To put it simply, we are no longer racist (at least not to the flagrant degree of our recent past) because we have failed to find justification for the suffering resulting from racist ideologies.

Even by my lights the analogy isn't perfect. The suffering resulting from racism is typically done by one to another, whereas much of the suffering from jealousy seems to be self-inflicted. What racism and jealousy have in common though, is that while they may have been adaptive for us in the past, in the present they cause people to suffer.

The Trip

Please entertain the following hypothetical: a friend of many years is planning a trip and intends to stay with you for a couple days while in town. However, after arriving, you spend less time together than expected, s/he electing to visit other friends while in town. Does this make you jealous of the others your friend visits? Even if so, the jealousy would be far more pronounced if it were your boyfriend who decides to spend less time with you than expected, electing to instead stay a couple nights with an ex-girlfriend. What is the difference between these two scenarios? One might be tempted to attribute the different level of jealousy these situations would arouse to the different amount of emotional investment each relationship carries. But what if they carried the same emotional weight for you; what if it was your brother or mother who blew you off to hang out with someone else? You would be upset no doubt, but probably not so upset that you would key their car, or scream at them over the phone, reactions that we can easily imagine someone engaging in the romantic scenario. I would argue that the real difference between these scenarios is sex. You are having sex with your boyfriend, not your brother (hopefully). Because sex (potential or actual) enters into the equation, certain mechanisms in the brain will be activated that otherwise would not be, or at least not to the same degree. You may be upset that your brother prefers to hang out with someone else over you, but this could be because he could potentially aid in the project of rearing your children. Your boyfriend on the other hand, should he be the father of your children, is expected to aid the project much more explicitly and rigorously. Therefore, hanging out with an ex-girlfriend instead of you tempts you to conclude that his commitment to the relationship is flagging and jealousy ensues. One troubling observation is that even if you are not interested in starting a family at this point in your life (or simply not with this person), this process is still going to happen. We have been built to react this way whenever sex is a factor.

Approaching a Solution

In a monogamous scenario, what's being communicated is "You can have my love, or you can have your freedom, but you can't have both." Is this really love? It seems to me that while we may wish to call many different things love, we are necessarily closer to what most people mean by that word most of the time when a couple share the goal of making their partner happy. Wouldn't saying "You can have my love and your freedom" be communicating a greater interest in your partner's wellbeing? Jealousy makes this hard to see because it gets in the way and convinces us that someone can't love us if they love another. We are inclined to believe this is true because our ancestors picked up on the correlation between monogamy and successful mating and have yet to put it down. The correlation between monogamy and love however, is illusory. It just doesn't follow.

Let's pretend for a moment that any of this has convinced you to rethink the "standard model" for relationships you have in your brain. So what now? How is any of this applied in day to day relationships? My suggestion is to more or less ignore the emotion of jealousy when it arises.

Impossible, Merely Impractical, or Does Practice Make Perfect?

Is ignoring or overcoming jealousy impossible? Surely not. Many people have accomplished this, and are doing it at this moment. (This doesn't prove everyone can, but that potentially you could too.) Is it impractical? Well, what is practical about placing a restriction on the freedom of a lover? It could be argued that getting involved with several people might complicate relationship management to the point of anxiety and frustration. However, this is already an issue in monogamous arrangements, and everyone handles it differently. Some couples work best when they have more time apart, others when they are always together. I see honest, open communication to be a sort of all-purpose remedy here. You can't solve your problems unless you are honest about what they are. So, if having too many people involved is a problem, work towards a solution that seems reasonable to everyone. This will not work without honesty. How can your partner even begin to value your wellbeing in a way that approaches love if they do not know what you want?

Just agreeing that we would like to jettison jealousy if we could puts us on the same page. So when jealousy arises, try behaving as though you are not jealous. This seems a skill like any other. Aggression, territoriality, hostility to outsiders and submission to leaders are all natural tendencies, but upon reflection we recognize that these are behaviors we wish to discourage in a free society. Jealousy is just as natural, and upon reflection I think we should recognize that it has no place in a truly free relationship.

Conclusion

I am fond of the comparison of humans to computer systems. Evolution designed the hardware we run, what mechanisms are really, materially at work in our brains. Our ideas, our worldview is the software. With jealousy, this is a case of installing software that can bypass the limitations of our hardware. To install this software, we need only be honest with ourselves and our partners.

Let me be clear about what I'm not saying: polyamory, open relationships, monogamy, none of these are the goal. A specific relational dynamic is not going to work for everyone. The goal is developing a dynamic that makes everyone in your romantic sphere as happy as possible. I am simply arguing that jealousy prevents monogamy from realizing this because people desire multiple partners.

Epilogue

While I've been thinking about this for some time, this is my first attempt to run through the arguments pseudo-systematically. It would not surprise me if I have missed something important, so please criticize wherever you feel I have been sloppy. I would love to get as much feedback as readers can throw at me, especially from the skeptic community. If enough of it sticks, I would be interested in posting a rejoinder.