Comments | differenceblog: The jealous type

differenceblog

The jealous type

Oct 25, 2006 08:05

Christine R. Harris discusses a popular theory of sexual jealousy in her 2003 review; it is widely believed that jealousy was an evolutionary strategy, where sexual jealousy addresses cuckoldry and emotional jealousy is meant to prevent resource loss. Therefore, it is thought that men demonstrate more sexual jealousy than women, and women more ( Read more... )

brad sagarin, christine harris, martie haselton, bram buunk, cheating, sex, emotional infidelity, david desteno, gender differences, todd shackelford, david buss, sex differences, jealousy, sexual infidelity, infidelity, pieternel dijkstra

Comments 2

poeticalpanther October 25 2006, 13:31:57 UTC

This is one area where I count myself very lucky. I cheated once, and only once - in fact, it was more "trying to cheat" than actually doing anything, but the tryee reported to my then-primary, and that buggered that well and proper, which taught me never to cheat again.

But the lucky part is, I don't get jealous. I never have. I occasionally have a small amount of envy when one of my partners is getting more sex or more fun than I am, but it's clearly envy (I want what you have) rather than jealousy (I want you not to have that). I don't know why this is so, but it was so before surgery, before transition, and remains true now so many years later. I just never got the instruction set that says "You own your partner - behave accordingly".

It certainly helps to make me good at poly. I'm a sucker for a wave of compersion.

laurenhat October 26 2006, 03:46:16 UTC

Are they claiming that all of these 13 hypothesized sex differences have biological bases?

I can be rather jealous. Being poly just means that I'd rather find ways to work through it than to assume that it's a big red light saying "Stop doing that now."