"Everyone knows the fear associated with it, it affects women and men"

Let's call her Julia Barth, the prototypical client who seeks help from Wolfgang Krüger. Visibly agitated, she reports to the Berlin psychotherapist in the first session that her husband "definitely cheats". He's been working late into the evening lately and also mentioned a new colleague. Only the other day at breakfast her name came up again. She felt like she had been stabbed in the heart with a knife. Soon her thoughts would have revolved only around her husband and this "woman". The psychotherapist remembers quite clearly how Barth reported on her loss of control, which culminated in the fact that she kept secretly checking her husband's mobile phone.

Who does not know jealousy, this dark, deeply painful emotion that hijacks our thoughts and sometimes robs us of control over our actions. Numerous surveys show the explosive power it has, and it often puts a strain on our relationships. In extreme cases, it leads to a separation. It is all the more astonishing how incomplete our knowledge is about how to accept and dissolve the feeling. From a scientific point of view, jealousy is “a kind of black hole,” recently stated Johan Åhlén from the Karolinska Institute near Stockholm. The psychologist is one of the leading scientists who have surprising things to report to help those affected.

"Everyone knows the associated fear, it affects both women and men," explains psychotherapist Wolfgang Krüger on the phone. He sits in his garden under vines and recalls the biblical story of Cain and Abel. That jealousy is "present since time immemorial". Krüger is considered an expert in this field, he has written a book: "Jealousy: Confidently dealing with an unloved feeling".

William Shakespeare called jealousy the "green-eyed monster" in his "Othello". Along with anger and revenge, it is one of the most common base motives in homicides. "Jealousy is a feeling that nobody wants to feel, so we suppress it," says Krüger. This does not only apply to romantic relationships, but also among friends or within the family one can be jealous.

"Jealousy is a passion that eagerly seeks what creates suffering", according to the short poem by the Austrian writer Franz Grillparzer (1791-1872). "Very wise," says the Munich psychotherapist Bärbel Wardetzki. "I can seek suffering or choose not to," explains Wardetzki, who specializes in narcissism and hurt. Negative emotions often involve envy, an unmet need for something we want but can't get. Jealousy, on the other hand, refers to the affection of a loved one, combined with the fear of losing them again. The psychotherapist knows from experience how challenging it is to deal constructively with difficult feelings. According to Wardetzki, those who take Grillparzer to heart understand that there are many ways “not to go into suffering, but into the solution”.

A therapeutic measuring instrument presented in June, the “Compulsive Jealousy Severity Scale”, could be helpful here. It was developed by Johan Åhlén's team in the Department of Clinical Neurosciences at the Karolinska Institute. The scale measures the strength of the thoughts of jealousy and the resulting behavior of those affected. In this way, it can be seen whether someone can cope with it on their own – or needs therapeutic help. "I think it's still a very shameful feeling," Åhlén is quoted as saying in the journal Medicinsk Vetenskap. According to Åhlén, all of this is still unexplored, how many people suffer from it, which therapies help. But he also believes that one can wring something good out of the unloved emotion.

Like many overwhelming emotions, including contempt or sadness, the condition can paralyze and emotionally block us. So what's the use? If you follow the explanatory approach of evolutionary biology, jealousy serves our reproduction. The branch of research attests men to have more sexual jealousy, while women tend to have more emotional jealousy. It acts as an alarm. Men kept a close eye on their wives so as not to raise a cuckoo child. Women, on the other hand, wanted to prevent a rival from stealing their child's father away from them.

Depth psychologist Wolfgang Krüger suspects the causes of particularly problematic jealousy in the first years of life. Attachment research generally assumes that relationship patterns are largely shaped by early experiences with parents. The more lovingly and sensitively they respond to the needs of the child, the more secure the bond.

"Jealousy is not cool, so we devalue this feeling," says Bärbel Wardetzki. The psychotherapist recommends getting involved with the current feelings and reflecting on them. You can't erase jealousy, you have to turn to it like a small child. Only then can the situation be resolved. An important first step out of the mental blockade.

It becomes difficult when jealousy takes on pathological forms, with demands on the partner such as: I want you all. I leave you no space. Then she can become a relationship killer, says Wardetzki. It also becomes problematic when jealous people remain in the victim role and block themselves. Here, too, self-reflection is the key, sometimes with professional help.

Bärbel Wardetzki is convinced that difficult feelings can only be dealt with constructively if one realizes that one can neither steer nor control one's partner. Even if he doesn't leave the house all day, the jealousy keeps flaring up. "Behind this is fear, the deeper causes of which must be considered."

But why do people deal with emotions differently? Is the tendency to have jealous outbursts linked to attachment style or personality traits? That's what the team around psychology doctoral student Marina Richter at the University of Witten/Herdecke wanted to know. To do this, the team surveyed 850 test persons and also included the personality psychology model of the "Big Five" for its study published in April 2022. This covers the main dimensions: openness to experience, conscientiousness, extraversion (outward-looking attitude), agreeableness and neuroticism (inner stability). These traits are, to some extent, in our genes.

The researchers came to the conclusion that the individual attachment style and the five personality traits are only responsible for around 25 percent of the development of jealousy. Contrary to popular belief, they found no evidence that people who fear commitment are generally more jealous. Also, stable and insecure bondees reacted equally jealously, but handled the situations differently. Those with secure attachment styles fought for the relationship, while the insecurely attached subjects withdrew. Conclusion: 75 percent of the individual differences in how jealous someone is are due to external factors, such as satisfaction with the partnership or its duration.

Wolfgang Krüger also points to the different intensities: The "mild form of jealousy" can be taken with humor: the couple in the restaurant, where she looks after the waiter. Anyone who is sovereign jokes, "Honey, this is where the music is playing!", says Krüger and laughs. For some, the mild jealousy is a "token of love", a compliment. The “monster”, on the other hand, is massive jealousy: daily checks, interrogations like “Where have you been?”.

At a certain point, the controlled tends to hide things on purpose. Krüger knows the end of the story: the couple becomes estranged, love perishes. To keep jealousy in check, there are three sticking points, explains the psychotherapist. “The first thing you have to ask yourself is: am I confident, do I feel special and do people want to relate to me? Second: Do I have life goals and do I know how to make my life exciting? And lastly: Am I independent and do I have my own circle of friends?” Anyone who can answer this positively will experience little jealousy.

Julia Barth, mentioned at the beginning, managed to reflect on herself and her relationship over the course of several sessions. She understood that she and her husband had lost touch. She decided to step up the relationship: more activity, more compliments, more sex. On Krüger's advice, she went to the Baltic Sea with friends for a weekend. “To make yourself scarce”, Krüger has to smile at that. "It's so simple: If you mean something to your partner, he will call you on the second day at the latest and ask about the weather." When interpreted correctly, jealousy does not create any suffering.

"Aha! Ten minutes of everyday knowledge" is WELT's knowledge podcast. Every Tuesday and Thursday we answer everyday questions from the field of science. Subscribe to the podcast on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Deezer, Amazon Music, among others, or directly via RSS feed.