Why is jealousy such a strong emotion?

In my opinion and from my experience both jealousy and envy come from anger. And Anger is a powerful emotion, like an engine driving everything else. I do not underestimate fear, but it can stop you from doing stuff or combined with anger can drive you toward the good or bad things. Regarding jealousy, we get angry because we think/see someone has something we want and what we think we do not have/or need, or can do better at so competing starts. We are angry because we feel deprived of love. We do not think we deserve love/to be loved, so we go and grab things/possessions/ whatever material or non-material. So we see an object of our love as our possession. In reality, we do not and cannot ever possess anyone. Period.

Jealousy I think is innate just as envy, lust, etc. But they do not have to rule our being. That is good news. A lot of neuroscientific studies seem to corroborate that. Anger is a powerful emotion and causes us inner suffering psychosomatically. Cortisol levels for instance rise, etc. We get into a fight or flight mode. Does this make sense? I think jealousy is a part of a huge chain of emotions. Each of those emotions can be analyzed separately but must be seen connected to other parts i.e. emotions, and therefore as a whole.

If we remember Shakespeare’s Othello there are two emotions he is analyzing. Envy and jealousy. Twin sisters. Iago is envious because Othello gets the promotion. Othello fails to see that Iago is a false friend and a liar. Obviously, Othello is gullible. Why? Because he does not know himself and that is his downfall. The consequence is that Othello gets poisoned by a manipulating, cold/probably narcissistic Iago against his beloved Desdemona. Can you imagine that? He was also susceptible to manipulation also because of anger and the sense that he cannot possess love/the loved one, and that he is not worthy of love/being loved. I think we all suffer more or less from this. Especially, the eldest children in the family. They feel deprived of their parent`s love because of that new baby impostor. Sounds cruel but remember Freud. We have that destructive Thanatos energy inside. We have the shadow. We need to face it to heal.

The good news is we can, by recognizing anger/jealousy, by not denying it, and by accepting the fact, overcome it. It will always be there, mind you. None of the negative emotions can be eradicated. I learned that from wise men. Nor jealousy/envy nor anger. Anger can be put to good use. But that is a completely different story on how to do that.

The psychological symbolism that I can see in Othello and the consequent takeaway for me is that we can get poisoned by our own suspicions, our own negative thoughts regarding others which we experience generally on a daily basis. The trick is to recognize them and fight them. but first, we need to accept the fact that jealousy is a part of us and try to REGULATE it and not deny or pretend like it is not there. It WILL persist until you acknowledge its existence. So you have it, so what is the big deal?

Also, some jealous men usually are like that because they are projecting the fear of losing someone onto the loved one or are prone to casting their eye at other women so they think their partner is doing the same. It is a form of paranoid thinking and hypocrisy. If you have the right to look at other women with lust why isn`t your partner allowed to do the same? So if someone wants to heal from jealousy they have to be honest, admit and not deny that they have the problem, and dig deep to find the root cause and find the pattern and chain of all emotions that accompany it. After doing that they learn that they are just a human with faults. So self-forgiveness is needed.

Truly behind jealousy is anger, insecurity in our own worth, low self-respect, low self-love, and self-hate/loathing that comes from childhood. Thoughts like “I am not good enough for my parents, so they replaced me with my brother/sister” poison us from the beginning and we go past them but THEY PERSIST. Because those stupid thoughts want to be seen, and recognized. I do not know why but that is the case. That is why people get sick. Ignoring thoughts like that just exasperates the situation in every aspect. We see our siblings as a threat to our comfort, and security, we see them as impostors, intruders, and robbers of parental love. So convoluted a chain, isn`t it?

Yes, this is why we get angry and the anger stays and does not go away until we recognize/acknowledge it. Once you recognize and accept I think the chain weakens, gets lost and anger and everything that goes with it loses its sway over us. It has to be recognized over and over. It takes practice, patience, and persistence. A lot of work and we should not forget it is a process. This is the only way for anger to get weakened. I have not heard of any other solution. Neuroscience corroborates this. Do not numb yourself with benzos or alcohol or drugs. All these will make your suffering worse.

 Here is maybe the quickest antidote to envy/jealousy where we covet something the others have. I took this from Mel Robins. She said something like, do not get frustrated because you feel envy/jealousy because they are a warning sign that there is something you lack. Jealousy/envy is telling us to examine what it is that we lack and work to get it. 

This reply has 820 and more words. Was not my intention. Anyway, what`s done is done. It was written out of need/necessity.