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Concept
Sexual jealousy
Summary
Sexual jealousy is a special form of jealousy in sexual relationships, based on suspected or imminent sexual infidelity. The concept is studied in the field of evolutionary psychology.
Evolutionary psychologists have suggested that there is a gender difference in sexual jealousy, driven by men and women's different reproductive biology. The theory proposes that a man perceives a threat to his relationship's future because he could be fooled into raising children that are not his own. In contrast, a woman risks losing to another the relationship and all the benefits that entails. Research has shown that men are impacted more by sexual infidelity, while women are more impacted by emotional infidelity.
An alternative explanation is from a social-cognitive perspective. Typically, men place importance on their masculinity and sexual dominance. When the male's partner commits sexual infidelity, these two components of his ego become severely threatened. Women are more emotionally invested in a relationship, and therefore experience a threat to their self-perception when a partner commits infidelity, more concerned with risk to the emotional content than the sexual.
Some research has suggested that there are no gender differences in sexual jealousy, concluding that males and females both equally experience distress over emotional and sexual infidelity. Sexual jealousy is cross-culturally universal but how it manifests itself may differ across cultures.
Psychologists have found that males react very strongly to sexual infidelity, whereas females are more likely to forgive a one-time sexual adventure if it does not threaten the male parental investment. Therefore, jealousy is likely to be evoked in females if they feel that their partner may leave them for another woman; this has been shown to be more likely to occur if the male commits emotional infidelity. Emotional infidelity occurs when one partner develops a meaningful, emotional attachment with someone outside of their primary romantic relationship.
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