Jealousy: Between Freedom, Fear and Closeness

Love confronts us with a paradox: we want the other person to choose freely, yet we hope that this freedom will lead them to choose us. We long for security and, at the same time, for desire that remains alive. The two often pull in different directions.

Alternative forms of relationship make this tension particularly visible. They promise freedom, while also triggering great fear in many people. For as soon as a relationship opens up, an unsettling question arises: what if the person I love actually turns towards someone else? Perhaps this person will become more desirable, more exciting, easier to be with, newer.

Over the past few months, I have spent time with two books: The Ethical Slut by Dossie Easton and Janet W. Hardy, and The Evolution of Desire by David Buss. I am less concerned with which relationship model is the “right” one. Rather, I am interested in why our thoughts about love and our feelings often diverge. I notice this repeatedly, both among people I know and in my psychotherapeutic work with couples and individuals.

Why does it feel threatening when the person we love desires someone else?

At first glance, the answer seems simple: because we are afraid of losing this person.

On closer inspection, it is more complicated. Perhaps we are not losing anything at all. The person who matters so much to us continues to love us. Perhaps nothing has changed in the bond between us.

And yet the mere thought that this person desires someone else can trigger something within us that feels almost existential.

Suddenly, there is competition. Another person steps onto our inner stage.

This third person can become a mirror of our own insecurities. They shake our certainty that we are unique to the other person. Then it is no longer just about the relationship, but about ourselves: if you desire someone else, what does that say about my value to you?

Almost involuntarily, comparison begins: is this person more beautiful? More exciting? More sexually interesting? What do they have that I do not? What makes this person desirable?

The evolution of jealousy

From Buss’s perspective, a feeling as deeply rooted as jealousy may have offered an evolutionary advantage in our history as a species. In his book The Evolution of Desire, Buss proposes that humans developed both short-term and long-term relationship and mating strategies. Long-term pair bonds may have been advantageous particularly because of the exceptionally high demands of caring for human children.

He understands jealousy as an evolved response, widespread among humans, to a threat to a significant relationship. This refers to the human capacity, characteristic of our species, to respond with jealousy to the possible loss of a relationship or attachment. In his theory, men faced the problem of paternity uncertainty: a female partner’s sexual infidelity could lead men to invest resources in a child who was not genetically their own. For women, on the other hand, it could pose a threat if a long-term partner directed attention, resources and protection towards another person and their offspring.

Reactions that helped people cope with these challenges may have become part of our psychological architecture over generations.

Jealousy, then, is not only an expression of personal experiences or fragile self-worth. It can also be understood as part of a very old, deeply human warning system.

When I recognise this, I can say: of course something within me is reacting. My brain is evaluating a possible threat to the bond. This makes the feeling understandable.

The evolutionary perspective can explain why pair bonding may be possible and attractive for us as humans, and why jealousy and jealousy-related behaviours may have emerged as mechanisms to protect that bond.

However, our understanding of monogamy and jealousy is also shaped by culture, law and history. Our society often combines the wish for attachment, sexual exclusivity and lasting partnership into a single relationship ideal.

Against this background, it can seem contradictory when someone longs for a stable bond while also experiencing romantic or sexual interest outside that relationship. Yet this feeling does not necessarily mean that the existing relationship is less meaningful. Rather, it shows that human needs and feelings are more complex than the social ideal of an unambiguously monogamous partnership.

What The Ethical Slut adds to this perspective

Buss asks where our feelings come from. The Ethical Slut asks what we do with them when relationships no longer have to be exclusive, for example in open relationships or polyamory.

The book invites us not simply to take forms of relationship for granted, but to shape them consciously. It is about communication, consent, responsibility, honesty and taking our own feelings seriously without automatically deriving from them a claim over the person we are connected to.

But choosing an open relationship does not make jealousy disappear.

This is crucial to my original question. Choosing consensual non-monogamy does not automatically answer the emotional question of why we feel threatened when the person we love actually desires someone else.

Instead, it shifts the responsibility. When exclusivity is no longer taken for granted as something guaranteed by social norms, partners need to talk much more consciously about what security, commitment, freedom and loyalty mean to them.

A synthesis of evolution and postmodernity

Together, the two perspectives make something clear to me: what hurts is less sexuality itself than the fear of being replaceable.

Rationally, we know that no one is the only desirable person in the world. And yet love seems to call for a different kind of certainty. Not necessarily the reassurance: “There is no one else.” But rather the feeling: “What exists between us is meaningful and cannot simply be exchanged for something else.”

Perhaps this is where a more sustainable form of security lies. One based on the understanding that our shared history, our intimacy and the particular way we encounter one another have a value that no one can replace.

And what do we do with jealousy now?

We can consciously choose generosity, freedom and trust, yet still find ourselves overwhelmed by jealousy. Despite this open attitude, a painful tension remains between how we would like to be and what we actually feel.

And this is precisely where the two books meet: for me, the value of the evolutionary perspective lies in its ability to make sense of why experiences of competition and threatened attachment can trigger such intense reactions, even when they contradict our conscious convictions. Easton and Hardy remind us that we do not simply have to accept these inner reactions as fate, but can consciously shape our relationships.

The feeling of jealousy can therefore first be understood as an invitation to encounter ourselves: what is this feeling trying to tell me? Perhaps: I am afraid of losing you. Perhaps: I need more closeness, security or a clear agreement. Perhaps: I feel inadequate or undesirable.

It can then become an opportunity to get to know ourselves better. Allowing this feeling makes us vulnerable: it brings us into contact with our insecurities and deepest fears. Yet this is precisely where an interesting potential for growth lies. I practise pausing and distinguishing: what belongs to my personal history, to old wounds or possibly to evolutionarily shaped patterns of reaction? What is actually happening in the present situation? And what need lies beneath this feeling?

This clarification creates distance between feeling and action. Jealousy need neither be suppressed nor acted upon immediately.

When jealousy is communicated without blame, it can become a moment of deep intimacy. By honestly showing my fears, insecurities and needs, I become visible and can be seen.

There is a meaningful dialectic in this process of showing ourselves and being seen: by showing myself to another person, I also encounter myself in a new way. I therefore advocate not overcoming jealousy, but tolerating contradictions: feelings do not always have to align with our convictions. And yet I can take both seriously.

For me, this is a deeper form of freedom: being allowed to feel jealousy without letting it decide how we love.