Are men born jealous?

Going way back into the past I met this fellow when I was 19 married him two years later, had our baby when I was 24 he 26 then he started fancying other woman I was always jealous but it didn’t do me much good as ten years down the line he walked out on me and our son with one of the women and never returned.. Six years on my friend set up a blind date for me with this drop dead handsome guy and even though in those days as far as looks went I had a lot going for me I never in my wildest dreams thought he would fancy me but he did so we started seeing one another.. We were always in dance halls and the drink was always flowing and at last my life was on track once again and I was having a ball. Now even in those days I had my own house which I had worked hard for and I lived there with my young son. Then he asked me to marry him and I turned him down and told him I never wanted to go down that road again.. One evening we were going dancing again with my friend and her boy friend, when we arrived my boy friend said I’ll get the drinks you all go in the hall and get a table so that’s what we did, we had just sat down when he brought the drinks in put them down and went out into the bar again. The band started up and my friends got up to dance and I was left sitting on my own, and it was like that for quite a long time until I heard a voice say can I have this dance please I was about to say no thankyou when I looked up (and believe me I am not exaggerating) another drop dead handsome guy was standing there so I forgot the no thankyou and got up to dance and because I hadn’t had a very good evening I was making the most of him even dateing him for another evening, then it all started to happen, my boy friend who had left me alone spoted us while he was proping up the bar. Now because he could get any woman he wanted I never dreamed he would be jealous not of me anyway but as my Mother always used to say (and she was a barmaid all her life) “when the drinks in the wits out” he stormed into the hall wanted to take the guy outside or punch him there and then well of cause he got thrown out I went home with the other guy but in the end I married the first guy had two kids, he was always drunk but drunk or sober never looked at another women so I consider myself lucky as given the choice I would rather marry a drunk than a woman fancyer any day.. He was six years younger than me and died five years ago but I still miss him. That’s Life… “Don’t know why I started this just wanted to join you all I suppose”

Nice story Jay.

I just think that it is possible to read much more into flirting than there actually is - and dancing with someone is not an invitation to have sex with them. Some people can handle flirting and tend to be flirts, and some people don't like flirting and get jealous. Either you trust someone, or you don't. And if you care about someone and know flirting upsets them, then you rein it in a bit. Nobody knows you and your girlfriend better than you, Spags, but my bet would be that you are much more likely to have destructive rows about insecurity and jealousy than that your girlfriend will go off with someone else because she dances with them in a nightclub.

In my observations of you gender-driven beings your behaviour seems quite normal, spag. I've always been jealous of the number 2. It's always invited for tea and they always dance the tango together. Makes me want to spit!!! I hope you and your girlfriend sort it out soon.

No spag, all humans have their share of jealousy, some more than others. The green-eyed monster rears his head in relationships usually when there is insecurity at work. If you really trust her you should've ignored it and been pleased she was having a good time. If you don't trust her you should throw her purse at her! On the other hand if she really cares about you she shouldn't do things she feels might upset you. Dunno why I'm offering my take on it, I'm a complete disaster in relationships!

Okay, I'm new to the site, but this is a question that I couldn't resist offering up another opinion for your digestion. I think that in addition to any so-called innate tendencies, there may be a great deal to be said for where you lived during all those formative years of your life. For instance, here in the States, girls from the South (particularly those southern states east of the Mississippi) are incredibly jealous. I'm not sure but, I think that they have been taught to expect a certain level of "ownership" comes right along with the package of having a boyfriend or husband. My ex-husband lived in Alabama for about 10 years before we met. And he told me some of the horror stories of what most of those women are like. The wife of a good male friend of his actually accused them of being gay because they often went fishing together! In contrast, my ex-husband (from Michigan originally, as am I and where I now live) is so NOT jealous that when, after showing no interest in me for almost 2 years I finally turned to someone else (I know I'm horrible but at least it was only once and I never lied about it) he didn't even make too much of a fuss. A little yelling and then it was as if it never happened. So, ultimately, what I'm trying to say is that I don't buy that "hard-wired" nonsense. There is one thing that I have come to feel very strongly about over the years, and that is that the one and only thing that we can control, is the way we choose to react to a given situation. This then begs the question, why would this wonderful girl want so badly to go to a place that her loved one may not enjoy as much as she? Is there not someplace that would be more fun for the two of you as a couple, since that was presumably the idea when you set out for your evening? And, secondly, could the real reason that the jealousy creeped in be that in the back of your mind you were wondering what she would have done had you been home in bed with the flu that night? Just some thoughts I wanted to share. And by the by, I am so enjoying everything that this site seems to be about...(quietly chanting litany in head, "please someone say they read and liked something I wrote...") Oh, excuse me, I seem to have fallen asleep at the keyboard and was doing "automatic typing." Thanks again to all of you for being so entertaining and talented.

Hey thanks. Yeah I am secure and stuff in the relationship. It is just that she , for once, flirted outrageously. It hurt me and jealousy creeped up. But she was having a good time and I do trust her. This was the first time I ever done anything like this. Thanks Missi.

Chant, flirting does not mean you are insecure ... it rather proves the opposite I find. There is a world of difference between the desperate flirt of the single person and the casual, I'm only doing this for fun, married or secure in relationship type of flirt. I think this is more of a 'man' thing. If spagbollocks had been shuffling on the floor with a sexy woman I bet he would have loved every minute of it. But, in the back of his mind he would have been thinking of girlfriend and 'is there any way I can shag the both of them tonight? No? oh well, I'll have this dance and go back to my table' when he gets back and girlfriend stomps off in a jealous huff, spag goes home to pc and posts: 'Are women born jealous ... its not fair blah de blah de blah' I shouldn't generalise but everyone else has so far so I will continue to say that men are by nature more predatory and flirt because it is second nature to them - which is what the bloke in spag's scenario was doing. Women in a happy relationship or when married - especially once they have had children - tend to flirt only if their partner is not giving them attention. Spag's g/f was probably only responding to bloke and had every intention of going home with spag that night. Now she will be wondering about the nature of their realationship and the control spag wishes to exert over her possibly. Despite what Chant says, men want to be the hunter - conquerers and can't understand why women get upset, and women want to build a secure home ... it's human nature and no one can change it. the thinking person can however adapt and will appreciate the needs of the other and shrug off the jealous feeling. It's hard to do so but you must if you want the relationship to survive. flirting is good and can increase the libido for when you arrive home with your partner. preventing your partner from enjoying him/her self just because you can't/don't want to dance or becoming jealous when you let them will only, as we have seen, end in tears.

Doc C. you're talking like a civil servant! i've had enough of this men are hunter-gatherers, women are home-makers b.ollocks. i've had enough of the evolution theory to explain everything school. i've had enough of the Mind only thinks about sex, women want a dick, Freudian b.ollocks. i say, ditch these super-crude, 'all Frenchmen wear berets and onions round their necks' tools. let's unmask these big cliches for what they are. science and pseudo-science has done a great deal to limit us over the last 50 years. by trying to make our psychology intelligible to everyone, it has totally bypassed our complexity. these simple formulae are only applicable to Neanderthal Man. let's take things forward!

dear chant ... i think there IS an argument for the biological bases of behaviour ... you can't just discount it all with a great educated sweep of the arm ... social mores may change how we intellectualise behaviour ... but i don't think we can deny some of the intrinsic differences are rooted in it ... (and you also use the term hunter/gatherer for men which i feel is a common mistake ... i think it actually is a term for the organisation of that type of society men hunt/women gather ... could be wrong of course ... but if i am i have been erroneously annoyed by it for years ..) i have been reading this thread with interest ... your first comments about flirtation and ego and the self/other model of relationships and i am afraid they DID strike a chord with me that had me tiptoeing back out of the thread and pretending i had never been in ... but i wonder if flirtation IS purely an ego massage thing ... is it really something we do just to remind ourselves that we are still attractive to other people when we are in a relationship? ... speaking as someone accused of being flirtatious i have been trying to think about it ... in some ways i see it as a social grease ... its nice to have a light hearted flirty interaction with someone ... it doesn't mean i want to have sex with them at all ... the other more sinister element to it ... is that i think for me anyway it ensures things are kept on an acceptably light level ... it is a distancing method that makes it certain the other party will not get anywhere near the real me ... if you show yourself to people all the time you are vulnerable ... i tend to think that sexual jealousy is actually more convincingly about insecurity ... and i am prey to jealousy too but only i find when i feel i have an instinctive reason for it ... i would far rather trust my partner and enjoy the fact that i can observe him talking to people and having a good time ...

definitely not just men who are born jealous. I have a problem with my boyfriend's ex. They went out for 6+ years, whereas we've been together 9 months. I think she is still in love with him. I know he doesn't feel the same (and never really did), but I still don't like them having regular chats on the phone. He says he can't just hang up on her and that it's her that calls him rather than the other way around. She phoned on New Year's day and they talked for ages because she was upset. I was so upset I left the house for a while. We invited her to our xmas party because she would be upset if we didn't as there were lots of their mutual friends coming. I was dreading her accepting as I knew I couldn't handle it - her all chatty with the mutual friends and me only just getting to know them. Luckily she didn't come. I have never had a 6 year relationship and feel like I can't compete. Really don't know why I feel the need to compete - I am the one he is in love with and going out with. It didn't work, that's why she's an ex. Seems completely irrational to feel threatened of an ex and yet I do - weird.

You just have to knock that jealousy on the head - nothing knackers a relationship quicker than a breakdown of trust. There are three types of people - those who will shag around behind your back, those who will wait until they have fallen out of love with you first and then finish with you honestly before starting a new relationship, or the ones that stick around and work things out. (Maybe there are only the first two, but I'm a romantic and I do believe that sometimes love lasts). Getting jealous and insecure doesn't stop the first type, will irritate the third type and accelerate the leaving of the second type. Thus, it achieves nothing. Let it go. Flirting for a lot of people is like a safety valve - if you flirt, it reminds you that you are attractive to more than one person, if you don't then it takes you by surprise when someone makes you a genuine offer and you might be so surprised you forget to say "No, I'm taken". Flirting is not a bad thing. Jealousy, in general, is.

Hey Kids. I start up this thread and then come back and it got 30 hits. Wowzer. Now - Mr.Pack. and others. Hippodrome was cause my girlfriend loves Capital Gold radio and their show was on at said club. Now for her flirting. She is a flirt. I am a flirt. But I have since subconsciously stopped flirting. She is gorgeous and thinks I am the only one that fancies her. She also states that she doesn't flirt to 'keep her options open' but merely as 'a laugh' or something. She is African and so has natural rhythm whereas I seem to make a giant tit of myself everytime I dance and can't get my damned legs to move. We talked. She said that guys will come up and dance with her and that's it. But anyway, before this episode I trusted her completely. My jealousy is borne from my vulnerability. I never been in love, had love, wanted love. Now I am immersed in the stuff and sometimes I freak out. She feels the same but she says I doubt her and that she doesn't doubt me. It is easy to trust me as I am not a people person, I stay in a lot, I never go to the pub, I have stopped drinking and hate socialising. So she knows that I don't want or have to flirt anymore. She flirtdanced with these blokes cause she said, ' they can't dance. I was mocking them and then looking at you. Seeing how gorgeous you are and wishing you were dancing with me. I asked you to come to this thing so WE could dance together. But you didn't and some guys just tried to dance with me but they weren't YOU! I want my Spag back. The carefree Spag who would've danced with me. I love you so much, ya know. Please never doubt that!' And with her words I conclude this rant.

here is a poem for you gail: Dorothy Parker - Mortal Enemy Let another cross his way- She's the one will do the weeping! Little need I fear he'll stray Since I have his heart in keeping- Let another hail him dear- Little chance that he'll forget me! Only need I curse and fear Her he loved before he met me.

seems very rational to me gail... years ago i had a short relationship with a man who had an ex of four years hanging around making everyones life miserable. i was quite young at the time, and used to get pretty spooked by her (actually she used to turn up at my parents house peering in the window, followed his car everywhere and even trailed us on a weekend away, 150 miles from home.) Part of me used to think he secretly loved it. the thing is there are some people in the world, men AND women, who will always go with the easiest option, and end up returning to their exes, for the simple reason that it is the easiest option. im not saying that your ex is that kind of person for one moment. the best option is to stay calm, and let it appear to not affect you. as you said, its you he is with after all.. the guy i was seeing went back to her, and in fact married her a couple of years later. they have two kids now, and she appears happy, but he looks all dull and beaten.. (ha!) i spoke to a friend of his a few years ago, and he said "he still hankers for you. you shouldve held on" no point.. i was young, as i said, and all life was out there.. poor him. and poor her too.. who wants a man that had to be forced back to them because it was easier? :o)

jealousy can only poison a relationship. you have no reason to be jealous. After all, you knew that at the end of the show she was going home with you. what more do you want? shouldnt you be pleased that the love of your life is able to turn heads and get guys panting? don't ruin all that love with some emotion that usually has no foundation Sorry i'm wittering on

awwww... Wise old Andrew.....

re. hunter gatherers - took that off Doc C's posting, except i didn't read his post properly - should have written 'hunter conquerors'. think you're right, biological bases of behaviour does hold - it covers the lower brain. what i'm attacking is this concept that the lower brain is all we are, which is now used to cover all behaviour patterns. 'oh well, (s)he couldn't help it. that's the way men/women are wired.' higher brain - Mind - has been swept aside. all the things that make us complicated, interesting, special - altruism, the will to truth, the will to good - have been brushed out of the equation. and all so we can be slotted into some primitive, oversimplified, Men/Women Behaving Badly equation. "it is a distancing method that makes it certain the other party will not get anywhere near the real me ... if you show yourself to people all the time you are vulnerable ..." no doubt this common ground is one reason why you and Robert get on so well!!!

thank you fish and liana - I will be cool and hang in there!

fair do's chant ... whilst i think in some ways the biological bases can be used to explain behaviour i agree that they shouldn't be used to excuse it ...

Hey Andrew, where do I find two or three?

Yep, nice tale. However I lived with a drunk for 10 years (now dying of drink) and, believe me, would take the womaniser anyday. Actually, I wouldn't take either...

I suppose it is more of a default position that we slide into if we don't make efforts. Squirrels that live near snakes react to them in a certain way - squirrels that haven't lived near snakes in thousands of generations react in precisely the same way if brought into contact with snakes. Certain things are hardwired into us, although as conscious human beings we have the power to make choices and decisions and have to take responsibility for our actions. Flirting is nice, it produces endorphins or what-not and makes you feel special - now, if you happen to be insecure and not particularly self-confident, you probably don't feel the same way and far from understanding it, seeing someone flirt makes you feel uncomfortable and insecure. Fair enough. Balance is needed. But I do think that flirting and negotiating a sexual contract are actually quite different things. Someone who enjoys one, would not necessarily entertain the other.

*starts feeling worried for Spags. all this free advice from lawyer Andrew. quietly imagines Andrew preparing to bill Spags heavily as soon as Spags comes back on the thread!*

Spag, i think the REAL question is, what the hell were you doing in the Hippodrome?! i mean, you do know you can go to any club in London, not just the s.hit one?! as a matter of fact, last Friday, at an okay London club, i danced with Liam Gallagher, who was quite cool. as to your question, i don't think men are born any more jealous than women. i think that, had you started flirting with some girls, it would have been your girlfriend who had a mini-strop. people are often odd like this. they will demand their right to do one thing, but, should you do the same to them they will quickly become bewildered and upset. lack of imagination or something. lack of empathy. i also think that, from the posts and stories of yours i have read, you are quite clearly the kind of person who wouldn't be happy when presented with this kind of scenario. (not that i'm entirely certain who WOULD be happy if their partner started dancing erotically with someone else, but never mind). your girlfriend, who presumably knows you a lot better than me, will have been aware of this. yet she persisted. why? as to the point made earlier by Andrew about people needing to remind themselves they are attractive to others, not just to their partner, i think he's absolutely right. is that kind of behaviour acceptable in a relationship though? depends on the seriousness of the relationship, i guess. i was reading something by Hanif Kureishi recently, where he suggested that, in a relationship you need more of the other person, and less of yourself. responding to other people's flirting to confirm your own attractiveness suggests that the relationship is all about you, your partner only a contingent aspect of what is fundamentally an ego-trip. imv, how you deal with your girlfriend's behaviour largely depends on how serious your relationship is, and what expectations you have for it. have you talked to each other about flirting with other people - set boundaries, that kind of thing? and was your relationship born out of the idea of exclusivity, or did she give you the impression from the start that she liked to be a bit of a flirt? my personal opinion is that if you are in love with someone who is also in love with you then that's the most amazing, precious, lucky thing in the world. i wouldn't jeopardise it for the world. if you and your girlfriend are in that kind of a relationship, then i don't know what your girlfriend was thinking of. best of luck.

I hadn't spotted that it was the Hippodrome - so unless your girlfriend goes for sad old fucks who probably have Dr Hook tapes in their car, you should be okay. But seriously - don't go there. You would seriously have a more entertaining evening in any Casualty waiting room.

I may not know an awful lot about love, but boy, do I see how an awful lot of relationships go wrong - in slow motion, quite often. And this is all pro-bono (my only fee is that Spags learns how to use someone's first name properly)

very interesting post that, chant...there was something about andrew's comments earlier that wasn't quite right, they *sounded* very convincing on a rational basis but not quite so convincing emotionally...i think your comments have for me identified some of the reasons for that.. *impressed*

I don't know - I think there is something quite major in human beings about feeling trapped or confined - knowing you could leave and choosing to stay is more important than staying because that's your only option. Like if you have a job that you enjoy, you can still get sometimes overwhelmed by feeling trapped in it with no other options - knowing that someone else would employ you is sometimes enough to quell those feelings - you don't need to hand your notice in and start with new company, but it is nice to know that you are wanted. If you are in a long-term serious relationship, then the thing shifts a little and it does become more of a joint thing along the lines Chant describes, but Spags and his girlfriend are both young and have not been seeing each other for that long. Personally, I think sitting down to talk about boundaries with your partner is the best way to get yourself chucked. Obviously if Spags feels deeply upset and hurt by it, then it is a problem and one which maybe his girlfriend should have picked up on, but I'm not convinced that you can ask someone who is a flirt to curtail it. Learn to dance, is the best tip. There's nowhere better to shine on the dancefloor than a nightclub populated by forty year old men who grew up dancing to Bachman Turner Overdrive.

My answer to spag's question is "yes." It's part of 2 million years of conditioning to compete with other males for the attention and loyalty of a female. In our highly "civilized" society, we can apply layers of sophistication with a trowel from now until hell freezes over in a losing battle to make it look like something else, but the answer to the question will still be "yes" until we stop being humans.

"Like if you have a job that you enjoy, you can still get sometimes overwhelmed by feeling trapped in it with no other options - knowing that someone else would employ you is sometimes enough to quell those feelings - you don't need to hand your notice in and start with new company, but it is nice to know that you are wanted." interesting analogy, Andrew, but it doesn't meet all the criteria. what has dropped out, critically is the inter-personal aspect of the situation described. had Spag's girlfriend gone out with her friends, but without SPAGS, flirted on the dancefloor and then come home, the analogy might hold. we need to alter your analogy then. we need the person to take a call from another company offering him a job while in the office, where all his colleagues can hear the call. we need him to ask the other company to fax the acceptance form through. we need him to start filling in the form in front of the boss and other members of staff, and then say, 'only kidding! just wanted to know that my options were open'. and then if people in a relationship do need to assert their freedom to leave all the time, what would you have? Spags flirting with girls in one corner of the room, while his girlfriend flirts with boys in the other, both on the understanding that they were going home together at the end of the evening? but what kind of a relationship is that? a pretty shallow one, i'd say. one based on personal insecurity and a constant need for egotistical self-affirmation. i mean, what's the point? i also think it's a mistake to suggest that because Spags and his girlfriend are young, the incident doesn't matter. feelings can run deep at any age. and you can't always shrug them of with an 'oh well, i'm young, and it's my fault for getting too serious.' the fact that someone can develop serious feelings at a young age is a good thing, i think, not a bad one. drifting through one's twenties with an 'i'm just looking for a bit of fun / serious relationships are for the over thirty-fives' attitude can smack of immaturity and frivolity. and then how do you cope with, or find, a serious relationship when you hit thirty-five? now, from what i understand of it, Spags has found someone whom he thinks is right for him. and this is a BIG thing. the fact that his girlfriend seems to want to say, and say openly to his face, 'Look, Spags, i want to keep my options open,' or, 'Look, Spags, i like you and i want to stay with you, but i have to know i can leave if i want,' will understandably throw these feelings into jeopardy. probably the most curious thing though is Spags's fear of getting on the dancefloor. i mean, apart from Nu Metal-stepping teenage boys, some of whom can dance b.loody well, the British male can't handle the dance floor at all. he shifts awkwardly from one foot to the other like a bear taking a s.hit (sorry Andrea, didn't mean to bring the bear thing up again). luckily though, the British female is, if possible, even more c.rap at dancing. neither male or female can hear the bass rhythm of a song at all, and might just as well be dancing to the same song all night. Spags, if you can't dance, you can walk into any nightclub anywhere in London, and hold your head up high with the best of them (and, indeed, the rest of them.)