What is a jealousy?

Jealousy generally refers to the thoughts or feelings of insecurity, fear, and concern over a relative lack of possessions or safety.  Jealousy can consist of one or more emotions such as anger, resentment, inadequacy, helplessness, or disgust.  Jealousy is a typical experience in human relationships, seen in all cultures and is a universal trait, but may be have a culture-specific emotion.  Jealousy can either be suspicious or reactive, often reinforced with a series of particularly strong emotions.  Psychologists, sociologists, and biologists have identified various factors in the expression of jealousy.  Thus, jealousy is difficult to express with an unambiguous language term or word.  Artists have also explored the theme of jealousy in paintings, films, songs, plays, poems, and books, since people do not express jealousy through a single emotion or a single behavior.  They instead express jealousy through diverse emotions and behaviors, which makes it difficult to form a scientific definition of jealousy.  Jealousy is a cognitive, emotional, and behavioral response to a relationship threat, usually a third person, a defensive reaction to a perceived threat to a valued relationship, triggered by the threat of separation or loss of a partner.  Thus, the definition of jealousy implies a triad composed of a jealous individual, a partner, and the perception of a third party or rival.  Jealous reactions typically involve aversive emotions with behaviors that are assumed to be protective of the original relationship.  In its original meaning, jealousy was distinct from envy, though the two terms have popularly become synonymous, since they tend to appear in the same situation.  Jealousy involves the wish to keep what one has, while envy is the wish to get what one does not have.  The jealous person feels in danger of losing or having something altered in an undesirable manner.  Jealousy includes the fear of loss, suspicion of a perceived betrayal, low self-esteem, sadness over a perceived loss, uncertainty, loneliness, and distrust.  There are jealous emotional episodes.  Jealously can also be a cognitively impenetrable state.  Jealousy arises from one’s imagination, affected by a person’s cultural milieu.  Jealousy in children and teenagers has been observed more often in those with low self-esteem and can evoke aggressive reactions.  Thus, jealousy has been linked to aggression and low self-esteem. Children and infants show distress when a sibling is born, creating the foundation for a sibling rivalry.  Anthropologists, on the other hand, have claimed that jealousy varies across cultures.  As men and women become more equal it becomes less appropriate or acceptable to express jealousy.  Communicative responses serve critical functions in a romantic relationship, reducing uncertainty, maintaining, repairing, and restoring self-esteem.  While some of these communicative responses are destructive and aggressive, some individuals respond to jealousy in a more constructive way.  Jealousy can be caused by differences in understanding about the commitment level of the couple.  In addition, more women consider emotional infidelity as more distressing than sexual infidelity. Security within the relationship also heavily contributes to one’s level of distress. Psychological and cultural mechanisms regarding sex differences may play a larger role than expected.  Women have been traditionally associated with jealousy.  Have you ever been jealous?