Why do girls get jealous?

rml_16

Truth....Insecurities seem the common denominator here..which I can understand.

For those that asked, I'm in "PoDunk" Iowa. Or maybe I just don't get out enough, or notice the signs that guys give off. It is true, I somewhat envy guys that just "let it go" or don't get all up in arms about it. Man that would be nice. So much easier and less headache.

So....next question for those that said they don't get jealous or rarely do.....did you ever get jealous of anything before now? Guess what I'm digging for is if someone does get jealous now because....say of .....insecurities, have you moved forward to not getting jealous anymore? What happened if so?

And for the gal that said it's kind of debilitating.....doll I feel ya....there have been days I wanted to knock down drag out with myself....realizing how much of a wast of time it is. You arent' alone.

I've never been a jealous person. I've been envious, like I see something someone has or a woman who looks really good and wish I had that thing or looked like that, but I never wish that person didn't have it, I just wish I did, too, if that makes sense.

As far as being jealous in relationships, I've just never felt like I needed a particular man that badly. I know if one leaves (or I leave him) there will be another someday. Or maybe not. But I'm OK with being single. I'm happy with myself, who I am and what I am. I have friends, interests, dreams and a life outside of my romantic relationships. So they are an enhancement to my life, not a necessity. Being able to live without them makes me less inclined to drive myself crazy over the idea they might leave.

When I was 24, I went through a terrible breakup that took me two years to fully get over. It was hell. But I got through it and it taught me I can survive anything.

nickyfm

This is why I have very limited female friends.

I can't handle all of the *****iness and jealousy. Who cares what other girls look like? Jealousy is pointless, and will often drive people away from you.

Women should just be happy with who they are. Or change themselves into the person they wanna be! Someone will love you for it, so who cares!

Minerva624

I don't get jealous of other girls. I just accept who I am because that's something I can't change. Sometimes I wish I were prettier and more likeable such as other girls I've seen but I never get jealous. It's pointless.

PaleoChocolateBear

I love this thread

Michelle2W

Mean women, are mean girls, who have gotten older!

SeaRunner26

Estrogen. Nuff said.

BananaFaceFace

I'll be honest, I get jealous and its because of insecurity within myself and not feeling good enough. I saw that Robin Thicke music video and wanted to drown myself in a big tub of ice cream after seeing those models prancing around . I realise I shouldn't compare myself to others and i'm working on that and doing a lot better but i know my insecurity won't go away overnight. I would never ever be mean to someone I was jealous of though.

I've been on the other side and know how damaging jealousy can be because I have a "frenemy" who competes with me on every level and i'm pretty sure its because she is jealous, (not tryna toot my own horn here) we fight so much because of this and then we both end up feeling like ****, its exhausting and so frustrating.

Jealousy sucks on both ends.

Michelle2W

Here's a great example. This morning in spin class, a lady that hardly attends, made a big public deal about me spinning through the three minute cool down. Our instructor doesn't mind, she even tells us spinning is an individual workout, in a group setting. As I said before, "Mean women are mean girls, who have gotten older"!

Michelle2W

Am I the only one who thinks calibriintx (who is responding to this thread) profile picture looks like something naughty? I'm sorry, but it's suppose to be two arms of two couches, but I see something else -_-

thelovelyLIZ

Heck if I know. I've felt pretty secure in every relationship I've ever been in. If I didn't, it's because he was skeezy and I had reasons to not trust him.

But I mean, my boyfriend and I are pretty chill. He has female friends. Heck, I might even be staying with a male friend of mine for a couple months here soon and my boyfriend's like "whatevs."

tigsi

Most girls are bats**t crazy... I have worked with quite a lot of females and some of them are nice, but boy do I know some insane ones...

Sharkington

This is why I have very limited female friends.

I can't handle all of the *****iness and jealousy. Who cares what other girls look like? Jealousy is pointless, and will often drive people away from you.

Women should just be happy with who they are. Or change themselves into the person they wanna be! Someone will love you for it, so who cares!

It's interesting you say that because I have met many women who claim to not want female friends because of "drama" and "cattiness", but i found they were usually the insecure and judgmental ones. I have met some women who I just did not get along with (just as I don't get along with every male)- that is completely normal for anyone, but I don't find it exceptionally difficult to make connections with women and never understood why some women claimed to have such horrible luck with female friendships, specifically. I think when you generalize and imply that most women are jealous and *****y,, you just set yourself up missing out on some great friendships. :flowerforyou:

rml_16

This is why I have very limited female friends.

I can't handle all of the *****iness and jealousy. Who cares what other girls look like? Jealousy is pointless, and will often drive people away from you.

Women should just be happy with who they are. Or change themselves into the person they wanna be! Someone will love you for it, so who cares!

It's interesting you say that because I have met many women who claim to not want female friends because of "drama" and "cattiness", but i found they were usually the insecure and judgmental ones. I have met some women who I just did not get along with (just as I don't get along with every male)- that is completely normal for anyone, but I don't find it exceptionally difficult to make connections with women and never understood why some women claimed to have such horrible luck with female friendships, specifically. I think when you generalize and imply that most women are jealous and *****y,, you just set yourself up missing out on some great friendships. :flowerforyou:

I like you.

nickyfm

This is why I have very limited female friends.

I can't handle all of the *****iness and jealousy. Who cares what other girls look like? Jealousy is pointless, and will often drive people away from you.

Women should just be happy with who they are. Or change themselves into the person they wanna be! Someone will love you for it, so who cares!

It's interesting you say that because I have met many women who claim to not want female friends because of "drama" and "cattiness", but i found they were usually the insecure and judgmental ones. I have met some women who I just did not get along with (just as I don't get along with every male)- that is completely normal for anyone, but I don't find it exceptionally difficult to make connections with women and never understood why some women claimed to have such horrible luck with female friendships, specifically. I think when you generalize and imply that most women are jealous and *****y,, you just set yourself up missing out on some great friendships. :flowerforyou:

I like you.

Trust me, in my area, almost all of the woman are horrendously superficial, fake barbies who just want to take each other down.
Ask any Sydney sider about the Eastern Suburbs. They will back me up.

But like I said, I do have some wonderful female friends who aren't like that. I always meet women with an open mind, but 9/10 times if they're from the East, they're not really your friend!

fat_harrie

Envy is the emotion when you want something that someone else has.

Jealousy is the emotion when you fear something or someone might be taken away from you

Jealousy is a perfectly natural response to a situation of being worried you will no longer be a a position of authority / seen as attractive / etc when someone else has improved the way they are percieved. Which in turn causes people to act like children without their ritalin... (Not so rational of a reaction as actual having the emotional response in the first place)

Shr3dded

Because they mirin'.

neandermagnon

I get jealous of women who can lift heavier weights than me. So I do what they did to be able to lift that much, and one day I intend to be able to lift as much... or maybe more. (I won't know unless I try, will I?)

Everyone gets jealous, what counts is how you deal with it. People who deal with jealousy by attacking (in any way, no matter how passive-aggressive) the person they're jealous of, lack emotional maturity and probably also lack self belief (i.e.the believe that they can do or have the same thing if they work towards it).... People who are mature and more self confident tend to react to jealousy by planning how they can have the thing they're jealous of (I don't mean to take it away from anyone else, I mean get it for themselves, their own one of the same, etc), and will find the person they were originally jealous of to be more of an inspiration, to show what's possible with hard work and the right attitude. Or another mature way to deal with jealousy is to just accept that you can't or won't have something or aren't prepared to put the work in, suck it up, and be happy for the person who has that thing, whether by chance or hard work that you're not prepared to put in. You don't have to have everything that you might think you want in a fleeting moment of jealousy. There's never any excuse to be nasty to anyone out of jealousy.

neandermagnon

Why does jealousy exist?

Evolutionary behavioral adaptation to try to keep the hunter that provides all your protein near you and away from other hungry females. It better ensures the survival of the progeny you have with that particular male.

Just my guess.

TRUTH! Primal instinct for us is to survive and pass on our genes. The healthier and more "attractive" a mate is, chances are the offspring will also carry both sets of genes down and continue the legacy.

A.C.E. Certified Personal and Group Fitness Trainer
IDEA Fitness member
Kickboxing Certified Instructor
Been in fitness for 28+ years and have studied kinesiology and nutrition

To build on this and take the chance of seeming misogynistic:

Women tend to be more jealous among the sexes because men can drop seed and flee. A woman has the far more taxing task of bearing and caring for the offspring. A female and her offspring would be more successful if she could keep the male close and encouraged him to remain with her. Fending off other females (evolutionary jealousy) and providing that particular male with easy access to sex (not just for procreation) helped to ensure this.

This is of course just theory but I find the ideas behind it fascinating.

I studied evolutionary biology also and it's not misogynistic to discuss those concepts. But, I always remember learning that actually females would group together to help each other with the babies. It was men that had jealousy because they needed to keep other men away from their women because another man could impregnate her and he would never know and would raise another man's baby as his own child. Wasting his resources on some other man's propagation of his genes.

you're all correct and the two explanations are not mutually exclusive

men cooperatively hunted to get protein and fat for the tribe. women gathered other foods, which would include some sources of protein (e.g. insects, birds eggs etc) but mainly carbs and micronutrient rich foods. Each relied on the other - as a community more than as specific individuals, i.e. the idea of one man hunting meat for one woman is not strictly correct, although it may be true for small animals like rabbits and squirrels. bigger animals were hunted by a group of men together then shared with the whole tribe, and larger animals also usually provided more fat (you can't live off of rabbits or squirrels as they don't provide enough fat).......... at the same time men relied on the carbohydrates from gathered food, because hunting did not always succeed and they also needed carbs in their system to be successful at hunting. Food would generally have been shared through the whole tribe, though individual food sharing between couples would have happened as well.

Anyway, back to jealousy and affairs........... men tend to be more jealous of sexual infidelity, because it's very bad from an evolutionary point of view to be cuckolded, however there's a big advantage to being the one whose baby is being raised by another man, which is why cuckoldry has remained and not been removed by natural selection. This is confounded somewhat in a tribal society, in that many modern hunter-gatherer tribes have a collective view of paternity (and you'd expect this to be the case, or even more so, in palaeolithic hunter-gatherer tribes, who may not have even understood the concept of paternity), i.e. all the men in the tribe collectively contribute to the tribe's children, so such jealousies are actually rarer than you'd think (though fights to the death over women do happen in modern hunter-gatherer tribes on occasion) because if you're helping to raise the child of another man in the tribe, then he's also helping to raise your child.... this kind of jealousy became more common after the development of agriculture because planting crops leads to the concept of individual ownership of property, and that leads to the concept of inheritance of property, and then that means it's a lot more important to ensure your kids really are your kids, as opposed to someone else's in the same tribe, whether or not he's raising your child, because the property and cultural knowledge is no longer collectively owned, it's individually owned

on the other hand, women tend to be more jealous of emotional affairs, because what she wants from a man (whether or not he's the father of her children) is someone to provide her with protein and fat, which she needs in large quantities while pregnant or breastfeeding, so she needs that investment either from an individual man or from the men of the tribe collectively. It's probably the case that palaeolithic women would have been more upset if a male partner shared food with another woman than if he had casual sex with her, although she would probably not look kindly on the other either, as sex could be the start of a loving relationship that would involve food sharing, which would ultimately result in her getting fewer resources.

Men would have relied on women as well from an emotional point of view, for example he needs the carbohydrates and micronutrients from food gathered by women, and also it's been know that humans have looked after sick and injured members of the tribe, and evidence for this behaviour goes back nearly 2 million years, so if a man in injured while hunting, it may have been his female partner who looked after him, so he is also dependent on emotional investment from women, so you'd expect some jealousy from men of emotional affairs too.... just less so than sexual infidelity, because this could mean that the child of his woman who he loves and shares his food with isn't actually his. But emotional attachment, food sharing, looking after each other when sick, etc, are all very important to human societies and the importance of this is often underestimated in relation to the importance of providing women with meat to sustain pregnancy and breastfeeding, and the importance of men ensuring that the kids they provide for are really their kids.

icmuse

Women are cray! I blame hormones!

I prefer guy friends over girlfriends for that reason.
I am a tomboy at heart and all the cattiness it too much for me.

And jealousy? I have never experienced it myself personally.

djsupreme6

I think a lot of guys are worse...sorry fellas lol