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The Palgrave Handbook of Sexual Ethics pp 93–110Cite as

Palgrave Macmillan

Sexual Jealousy and Sexual Infidelity

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Abstract

In this chapter, Natasha McKeever and Luke Brunning consider (sexual) jealousy in romantic life. They argue that jealousy is best understood as an emotional response to the threatened loss of love or attention, to which one feels deserving, because of a rival. Furthermore, the general value of jealousy can be questioned, and jealousy’s instrumental value needs to be balanced against a range of potential harms. They assess two potential ways of managing jealousy (which are not mutually exclusive)—firstly by adopting a policy of monogamy and secondly by engaging in emotional work. Neither of these methods is easy, and neither will solve jealousy altogether, but Brunning and McKeever argue that the second strategy should be taken more seriously.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Goldie (2000: 240).

  2. 2.

    Neu (1980: 433).

  3. 3.

    For example, Ben-Ze’ev (2010). Exponents of the former view are influenced by William James; exponents of the latter, like Martha Nussbaum or Robert Solomon, are influenced by ancient Stoicism. For the purposes of this chapter we set aside questions about what kind of cognitive content features in emotions, that is, whether emotions are more like beliefs, or perceptions, or something else.

  4. 4.

    The fact that jealousy can motivate acts of shocking violence prompts our caution here.

  5. 5.

    Toohey (2014: Chapter 3).

  6. 6.

    For example, Farrell (1980). These claims are disputed. For instance, Kingsley Davis suggests jealousy is also oriented to a public, real or implied, and thus has a quadripartite form (c.f. Davis 1936: 395). For our purposes, these disputes matter only insofar as they encourage us to focus on typical features of jealousy, such as the role of a third party.

  7. 7.

    Protasi (2017).

  8. 8.

    Threat of loss seems more common than situations where one is jealous that a rival has secured some good we valued. Threat of change seems to cover cases where our relationship, affection, and so on continue (or improve) but is altered. Perhaps nonmonogamous cases are like this.

  9. 9.

    The possibility of jealousy in the absence of a relationship would also suggest that fidelity (Prinz 2004: 98–99) or exclusivity (Ben-Ze’ev 2010), understood as properties of relationships, is not always at stake in jealousy in a central way.

  10. 10.

    Neu (1980).

  11. 11.

    Solomon (2007).

  12. 12.

    Tov-Ruach (1980: 467).

  13. 13.

    Ben-Ze’ev (1990: 494).

  14. 14.

    Murphy (2002). The topic of the ‘rival’ is complex. We can distinguish between situations where other people are active competitors for the good we value, from those when they are not. In the latter, perhaps they have no interest in the person we care about at all. Similarly, jealousy can be elicited by imagined situations, mere suspicions, and perhaps even toward the dead (such as a partner’s ex-spouse). One dispute concerning rivals is whether they are part of the object of jealousy, or not. Robert C. Roberts thinks that any of the lover, beloved, and rival can be the focus of the emotion (2003: 257); whereas others, like Justin D’Arms, think jealousy focuses more squarely on the person we care about: ‘The jealous person’s real locus of concern is the beloved—the person whose affection he is losing or fears losing—not his rival. […] The envious person’s locus of concerns is the rival. […] Roughly for the jealous person the rival is fungible, and the beloved is not fungible. […] Whereas in envy it is the other way around’ (D’Arms 2009: 3–4).

  15. 15.

    For examples of these views, see Ben-Ze’ev (2010: 289–297); Farrell (1980); Goldie (2000: 225) and Roberts (2003).

  16. 16.

    Goldie (2000: 237).

  17. 17.

    Ben-Ze’ev (2010: 44).

  18. 18.

    Kristjánsson (2018: 105).

  19. 19.

    Fredericks (2013: 98).

  20. 20.

    Fredericks (2013: 100).

  21. 21.

    Chalmers (2018: 235).

  22. 22.

    Frankfurt (2004: 79).

  23. 23.

    Goldie (2000: 237).

  24. 24.

    Keller (2000: 163).

  25. 25.

    Wonderly (2017: 240).

  26. 26.

    Wonderly (2017: 240–241)

  27. 27.

    Wonderly (2016: 229).

  28. 28.

    Hazan and Shaver (1987, 1994); McCarthy (1999).

  29. 29.

    Frankfurt (2004: 43).

  30. 30.

    Frankfurt (2004: 83).

  31. 31.

    After all, attachment theory arose from studying parental bonds.

  32. 32.

    McKeever (2019: 214).

  33. 33.

    Wonderly (2017: 241).

  34. 34.

    Tsai (2016: 170).

  35. 35.

    La Rochefoucauld (2007: 91).

  36. 36.

    Neu (1980: 63).

  37. 37.

    White (1980).

  38. 38.

    Welpinghus (2017).

  39. 39.

    Wreen (1989: 651).

  40. 40.

    Ben-Ze’ev (2010: 324) and Toohey (2014: 190).

  41. 41.

    Kristjánsson (2002: 160). Kristjánsson later (2018) changed his mind on this after reading Fredericks (2013).

  42. 42.

    Perel (2017: 99–100).

  43. 43.

    Brunning (2020: 7–8).

  44. 44.

    Pines (1998: 199).

  45. 45.

    Toohey (2014: 221).

  46. 46.

    Brunning (2020: 15).

  47. 47.

    Fredericks (2013).

  48. 48.

    Buss (2013: 160).

  49. 49.

    Scruton (2001: 339).

  50. 50.

    Brunning (2018: 517).

  51. 51.

    McMurtry (1972).

  52. 52.

    Chalmers (2018).

  53. 53.

    Chalmers (2018: 237).

  54. 54.

    Murphy (2002: 148).

  55. 55.

    Murphy (2002: 147).

  56. 56.

    Mogilski et al. (2019).

  57. 57.

    Brunning (2020).

  58. 58.

    Buss (2000).

  59. 59.

    Buss (1994, 2000).

  60. 60.

    Chung and Harris (2018).

  61. 61.

    Buss (2013: 158).

  62. 62.

    Solomon (2007: 107–109).

  63. 63.

    Easton (2006: 646).

  64. 64.

    Brunning (2018: 522).

  65. 65.

    Brunning (2020: 236–237).

  66. 66.

    Brunning (2020: 226).

  67. 67.

    Brunning (2020: 239).

  68. 68.

    York (2019: 11).

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. University of Leeds, Leeds, UK

    Natasha McKeever

  2. University of Birmingham, Birmingham, UK

    Luke Brunning

Authors
  1. Natasha McKeever
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  2. Luke Brunning
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Correspondence to Natasha McKeever .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Philosophy, University of Colorado Boulder, Boulder, CO, USA

    David Boonin

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McKeever, N., Brunning, L. (2022). Sexual Jealousy and Sexual Infidelity. In: Boonin, D. (eds) The Palgrave Handbook of Sexual Ethics. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-87786-6_6

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