Jealousy mainly occurs in relationships or over possessions. Jealousy can take serious forms and turn into morbid jealousy. Ultimately, pathological jealousy can develop.
Healthy jealousy
Everyone has some degree of jealousy. This is called healthy jealousy. Jealousy occurs within relationships or within possessions. You may become jealous because someone flirts with your partner or because someone drives a bigger car than you. If you then feel envy or are angry about it, but you can otherwise handle it well, you have a healthy dose of jealousy. You have to be able to put something like that behind you and forget it. Jealousy is most common within relationships, within sports (performance-oriented) and within possessions. In children, jealousy mainly plays a role in relation to possessions (toys), later friendships also play a role in children.
Sick jealousy
This form of jealousy goes beyond healthy jealousy and is most common within relationships. With morbid jealousy you cannot tolerate it when your partner talks to, looks at or thinks about someone of the opposite sex. When your partner is looking at someone else, try to distract him or her and draw attention to yourself. You have difficulty when your partner watches a TV program featuring beautiful men/women. You certainly cannot accept that your partner has a friendship with someone of the opposite sex.
You often ask confirmation of love: do you still love me is a frequently asked question. You want to hear from your partner that you are beautiful. You want to share your partner all to yourself and with no one else. Sometimes it feels as if your partner has become your possession. You often become disappointed because the partner does not say or think what you want to hear. You often know that you are jealous, but you cannot simply change this.
When you have a partner who is sickly jealous, this can put a lot of strain on your relationship. You feel constantly watched and questioned. You sometimes feel trapped because you have to justify everything, where you are going, who you are with and what time you are coming home.
Delusions of infidelity
In some cases, morbid jealousy can turn into delusions of infidelity or pathological jealousy. You are firmly convinced that your partner is unfaithful. Often there is no reason for this and the partner is not unfaithful, but the thought still persists. The partner’s corridors are checked every day: where has he/she been, is everything correct, checking pockets, reading the phone, looking at email, opening mail, etc. Delusions of infidelity are common in depression and alcoholics.
Danger of jealousy
Delusions of infidelity and morbid jealousy can make a person quite aggressive and provoke anger. In some cases it even comes to the point that a suicide or murder takes place. This is called crime of passion, murder out of passion. People do not want to share the partner with anyone and therefore decide to kill the partner, or they kill the person who pays too much attention to the partner. Suicide often results from no longer being able to cope with one’s own jealousy or from being unable to find a way out of a morbidly jealous relationship.