Sex and soulmates: The difference between male and female jealousy

The main support for the evolutionary-based Mars-Venus divide in jealousy comes from David Buss of the University of Texas. In studies of American college students, he has found that about twice as many men as women say they’d be upset more by sexual infidelity than by emotional infidelity. But psychology researchers Kenneth Levy and Kristen Kelly of Pennsylvania State University had doubts about the evolutionary explanation. For one thing, many men find emotional betrayal more upsetting than the sexual kind, Levy told me. “I noticed that although studies found that more men than women indicated that sexual infidelity was more bothersome than emotional infidelity—30 to 50 percent of men say that, compared to only 20 percent of women—an awful lot of men weren’t behaving as evolutionary psychology says they are supposed to.” That is, 50 to 70 percent of men agree with women that emotional infidelity is more distressing than sexual betrayal, says Levy…

According to “attachment theory,” how you are raised leaves a lasting impression on how trusting you are in intimate relationships. (Some of the most interesting work on this is by Phillip Shaver of the University of California, Davis.) In a nutshell, people whose parents were warm and loving and reliable sources of emotional support tend to be “securely” attached, forming successful adult relationships that are not marred by excessive clinginess or jealousy. But people whose parents were distant or cold tend to be “avoidant”: they are either dismissive of close relationships (and therefore prefer autonomy to commitment, and are often promiscuous) or afraid of them. (That is, the “avoidant” attachment style comes in two forms, fearful or dismissive. The former is often of the “once bitten, twice shy” variety, in which someone is afraid of being hurt in a relationship. But dismissive people actively scorn relationships.) The Penn State duo hypothesized that people who are dismissive of relationships would be more distressed by sexual than emotional infidelity.