October 26, 2010 • 46 mins
All of us have experienced the feeling of jealousy at some point or another. But why do we get jealous? Are women really more jealous than men? Josh and Chuck get to the bottom of jealousy in this episode.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve Camray.
It's ready. Are you welcome to stuff you should know
from house Stuff Works dot com. Hey, and welcome to
the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. With me as always is
(00:21):
Charles W. Chuck Bryant, who better not be podcasting with
anybody else behind my back? Are you You didn't hear
about the Chuck and Chuck show? Who's the other Chuck?
It's me? You're doing it with yourself, yes, but I
do your voice as me. That's fine. It's sort of weird.
It's just obsessive, like theater acting, sort of fantasy league thing.
(00:45):
Am I the the dummy in it? Like? Are you
just I'm Josso. Yeah, I figured I figured you did
that in your underwear in the mirror every mornings. It's
really good and the numbers like we're rivaling our own
show now open people love it. I'm surprised that hasn't
overtaken it yet. Wait, it's that one. Oh I didn't
(01:07):
know that was you? What. There's probably people out there like,
oh my god, I gotta hear this. Let's get to
it showing enough of this riff raff crap enough, Okay, Chuck,
You're ready. October this month? Uh is National apple Jack Month,
National pickle Peppers Month, National Breast Cancer Aware this month.
Did you notice the Delta Stewards and Stewardesses pink everywhere?
(01:29):
I love it. It's National Mental Illness Awareness Month, National Lesbian,
Gay and Bisexual History Month. And just so happens that
we're recording this on Pride weekend, which makes sense. Um,
it is National country Ham Month. Really, there's a lot
of October is a big month that kind of overshadows
(01:50):
Breast Cancer Awareness Month, Country Ham. It depends on the
country Ham. I would say, uh, And then I guess
most apropos to this podcast, which I wasn't aware of,
but I don't think you were either. Um, It's National
Domestic Violence Awareness Month. Really, yes, And I say it's
a propos of this podcast because this is a podcast
on jealousy. Jealousy is one of the more widely recognized
(02:14):
triggers of domestic violence. Did you know that? Did not?
But it makes sense? Um. According to a two thousand
three alone I study um in relationships that were domestically violent,
it was male on woman domestic violence, and there is
such thing as the other way around, um, women who
(02:35):
were abused. As long as it was attended by jealousy,
it was perceived by the battered woman as um less
negative and that deserves but less negative than um non
jealous violence. Interesting. Yeah, um, which is it's very interesting,
and it's really weird because it kind of goes it
(02:56):
speaks to our perception of jealousy. It's a it's a weird, undesirable,
unflattering emotion. Um. And yet it also shows we care
in certain ways. Right, Clearly, domestic violence is far far
beyond any level of caring. But it's so it's it
(03:18):
can even spill over that far the idea that jealousy
equals caring, that it can it can reach violent levels.
That is one of the more messed up things I've
heard in a long time. And because as I can
hear the scenario of well, he was just jealous because
I was talking to that guy at the bar, which
means he loves me, which is like, that's so messed up.
(03:41):
It is very because I josh am of the belief.
Before we get started, here's Chuck's oppinion rant. These are
the two things that Chuck says about jealousy. This is
not backed up in any scientific way. I believe that
A there is no place in jealousy in any healthy relationship.
In the article, it says like jealousy can be good
(04:02):
as long as I don't agree B. Because of that,
I think jealousy pops up when you when there are
trust issues should never be trust issues. When there is
an unhealthy dependence on one another should never be that.
And when one or both of the parties is really
really insecure with each other. I disagree. All right, then
(04:26):
I don't disagree to like a polar opposite degree. Um,
but I do think I did agree with the article
where it says towards the end, the psychologist that was
um interviewed for this article suggests that a certain degree
of what's called normal jealousy is healthy. UM. I don't
think it's possible to have a relationship that doesn't have
(04:48):
some sort of trust issues you're looking at it. I
have zero trust issues, zero jealousy, Emily, I've never had
anything like that. That is fantastic for you. I am
of the opinion, though, that jealousy in small measure to
a certain degree is symptomatic of a healthy relationship. Really. Yeah,
all right, let's get into it. Okay, you're ready. What
(05:09):
is jealousy Chuck? First of all, jealousy envy same thing.
Uh No, not at all. They're in fact quite different
because envy, Josh is when you want something that you
do not have that someone else has, right, usually an
object near or whatever. The job, jobs, an object is
(05:30):
it if you write it down, if you draw a
picture of your job, it becomes an object. Whereas jealousy
is a fear of losing something that you have to
someone else, like a job or an object. So you
want something that somebody else has an envy and jealousy
you already have something, but you fear losing it. Yeah.
And like you know, relationships are usually where you talk
about jealousy, So you basically fear that you're gonna lose
(05:52):
your mate to the dude at the bar. And jealousy,
Chuck is an emotion. So let's talk briefly about emotions.
But they're um, primary emotions like fear, disgust, anger, joy, uh,
and a couple others okay, um, And these are found
in just about any animal with the brain, right, um.
(06:14):
And then there's secondary emotions that are self conscious emotions
that include jealousy, right, jealousy, shame, guilt, embarrassment, pride, um.
You have to have a sense of yourself and awareness
of yourself in relation to others to experience secondary emotions
like jealousy, because jealousy, you can't be jealous of anything
(06:36):
if there's not another person or another something. It takes
two to be jealous, right. Yeah. And Ralph Hopka, he's
a professor of psychology at cal State Long Beach heap
I know, was interviewed for this article and he put
it really succinctly. He said, jealousy is an anticipatory emotion.
It seeks to prevent loss. That really sums it up
right there. But it also makes jealousy really really unusual
(06:59):
because think about it, like all relations or all um
emotions are reactionary. Really, there's like a stimuli or stimulus
and it you react to it. You feel fear because
of it, you feel joy because of it. Jealousy is
the prospect of of experiencing something, so that makes it
(07:19):
an antecedent to other emotions like anger or fear, right
it comes first. Yeah, Yeah, it's weird, it's unusual, and
what our emotions chuck if not motivators, right, Fear motivates
you to like move away from the man coming at
you with a knife. Joy motivates you to like do
(07:40):
that again or break out in song? Right, Uh, and
then I guess jealousy motivates you to take measures to
prevent that loss. Interesting. Yeah, all right, this is gonna
be a fun one, alright, because rarely do we come
at it from different angles. Uh. Since we're talking about
m V, do you want to talk about your penis? Uh? Sure,
(08:02):
that's one of my favorite things talking about Uh. Freud.
Sigmund Freud, the psychoanalyst UM came up with the concept
of penis envy and I had a general idea of
what it was, and it wasn't very far off. But
it wasn't until this article that I read what penis
MV is. It is defined the psychoanalytic concept in which
(08:26):
a female envyes male characteristics or capabilities, especially the possession
of a penis. Right, Yeah, what's that gonna do with jealousy?
It doesn't, but it is interesting and I didn't realize
I didn't understand why this um was put into this either.
This is one of the more feminist articles on the site. Yeah,
I thought so. Um. But in in this little sidebar,
(08:47):
penis envy? Um. Basically what Freud came up with was
that all women want to be men, and all of
their accomplishments and feats are the result of a sense
of competition with men, or they're trying to make up
for their shortcoming of lacking a penis interesting. Obviously this
has been generally discarded, but pertinent to your your your
(09:11):
question of what it has to do with jealousy. Nothing,
because that's envy and we've already cleared the air between
what's envy and what's jealousy. I just thought it was
an interesting side it is. Can we talk about jealousy? Sure, Chuck, Uh.
There are there have been studies. It's kind of a
difficult thing to study, um, because you know, you want
to study if gender has an even to do with it,
(09:32):
if age has anything to do with it, if ethnicity
has any to do with it. And it's hard for
like age, because you'd have to interview someone at the
age of fourteen as an adolescent, and then again in
their thirties and then their fifties, and that's sort of
a hard study to pull off. Yeah, the same person
you'd have to interview. One of the reasons why it's
so hard is because, well, it's a longitudinal study, but
(09:54):
with jealousy specifically, it's so um contextual, culturally contextual that
as the culture just expectations of what might make someone
jealous change as well. Sure that was the reason at
least given in this in this um, in this article,
but other longitudinal studies have been carried out, and it
could considerably be carried out, but apparently no one's done
(10:16):
it on jealousy, right, Yeah, but there have been some
really cool studies just about different aspects of jealousy and
they have found some pretty cool water cooler things that
you can wow your buddies tomorrow. And the cubicles. Um.
Women they've always thought have showed jealousy a little more
than men do. And we'll get into the emotional and
(10:36):
sexual jealousy in a minute. But one study revealed that
women when they're jealous tend to aim their ire more
often at the rival, whereas the male will aim the
ire at their partner a fisher. Interesting, yeah, great example
of that's really great example, Um, what lies beneath fatal attraction?
(10:59):
Glenn posts yeah, although she kind of came after the
family wholesale energy. Yeah. And then there's always the lorrain
of Bobbitts who just fly in the face of that,
and and the woman who run who ran over her
husband in Texas member with her daughter in the car. Right. Yeah.
So I mean I'm gonna end up saying this, I
might as well say it. I think it's all very personal,
Like it's hard to do a sweeping study of jealousy
(11:21):
and say people say this and people do this because
everyone's different. Yeah, and this other um, this supplemental study
from two I think that you came up with kind
of underscores that it supports that idea, Chuck. I think
jealousy is far more personal than it's been treated in
the past as well. Um, for the most part, it
was viewed as um, it was divided by gender, and
(11:43):
there are there are studies that support that that women
tend to be more jealous than men, right. Uh. And
that's I guess you have to be very careful with
your wardening there, because it's really easy to uh skew
that idea the wrong way. It doesn't mean that women
experience it's jealousy more than men. Necessarily. It just means
that women display jealous characteristics more than men according to
(12:07):
these studies. Well, yeah, and they say that one reason
might be that they're not more jealous, they just are
more open and honest with expressing that the men um.
Since you brought that study though, it is pretty interesting.
They there's long been the belief that, uh, men are
more upset about sexual infidelity, women are more upset about
emotional infidelity. Actually that is true, but they always thought
that it was evolutionary in its basis because men, ah,
(12:32):
and this is pretty interesting. There's no way to for
men to have proven that they're the father of a child, right,
So men were always very like guarded about sexual behavior. Well,
they guard their mate because they my wife, my you know,
Tuktok is pregnant, and I don't know if it was
you know me, or if it was Ringo star over there.
(12:54):
Oh that's from caveman, and I don't know if Tuktok was.
But and women are more com admitted to raising a
family and having a partner, so like an emotional betrayal
would be you know, more devastating to them. But the
scientist at a Penn State said, well, what about the
fact that there's men who are really upset about emotional
(13:16):
betrayal just like women are, Like, how do you explain that?
And they did some studies and they found that it's
not necessarily evolutionary and nature right, No, it's uh. What
they came up with was that it was much more
personal and specific. UM. Basically, what these two these two
researchers hypothesized was that UM, men tend to be more
(13:39):
sexually jealous and women tend to be more emotionally jealous
or jealous over emotional betrayal and sexual betrayal. UM because
men are more likely to detach from personal relationships as
a defense mechanism. That was their hypothesis, And they carried
out the study and they found that their hypothesis was
(14:00):
really correct, that men who are detached from relationships, which
they theorize as a defense mechanism, are more likely to
report that they would be turned off or made jealous
by a sexual betrayal than an emotional betrayal. But what
they found and what I think they were trying to
point out, was that their their hypothesis explains the why
(14:25):
there's a population of men who are in securely committed
relationships who consistently report that an emotional betrayal is way
worse than a sexual betrayal. So it's they're saying, like,
there are there there is a division of jealousy by gender.
But here's why it's not because you know, men can't
prove that that that's not their kid. That it's actually
(14:46):
much more personal than that. Did you know that? Men?
One of the most common reactions that a man has
when they first find out that their wife is pregnant
is whose is it? Even in committed like awesome marriages,
It's like a very common psychological reaction to think like
that can't be mine? What? Yeah, where did you read this?
(15:08):
I read it? That's it. I can't remember. Yeah, I
did so many sights I want to rag on right now. Alright,
chuck um Well quickly though about that study too. It
also points out that the person's history has a lot
to do with it, So right, it's a defense. Yeah, Like,
I'm not a jealous person at all, like I said,
and I have no trust issues, but if I had
been cheated on a bunch of times, I might sure,
(15:30):
and I throughout this podcast or I'm going to refer
to nameless friends of mine, And I do know this
one couple who the guy had a history of cheating
and the girl had a history of cheating. They hooked up,
they got married, and they're both pretty jealous. Oh yeah,
I mean it's and they've been mary happily married. It's
not like they're they're not a good couple, but they're
(15:52):
both just inherently jealous because they're both cheaters. Right. It's
kind of goes back to that, um judge not less
you be judged, or when you point a finger, there's
three pointing back at you. The concept that actually encountered
the Yeah, the concept that if you have cheated, um,
you are aware that people can do that to other peopure.
(16:14):
And on the same coin, if you've been cheated on,
you're acutely aware that that can happen. And I think
both of those situations can lead to jealousy too. I
think that's what that past state study was was saying that,
like you said, it's much more personal than of evolutionary
origin divided along gender. Right, Um, so, Chuck, let's let's um.
There have been other studies too that are some are hokey,
(16:37):
some deserve rim shots, some deserve sad hombones UM. But
apparently some studies have focused on jealousy as an individual
um emotion, not necessarily needing another person that it um
is or it originates in the self right. And one
of the things that they found was men who are
(17:00):
tall and women who are average height tend to be
less jealous than um men who are short or women
who are shorter or taller. And basically the point is
is that they know everybody wants them well. And I
think beyond that, it goes back to what I was saying.
I think the root of a lot of jealousy lies
in the insecurities of a person. And you know, short
(17:23):
guys are often insecure. Okay, So if jealousy is an
insecurity we're breaking new ground here, are we. Yeah, it
sounds like it, Okay, Jealousy is an insecurity insecurity based emotion, right,
I believe so, Yes, And what we're finding is that
it can be It can originate from the self feelings
of insecurity based on appearance, um, height, attributes, what have you,
(17:49):
or it can be inflicted by another person e g.
Cheating or being cheated on, or doing anything to break
someone's trust right right, trust breaking dude, we get our
pH ds today, Chuck, Yes, Uh, should we talk about
adolescent jealousy for a little bit, Yeah, adolescent jealousy, Josh
(18:13):
is um kids are pretty jealous. Like, there's some of
the more jealous creatures on earth. If you sit around
and watch kids, there's two types. There's one that is
inherently wants to share a lot and it's very kind
and giving. And there's one that doesn't want to share.
They want what you've got, They want your Lincoln logs,
they want to break your toys. And uh. Kids often
(18:39):
display this, and especially with siblings with sibling rivalry. But
they say rivalry whatever, and they say that's a really
normal behavior though, and not to get too worked up
about it as a parent, and to kind of stay
out of it unless you know it gets violent and
let them figure it out on their own. But that
that makes you wonder, like our kids more jealous or
are they just more emotionally honest? Well, maybe have they?
(19:01):
Have they not learned that you need to kind of
keep a lid on that kind of thing that or
not emotionally mature. It depends on how you look at it.
Jealous either way, is that right? Were you did you
happen to be extremely lonely or extremely insecure. I think
I was insecure in my high school relationship and that
(19:25):
made me really jealous. Oh yeah, yeah, okay, so check
that that's actually kind of normal to experience jealousy as
far as friendship, jealousy is an adolescent according to a
study that was produced in uh, well, not produced but
published instead in developmental psychology, right, and I basically found
that kids who are insecure or lonely, or experience insecurity
(19:48):
or extreme loneliness tend to um be jealous of friendships. Right,
So when they get into a friendship, they are jealous
of their friends friends to the point where it can
erupt and physical aggressiveness or passive aggressiveness where they're, you know,
ignoring their friend and their friend has no idea. Why. Yeah,
that's basically another way to put it. It's high school. Yeah,
(20:11):
like you know, and I was. I sort of became
friends with a popular crowd in about the tenth grade,
and I never remember being jealous because I was just
so excited to be in the cool club. So I
was never jealous. I was just like, yeah, I like everybody,
and everybody likes me, and it's all great, but it
was the girlfriend that I was jealous of, but I
(20:31):
had reason to be. I think I think it's pretty
normal too. I think high school is how do you?
How do you ever make it through there? Don't know.
I always feel so bad for kids that like take
their own lives in high school because it's just like
just just hung on a couple more years, you know,
gets so much better. Believe me, Yeah, we can message
(20:52):
that out to our high school friends. If you're lonely
and depressed out there on so much better. High school
is really the anyone who who's high school was the
high point of their lives, they are the sad people
in your past eventually exactly. Um so chuck uh. The
that study I was talking about in developmental psychology, it
(21:14):
was pretty comprehensive. They interviewed ninth graders and asked them
about hypothetical situations and found, um, it was reinforced that
girls tend to be more jealous than guys. Um, which
is something that I think psychology is having a lot
of trouble like addressing because it's just such a m
It's a misogynist finding girls are jealous. It's so cliche.
(21:38):
It's so the other word I'm trying to think of. Um,
but it apparently is this open secret in psychological research
into jealousy, right, or again, like you're saying, or are
girls more emotionally Uh, what's the word? Um? Honest? Expressive? Honest? Yeah,
(22:01):
but when it comes down to a study, there's no distinction. Yeah,
that's true. I mean it's open displays of jealousy that
you're looking for, or at least honesty in whether or
not you'd be on jealous right. And I could see
a lot of high school boys not being in a
study like this, not wanting a cop to it. Yeah
for sure. Yeah, Um, you're talking about types of jealousy.
(22:21):
Adolescent jealousy is racked with sibling rivalry, right. Um, that's
just I was second fiddle to my um middle sister,
like my whole Still to this day, I'm like the
baby of the family. I'm like, oh, you know, I'm
going to be on TV next week and everybody's just
like whatever, So, Mandy, how are the kids? Uh you
(22:45):
know about my my handsomer, thinner, smarter, older brother. Yeah,
he and I correspond pretty regularly these days. He guys
writing each other, does that make you jealous? Does uh?
He he is was always better than at me school
and you know, better looking, and like I said, he's
in better shape. But we were I was never jealous
of him because my parents were always really good about
(23:08):
just they didn't you know, Scott was good at this
and you're you're good in other areas, and they were
good about building me up, and you're good at growing
facial hair. Yeah, exactly, Well, actually that is where I
beat him. Yeah, he's he's a little he's he can
grow a little goatee and a little stash, but he
struggles in the facial hair department. Good. Maybe he's jealous
of my facial I bet he is. He would never
(23:29):
admit a chuck, but he is okay take it from me,
and he never rubbed it into That can make you jealous,
I guess if he stuffs it in your face. But
we just always got along really great. Yeah. And you
were saying did your parents stay out of it? Um? Yeah,
I mean they stayed out of fights when we had him,
and they definitely didn't say, Well, look at Scott's report
card compared to yours. He got a's and you've got bees. Yeah, Well,
(23:51):
who does that unless you're like a sadistic out there,
that's crazy. Um. Yeah, my parents stayed out of mine
and my sister's relationship to UM, And apparently that's the right,
that's the that's the way to UM single handedly pretty much,
but that's apparently the way to go according to some
(24:14):
uh child psychologists, like stay out of it, let them
handle it themselves, because um, not only are they learning
how to, but you might also actually like one more
than the other. And then you come through loud and
clear to the one when you unconsciously side with the other, right, UM.
So apparently let your kids as long as they're not
(24:35):
beating the tar out of each other, you're all right. Right.
So that was a sibling rivalry, which is also called
family jealousy. UM. And then I imagine there's other types
of family jealousy to like, um, apparent one parent being
jealous of the other because they're getting all the attention
of the kids. But that exists, um. And then of
(24:55):
course there is well there's all sorts of complexes at
a pole electoral, just all sorts of crazy family dynamics
going on. I got older sister too. I never talked
about Michelle. I should mention that she's six years older,
so there was no there was no jealousy between like
the sexes. We were all our own people. How how
how much older is your brother? It's three years in
(25:18):
six years, so three three and three romantic jealousy, Josh,
you wanna talk about that? That's really the big one. Yes,
this is the one where apparently everyone else on the planet,
but you and Emily experienced this. I know plenty of
couples who aren't jealous of each other. Yeah really, yeah,
(25:38):
is that news to you? Yeah, I've I've never ever
had a relationship that, like, didn't have some jealousy here.
There wasn't a constant, it wasn't a thread, and it
wasn't debilitating by any means. Right, I've never I've never
been in a relationship that didn't have that didn't exhibit
(26:00):
some form of jealousy somehow. And I don't I don't
know that I would feel comfortable in one that doesn't.
I wonder if it's over sharing. But that's how that's how. Well,
let me ask you this. You go to a party
with you me, you split up, and you see her
over at the beer keg because you know the keggers
were good to see at this age just talking to
some guy. Would you immediately feel jealousy or just think
(26:22):
she's just talking to some guy? Um? Honestly, UM, I
would say that in that situation because I trust her,
I would assume that she's talking to some guy. But
I would eventually go over there if it like continued
or if she saw her talking later on or something
(26:42):
like that, And UM, it wouldn't be for her. I
wouldn't be trying to intervene toward her. It would be like, hey, guy,
she's got a boyfriend kind of you know what I mean?
You want to go? I know her and I trust her, Um,
and I don't know that guy, right, And I know
that I don't know the guy and the guy doesn't
know I exist or whatever, although knowing you me, he
(27:05):
does know I exist. So that just makes me more
app to go over and be like take a hike.
For all you know, he could be dropping a roofy
in her in her That's exactly right, And this is
why I think that there is it is healthy to
experience some form of jealousy, because if I was totally
not jealous, I wouldn't have gone over there. I wouldn't
have cared, and you know, I would have had my
back to my girlfriend, which whatever, I don't think that's
(27:27):
a good thing. I guess that's me then no, No,
But here's the thing, Chuck, I guarantee you. I guarantee you.
We're going to get listener mail supporting your view and
supporting my view. I don't think there's a right or
wrong view. I think you should you know, when there's
an uncomfortable amount of jealousy in your relationship or a
(27:51):
bunch you know, you know, and if you're getting beat
up because your husband or boyfriend's jealous and you don't know,
go get help because you that's too much. Well, you
may not know if you're really jealous, though, because a
lot of people might think, well, that's completely normal to
be abnormally jealous, right, Well, we're here to tell you.
(28:11):
And again this applies to women beating up. Man. If
you're getting beat up by your significant other out of
jealousy for any reason, really, that's not okay. That's that's wrong.
Like no other people who also listen to this podcast
think that your relationship is wrong. Everybody out here thinks
that what's being done to you is wrong. It's a
(28:34):
good way to put it. Uh. They did find that
romantic jealousy is uh. Usually the first fight that a
couple will have is over some sort of romantic jealousy,
whereas later on in life it's all about money, money,
and if you're if you're lucky, it's about money. As
long as you're not fighting about trash, who takes who
takes the trash out, you're fine. Really. Yeah, the once
(28:55):
you start finding about the little stupid things, that's a
big problem, you think, so, and my experience, we should
start a relationship show people just like what we think
about things. All right, let's get back to the science,
shall we. Uh. There is work jealousy, of course, and
that is a really ugly thing to have in the workplace.
And that is obviously when people are buying for the
(29:16):
same jobs, are looking for the same promotion or the
same pay raise or the same whatever, and other people
are getting it and or a person gets that raise
over you, and it's just it's it's one of the
uglier types of jealousy that I've seen. It is And
you know, what I think is cute? What's that? And
this is how I feel about you? If I'm ever
jealous of you. It falls much more into the sibling
rivalry than work jealousy. I thought you're can Sara romantic.
(29:39):
I was about say, thank god, thank god. So what
more sibling rivals than work? Yeah? Well that's because we're
we're peers, and we wish the best on each other.
Like occasionally we'll get individual opportunities, not often, but sometimes,
like you write for HuffPo, occasionally. I didn't think you
(29:59):
cared about that. Well, no, that's what I'm saying. Well,
that's what my point is is that we're real supportive
of each other's Like I wrote for Cosmo last week,
you wrote for HuffPo. You wrote for Cosmo. I should
be jealous because HuffPo Cosmo. No, no, no, you wrote
for Cosmo. Yeah. You didn't tell me this, What are
you jealous? No? But I'm proud of you. You're supposed
to tell I was kind of like, you know, Cosmo,
(30:22):
I wanted to know about stress, and that's awesome. It's
like being mad at your boyfriend gives you pimples and stuff.
That's awesome. Chuck, not as heady as hufbo. Hey, Well regardless, Chuck,
I'm proud of you, so you sent me that link
after this, Okay, well when it publishes it well, and
pride is a self conscious emotion. Uh. And then Josh,
we've talked about this kind of off and on. But
(30:43):
abnormal jealously is I think what they called it many things,
psychotic behavior, delusional, morbid. It's also referred to largely as
neurotic jealousy neurotic where it's a habitual, possibly unfounded or
at the very um detrimental to the relationship. Yeah, and
they said it could be uh for a lot of reasons.
(31:04):
Um insecurity of course, always back to that immaturity again
and being a control freak, which I thought was kind
of interesting. It can also be um the result like
we said, of having your trust broken, Chuck, or having
feel like the trust was broken even when it hasn't happened. Right.
But I think if you've broken someone's trust, you know it,
like to a debilitating degree, you know it, right, And
(31:27):
there's actually a lot of help out there. Are you
people who if you've broken someone's trust and you don't
care to find out how to rebuild it, probably just
move along. But if you do care, then there's actual
like steps to rebuilding trust, and we actually did a
little digging around and found something right. That's right. So UM,
(31:49):
we found that I think anybody who says seven steps
to rebuilding trust in like ten minutes, it's not going
to happen. One of the things that we found in
our research was that if you're rebuilding trust broken trust,
it's always going to take longer than you think it's
going to I would like triple what you think you
can't I I think even that would probably fall short.
(32:12):
I think once you start thinking about how long it's
going to take, you've lost focus and you need to
refocus on rebuilding trust with the person. So the first
thing that you have to do is tell your partner,
whether it's your friend, your spouse, your UM, the love
of your life, your co host on your podcast, your workmate,
(32:33):
whoever you broken trust with UM you you you want
them to know that you understand their feelings, that you're
wrong them right, and that you're sorry, and that you
feel totally cool with the fact that they hate you
right now and you're completely responsible. You have to own
that completely, I would think totally. Because some people break
trust and they kind of try and put it back
on you a little bit, which is a natural human emotion.
(32:55):
I think to try and deflect blame, but it's always
better if you just keep it yourself. Well, you don't
want to heap it like you want. You want to
have a conversation, and yeah, you want to accept responsibility
for what you did. Some of the things you don't
want to do is withdraw, um, attack back like you
were saying, or offer excuses or explanations. You want to
do that and apologize, not attack back, but you want
(33:18):
to offer an explanation and apologize in reverse order. After
you've said, I understand that you're mad, and all of
this might not take place in like a ten or
fifteen minute conversation. This could take place over months, depending
on how badly you've hurt the other person. Right, Um,
but yeah, after you have said I know I've hurt you,
(33:39):
and I take responsibility. Um, you want to apologize. You
want to explain your point of view. Basically, you want
to say, this is why I did this, even if
it's as wrong as because I'm a selfish piece jerk.
Selfish jerk. Um, that's an explanation, right, It's how the
(34:00):
person understand why it happened, which I think is a
big part of it. Right, Yeah, I would want I
would just recommend stopping short of trying to defend your
actions though, because there's a difference. Right. Right, You're not
saying it was right, you're saying why you did it.
Those two are separate, or why it's right is layered
on the explanation. Right. And you want to make promises,
Actually you want to go out of your way to
(34:21):
make promises. You you don't want to say I make
no promises. This changes our relationship. You can't expect anything
from me. You make promises by saying this is you
know what you can expect of me in the future,
and it can be Um. One of the examples that
was used in this was, um, if you if you
lie to your wife so you can go play golf
(34:44):
with your buddies on a Saturday morning, which is wow. Um,
you want to promise to spend you know, every Saturday
for the next two months with your family, or you
could just a little maybe, or you could go to
your wife to begin with and say, hey, I'm gonna
play golf on Saturday, right, or even can I depending
on your relationship, but yeah, lying to your wife to
(35:06):
go play golf with your buddies. It's like a Bob
Hope short from the fifties or Kevin James sitcom. Have
you got anything else on trust there? Um? Well, yeah,
you want to make promises. One of the things you
want to do is not over exert yourself with promises.
You don't want to make fantastic promises because the worst
thing you can do is not follow through on your promises,
(35:28):
and you just broken trust again, right, And you also
want to make promises that are not just agreeable to
the person that you have who's trust you broken, but
to yourself as well, because if you're like, well, for
the love of God, I'm like, you know, I've lied
about playing golf with my buddies and now I have
to go get some moon dust because I promised I would.
You're gonna probably resent your partner. So you want to
come to a consensus about what's okay. Um, And then,
(35:52):
like we said, you want to keep promises, and then
you want to kind of discuss how things are going. Um.
There's a lot of steps to this, but again the
rule of them is, um, apologize or say you understand
why their feelings are hurt, and take responsibility apologize, explain,
make promises, follow through on the promises, and just keep
an open dialogue. Try to hustle the other person. Yeah,
(36:14):
if you're a male right now and you're thinking all
those steps come on, that's called being in a relationship,
right and it does take a lot of work in
a lot of steps, and it does if you're gonna
be in a happy one, dude, that's what you gotta do.
And you will know when it's worth it. Oh, sure
you'll know or when to cut bait, So chuck, I
(36:34):
guess that's it. Oh well, no, no, we got I
got a few more things. We never finished on. Abnormal
jealousy actually, uh, because there's a switch that happens sometimes
between normal jealousy that leads to abnormal and dr Hoopka
says it's not always easy to spot and define when
that happens, but you should be aware of it if
you're in a relationship because it can't get really bad.
(36:57):
You know if when they throw acid on you, or hey,
someone to throw acid on you. Did that happen? Yeah,
there was a picture in the article. Yeah, really weird. Uh.
He says that a few things you can look for though,
if for abnormal jealousy is if, like, you go out
or something, you're given permission, or you just go out
(37:17):
with your friends and your mate is always calling to
check in on you. That's something that you should look for.
Or if they're going through your telephone book or your
like text or your address book, that's probably abnormal jealousy too.
It is. And I have other unnamed people I know
it's a friend of mine. Who oh sure, the wife says,
you can go out with your friends. Oh, no problem,
(37:38):
I'm so cool. It's so cool. And then they get
out in the whole entire timet texts in a couple
of hours to the point where we just go why
you even bother coming out? Man? That's supportive, that's supportive.
What should I say? That's awesome? No, but I mean, like,
why you even bother coming out? That's kind of I mean,
I don't know. I can't wait to meet your unnamed friends,
(38:02):
like you're unnamed friend number two. I don't think they
listen to the podcast. They don't know, so I feel
pretty comfortable. Uh. And then one more two more things green, Yeah,
the ancient Greeks, right, that's what did you recognize that?
What do you mean recognize it turning green? Um because
of bile. Remember the four humors we talked about happiness
(38:26):
audiobook that's hitt hint. Yeah, uh yeah. They think that
came from a build up of bile when you're jealous
or envious and would actually turn your skin greeny. Yellow
bible will turn your skin green. I think I think
it would be green bile. Yeah, there's a but well
there isn't. There's yellow bile, black bile, blood, and flagm
(38:47):
were the four humors. I like black bile. We're we're
both black bile and a little bit of a blood.
We're both sanguine and melancholy. And can we talk about
animals real quick? Uh? Animals actually show jealousy, forms of jealousy.
They don't know, they don't chuck this if you read this.
A sense of fairness does not indicate jealousy. And what's more,
(39:08):
the the animals may have envied the other animals treat
The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences did a
study where they tested dogs to give them treats when
they would shake, you know, as a reward. Yeah, And
they saw that if another dog was getting a you know,
a treat a piece of food afterwards, the other what
(39:29):
wasn't that the dog that wasn't would eventually, after a
couple of times, would be like, I'm not shaking right
until I get some uh some food. And they tested
that in monkeys, and they found that the monkeys got
jealous over the kind of treat, even jealous. The ones
that got a cucumber were like, at first, oh, this
is great, I get a cucumber for a treat, And
(39:50):
then they noticed that their buddy was getting a grape,
which tastes a lot better I cast to a monkey.
And the monkeys would actually just stop performing because they
didn't get a treat as good as the other monkey.
You know, it's weird. That came up when we were
doing research for our super Stuff Guide to the Economy
audio book. Oh that's right, I knew that sounded yeah, familiar.
It was that your key's at the emery down the street. Um. See,
(40:11):
the thing is, Chuck is that's a sense of fairness.
It's not the same thing as jealousy. And I don't
think that the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science
has got it wrong. I think MPR did because sometimes
MPR and gets things wrong much has it pained me
to say it five times per podcast? We get something wrong?
So for podcasts for podcast uh, you know, you might
(40:31):
say jealous, Some say elephants get jealous. Elephants can remember.
It's hard to tell with animals because you can't ask well. Currently,
the prevailing scientific way of looking at it is animals
don't have a sense of self enough to have to
experience secondary emotions like jealousy or shame or embarrassment. You
have to have a conscious sense of self. I think
(40:54):
animals do. But science is like, we'll prove it, and
we haven't figured out how to prove it yet. So
that's where we're standing. You ready, I see you've got
a fine piece of listener mail right there. Yeah. Do
you have anything else? Nope. So if you want to
learn more about jealousy, trust all that kind of stuff,
you can type jealousy or trust into the swing and
(41:14):
search bar at how Stuff works dot Com. Since I
said that, I think now nowadays it's time for listener man.
It is Josh. I'm gonna call this just one of
many polygamy emails. We got it blew up, it really did.
We got something from we got one from lou Bega.
Did you see you know? We got two emails from
(41:36):
lou Bega. And I wrote him back the first time
because he said, Hey, guys, I'm not pumping gas. I'm
I'm slicing meat at a deli, just so you know.
And I wrote him back and said slice at then
lou And then he wrote back again and said about
the Mormon one of the Polygamy podcast, Yes he was.
He was defining. Do you think I'm kind of leaning
(41:56):
toward it, dude. I wrote him back today and said, listen,
if this is the real loup Ega of hit song fame,
they'n I'm gonna need photographic of it. That's what I
was thinking too, But I didn't have time to email him,
So I'm glad you didn't want a picture of blue Bega.
You'd see see me on these That kind of makes
me jealous that I don't see see you on fanmail
when it's lou Bega. It depends on who it is. Okay,
we'll see seeing me on the rest, but especially if
(42:18):
you send in photo of it. What's funny is he's
going to send a picture himself. You're gonna be like, wait,
what the hell, little lou Big it look like now
I remember, he looks like what if he doesn't wear
po door? I wonder in the Delhi if he's like
a little bit of turkey, a little bit of pumper nickel. No,
some rye, oh dear. So this one, like I said,
(42:41):
we heard from a lot of um people from the
Church of Jesus Christ of Latter day Saints. A lot
of people said, it's really great, you got it right.
A lot of people said he got it all wrong,
or they said we didn't distinguish that enough. I disagree.
I think we said quite plainly that that most Mormons
don't do this, and that this is the fundamentalist Mormon,
and like with a capital at fundamentalist Mormons. Well, and
(43:04):
a distinction between the Church of Latter day Saints and Mornerism. Right,
maybe that's what the distinction wants. Maybe we'll have a
whole another bath. This is from Susan. Hey, guys, have
said it before, I'll say it again. You guys are awesome.
I just had a few clarifications about the Mormons concerning
their practice of polygamy in your recent podcasts. I myself
am a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of
(43:24):
Latter day Saints and a history buff on this topic
because a few of my ancestors were early members who
practice polygamy. Polygamy was not a blanket requirement for being
a good member of the Church of Jesus Christ of
Latter day Saints. It was only practiced by a small
portion of the membership of the church, and was only
done so at the discretion of the president of the church.
(43:44):
You couldn't just decide to do it yourself unless you
wanted to be excommunicated and or seriously disciplined. Uh. Those
men who were asked to practice polygamy were mostly leaders
of the church, and all parties were willing and gave
their consent to the marriages. You mentioned that after the
church stopped practicing give me, they promised to excommunicate any
who continue to do so. But even when they advocated
(44:05):
the practice, it was selectively practiced among the leaders of
the church. I have to say, in this day and age,
I would be hard pressed to find a good reason
to practice polygamy, at least in the Western world. Back
in the pioneer times of wagons and gas lamps, I
could see some benefits. My great great great great grandmother
who was a second wife. Uh said that not second
(44:26):
wife is in second of two active wives. I think
that's what she means that in a lonely, dreary, dangerous
part of the wilderness that she and the first wife
settled with their children and husband, it was comforting to
have a close friend and neighbor who she knew would
help them any moment for any reason, and there were
no other neighbors around for hundreds of miles back in
the day. As a member of LDS Faith, I appreciate
(44:48):
your respect in discussing the issues that are close to
my heart and in accurately representing facts that are so
often misreported and misconstrued. If you guys decided to do
a podcast on the LDS, I would recommend you visit
the church's official websites and access material there for clarification
of practices and beliefs. So uh, and she said, I'll
give you any help you need to, because I got
(45:10):
the nine one one nice before one one nice. That's
Susan B. Thanks Susan B. That was very kind of
you to take the time to write in and to
say we cheated it respectfully. We thought we did as
opposed to some people who did not think we did.
We tried to totally aside from the Swinger intro anyway, UM,
(45:31):
thank you very much for that, Susan, and everybody who
wrote in with their opinion one way or the other.
That's very cool, Um, and thanks for the bit of
history and research Susan. We always appreciate that if you
have a story about your best country hand month, we
want to hear about it. Wrap it up in a podcast. No,
(45:51):
wrap it up in an email, right? Or I guess
you could record a podcast on it and then email
that to us. He could do, or a link, uh
and send it to Chuck in Jerry and Me at
stuff podcast at how stuff works dot com. For more
(46:13):
on this and thousands of other topics, visit how stuff
works dot com. Want more how stuff works, check out
our blogs on the house stuff works dot com home page.
M brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve camera.
It's ready, are you
Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve Camray.
It's ready. Are you welcome to stuff you should know
from house Stuff Works dot com. Hey, and welcome to
the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. With me as always is
(00:21):
Charles W. Chuck Bryant, who better not be podcasting with
anybody else behind my back? Are you You didn't hear
about the Chuck and Chuck show? Who's the other Chuck?
It's me? You're doing it with yourself, yes, but I
do your voice as me. That's fine. It's sort of weird.
It's just obsessive, like theater acting, sort of fantasy league thing.
(00:45):
Am I the the dummy in it? Like? Are you
just I'm Josso. Yeah, I figured I figured you did
that in your underwear in the mirror every mornings. It's
really good and the numbers like we're rivaling our own
show now open people love it. I'm surprised that hasn't
overtaken it yet. Wait, it's that one. Oh I didn't
(01:07):
know that was you? What. There's probably people out there like,
oh my god, I gotta hear this. Let's get to
it showing enough of this riff raff crap enough, Okay, Chuck,
You're ready. October this month? Uh is National apple Jack Month,
National pickle Peppers Month, National Breast Cancer Aware this month.
Did you notice the Delta Stewards and Stewardesses pink everywhere?
(01:29):
I love it. It's National Mental Illness Awareness Month, National Lesbian,
Gay and Bisexual History Month. And just so happens that
we're recording this on Pride weekend, which makes sense. Um,
it is National country Ham Month. Really, there's a lot
of October is a big month that kind of overshadows
(01:50):
Breast Cancer Awareness Month, Country Ham. It depends on the
country Ham. I would say, uh, And then I guess
most apropos to this podcast, which I wasn't aware of,
but I don't think you were either. Um, It's National
Domestic Violence Awareness Month. Really, yes, And I say it's
a propos of this podcast because this is a podcast
on jealousy. Jealousy is one of the more widely recognized
(02:14):
triggers of domestic violence. Did you know that? Did not?
But it makes sense? Um. According to a two thousand
three alone I study um in relationships that were domestically violent,
it was male on woman domestic violence, and there is
such thing as the other way around, um, women who
(02:35):
were abused. As long as it was attended by jealousy,
it was perceived by the battered woman as um less
negative and that deserves but less negative than um non
jealous violence. Interesting. Yeah, um, which is it's very interesting,
and it's really weird because it kind of goes it
(02:56):
speaks to our perception of jealousy. It's a it's a weird, undesirable,
unflattering emotion. Um. And yet it also shows we care
in certain ways. Right, Clearly, domestic violence is far far
beyond any level of caring. But it's so it's it
(03:18):
can even spill over that far the idea that jealousy
equals caring, that it can it can reach violent levels.
That is one of the more messed up things I've
heard in a long time. And because as I can
hear the scenario of well, he was just jealous because
I was talking to that guy at the bar, which
means he loves me, which is like, that's so messed up.
(03:41):
It is very because I josh am of the belief.
Before we get started, here's Chuck's oppinion rant. These are
the two things that Chuck says about jealousy. This is
not backed up in any scientific way. I believe that
A there is no place in jealousy in any healthy relationship.
In the article, it says like jealousy can be good
(04:02):
as long as I don't agree B. Because of that,
I think jealousy pops up when you when there are
trust issues should never be trust issues. When there is
an unhealthy dependence on one another should never be that.
And when one or both of the parties is really
really insecure with each other. I disagree. All right, then
(04:26):
I don't disagree to like a polar opposite degree. Um,
but I do think I did agree with the article
where it says towards the end, the psychologist that was
um interviewed for this article suggests that a certain degree
of what's called normal jealousy is healthy. UM. I don't
think it's possible to have a relationship that doesn't have
(04:48):
some sort of trust issues you're looking at it. I
have zero trust issues, zero jealousy, Emily, I've never had
anything like that. That is fantastic for you. I am
of the opinion, though, that jealousy in small measure to
a certain degree is symptomatic of a healthy relationship. Really. Yeah,
all right, let's get into it. Okay, you're ready. What
(05:09):
is jealousy Chuck? First of all, jealousy envy same thing.
Uh No, not at all. They're in fact quite different
because envy, Josh is when you want something that you
do not have that someone else has, right, usually an
object near or whatever. The job, jobs, an object is
(05:30):
it if you write it down, if you draw a
picture of your job, it becomes an object. Whereas jealousy
is a fear of losing something that you have to
someone else, like a job or an object. So you
want something that somebody else has an envy and jealousy
you already have something, but you fear losing it. Yeah.
And like you know, relationships are usually where you talk
about jealousy, So you basically fear that you're gonna lose
(05:52):
your mate to the dude at the bar. And jealousy,
Chuck is an emotion. So let's talk briefly about emotions.
But they're um, primary emotions like fear, disgust, anger, joy, uh,
and a couple others okay, um, And these are found
in just about any animal with the brain, right, um.
(06:14):
And then there's secondary emotions that are self conscious emotions
that include jealousy, right, jealousy, shame, guilt, embarrassment, pride, um.
You have to have a sense of yourself and awareness
of yourself in relation to others to experience secondary emotions
like jealousy, because jealousy, you can't be jealous of anything
(06:36):
if there's not another person or another something. It takes
two to be jealous, right. Yeah. And Ralph Hopka, he's
a professor of psychology at cal State Long Beach heap
I know, was interviewed for this article and he put
it really succinctly. He said, jealousy is an anticipatory emotion.
It seeks to prevent loss. That really sums it up
right there. But it also makes jealousy really really unusual
(06:59):
because think about it, like all relations or all um
emotions are reactionary. Really, there's like a stimuli or stimulus
and it you react to it. You feel fear because
of it, you feel joy because of it. Jealousy is
the prospect of of experiencing something, so that makes it
(07:19):
an antecedent to other emotions like anger or fear, right
it comes first. Yeah, Yeah, it's weird, it's unusual, and
what our emotions chuck if not motivators, right, Fear motivates
you to like move away from the man coming at
you with a knife. Joy motivates you to like do
(07:40):
that again or break out in song? Right, Uh, and
then I guess jealousy motivates you to take measures to
prevent that loss. Interesting. Yeah, all right, this is gonna
be a fun one, alright, because rarely do we come
at it from different angles. Uh. Since we're talking about
m V, do you want to talk about your penis? Uh? Sure,
(08:02):
that's one of my favorite things talking about Uh. Freud.
Sigmund Freud, the psychoanalyst UM came up with the concept
of penis envy and I had a general idea of
what it was, and it wasn't very far off. But
it wasn't until this article that I read what penis
MV is. It is defined the psychoanalytic concept in which
(08:26):
a female envyes male characteristics or capabilities, especially the possession
of a penis. Right, Yeah, what's that gonna do with jealousy?
It doesn't, but it is interesting and I didn't realize
I didn't understand why this um was put into this either.
This is one of the more feminist articles on the site. Yeah,
I thought so. Um. But in in this little sidebar,
(08:47):
penis envy? Um. Basically what Freud came up with was
that all women want to be men, and all of
their accomplishments and feats are the result of a sense
of competition with men, or they're trying to make up
for their shortcoming of lacking a penis interesting. Obviously this
has been generally discarded, but pertinent to your your your
(09:11):
question of what it has to do with jealousy. Nothing,
because that's envy and we've already cleared the air between
what's envy and what's jealousy. I just thought it was
an interesting side it is. Can we talk about jealousy? Sure, Chuck, Uh.
There are there have been studies. It's kind of a
difficult thing to study, um, because you know, you want
to study if gender has an even to do with it,
(09:32):
if age has anything to do with it, if ethnicity
has any to do with it. And it's hard for
like age, because you'd have to interview someone at the
age of fourteen as an adolescent, and then again in
their thirties and then their fifties, and that's sort of
a hard study to pull off. Yeah, the same person
you'd have to interview. One of the reasons why it's
so hard is because, well, it's a longitudinal study, but
(09:54):
with jealousy specifically, it's so um contextual, culturally contextual that
as the culture just expectations of what might make someone
jealous change as well. Sure that was the reason at
least given in this in this um, in this article,
but other longitudinal studies have been carried out, and it
could considerably be carried out, but apparently no one's done
(10:16):
it on jealousy, right, Yeah, but there have been some
really cool studies just about different aspects of jealousy and
they have found some pretty cool water cooler things that
you can wow your buddies tomorrow. And the cubicles. Um.
Women they've always thought have showed jealousy a little more
than men do. And we'll get into the emotional and
(10:36):
sexual jealousy in a minute. But one study revealed that
women when they're jealous tend to aim their ire more
often at the rival, whereas the male will aim the
ire at their partner a fisher. Interesting, yeah, great example
of that's really great example, Um, what lies beneath fatal attraction?
(10:59):
Glenn posts yeah, although she kind of came after the
family wholesale energy. Yeah. And then there's always the lorrain
of Bobbitts who just fly in the face of that,
and and the woman who run who ran over her
husband in Texas member with her daughter in the car. Right. Yeah.
So I mean I'm gonna end up saying this, I
might as well say it. I think it's all very personal,
Like it's hard to do a sweeping study of jealousy
(11:21):
and say people say this and people do this because
everyone's different. Yeah, and this other um, this supplemental study
from two I think that you came up with kind
of underscores that it supports that idea, Chuck. I think
jealousy is far more personal than it's been treated in
the past as well. Um, for the most part, it
was viewed as um, it was divided by gender, and
(11:43):
there are there are studies that support that that women
tend to be more jealous than men, right. Uh. And
that's I guess you have to be very careful with
your wardening there, because it's really easy to uh skew
that idea the wrong way. It doesn't mean that women
experience it's jealousy more than men. Necessarily. It just means
that women display jealous characteristics more than men according to
(12:07):
these studies. Well, yeah, and they say that one reason
might be that they're not more jealous, they just are
more open and honest with expressing that the men um.
Since you brought that study though, it is pretty interesting.
They there's long been the belief that, uh, men are
more upset about sexual infidelity, women are more upset about
emotional infidelity. Actually that is true, but they always thought
that it was evolutionary in its basis because men, ah,
(12:32):
and this is pretty interesting. There's no way to for
men to have proven that they're the father of a child, right,
So men were always very like guarded about sexual behavior. Well,
they guard their mate because they my wife, my you know,
Tuktok is pregnant, and I don't know if it was
you know me, or if it was Ringo star over there.
(12:54):
Oh that's from caveman, and I don't know if Tuktok was.
But and women are more com admitted to raising a
family and having a partner, so like an emotional betrayal
would be you know, more devastating to them. But the
scientist at a Penn State said, well, what about the
fact that there's men who are really upset about emotional
(13:16):
betrayal just like women are, Like, how do you explain that?
And they did some studies and they found that it's
not necessarily evolutionary and nature right, No, it's uh. What
they came up with was that it was much more
personal and specific. UM. Basically, what these two these two
researchers hypothesized was that UM, men tend to be more
(13:39):
sexually jealous and women tend to be more emotionally jealous
or jealous over emotional betrayal and sexual betrayal. UM because
men are more likely to detach from personal relationships as
a defense mechanism. That was their hypothesis, And they carried
out the study and they found that their hypothesis was
(14:00):
really correct, that men who are detached from relationships, which
they theorize as a defense mechanism, are more likely to
report that they would be turned off or made jealous
by a sexual betrayal than an emotional betrayal. But what
they found and what I think they were trying to
point out, was that their their hypothesis explains the why
(14:25):
there's a population of men who are in securely committed
relationships who consistently report that an emotional betrayal is way
worse than a sexual betrayal. So it's they're saying, like,
there are there there is a division of jealousy by gender.
But here's why it's not because you know, men can't
prove that that that's not their kid. That it's actually
(14:46):
much more personal than that. Did you know that? Men?
One of the most common reactions that a man has
when they first find out that their wife is pregnant
is whose is it? Even in committed like awesome marriages,
It's like a very common psychological reaction to think like
that can't be mine? What? Yeah, where did you read this?
(15:08):
I read it? That's it. I can't remember. Yeah, I
did so many sights I want to rag on right now. Alright,
chuck um Well quickly though about that study too. It
also points out that the person's history has a lot
to do with it, So right, it's a defense. Yeah, Like,
I'm not a jealous person at all, like I said,
and I have no trust issues, but if I had
been cheated on a bunch of times, I might sure,
(15:30):
and I throughout this podcast or I'm going to refer
to nameless friends of mine, And I do know this
one couple who the guy had a history of cheating
and the girl had a history of cheating. They hooked up,
they got married, and they're both pretty jealous. Oh yeah,
I mean it's and they've been mary happily married. It's
not like they're they're not a good couple, but they're
(15:52):
both just inherently jealous because they're both cheaters. Right. It's
kind of goes back to that, um judge not less
you be judged, or when you point a finger, there's
three pointing back at you. The concept that actually encountered
the Yeah, the concept that if you have cheated, um,
you are aware that people can do that to other peopure.
(16:14):
And on the same coin, if you've been cheated on,
you're acutely aware that that can happen. And I think
both of those situations can lead to jealousy too. I
think that's what that past state study was was saying that,
like you said, it's much more personal than of evolutionary
origin divided along gender. Right, Um, so, Chuck, let's let's um.
There have been other studies too that are some are hokey,
(16:37):
some deserve rim shots, some deserve sad hombones UM. But
apparently some studies have focused on jealousy as an individual
um emotion, not necessarily needing another person that it um
is or it originates in the self right. And one
of the things that they found was men who are
(17:00):
tall and women who are average height tend to be
less jealous than um men who are short or women
who are shorter or taller. And basically the point is
is that they know everybody wants them well. And I
think beyond that, it goes back to what I was saying.
I think the root of a lot of jealousy lies
in the insecurities of a person. And you know, short
(17:23):
guys are often insecure. Okay, So if jealousy is an
insecurity we're breaking new ground here, are we. Yeah, it
sounds like it, Okay, Jealousy is an insecurity insecurity based emotion, right,
I believe so, Yes, And what we're finding is that
it can be It can originate from the self feelings
of insecurity based on appearance, um, height, attributes, what have you,
(17:49):
or it can be inflicted by another person e g.
Cheating or being cheated on, or doing anything to break
someone's trust right right, trust breaking dude, we get our
pH ds today, Chuck, Yes, Uh, should we talk about
adolescent jealousy for a little bit, Yeah, adolescent jealousy, Josh
(18:13):
is um kids are pretty jealous. Like, there's some of
the more jealous creatures on earth. If you sit around
and watch kids, there's two types. There's one that is
inherently wants to share a lot and it's very kind
and giving. And there's one that doesn't want to share.
They want what you've got, They want your Lincoln logs,
they want to break your toys. And uh. Kids often
(18:39):
display this, and especially with siblings with sibling rivalry. But
they say rivalry whatever, and they say that's a really
normal behavior though, and not to get too worked up
about it as a parent, and to kind of stay
out of it unless you know it gets violent and
let them figure it out on their own. But that
that makes you wonder, like our kids more jealous or
are they just more emotionally honest? Well, maybe have they?
(19:01):
Have they not learned that you need to kind of
keep a lid on that kind of thing that or
not emotionally mature. It depends on how you look at it.
Jealous either way, is that right? Were you did you
happen to be extremely lonely or extremely insecure. I think
I was insecure in my high school relationship and that
(19:25):
made me really jealous. Oh yeah, yeah, okay, so check
that that's actually kind of normal to experience jealousy as
far as friendship, jealousy is an adolescent according to a
study that was produced in uh, well, not produced but
published instead in developmental psychology, right, and I basically found
that kids who are insecure or lonely, or experience insecurity
(19:48):
or extreme loneliness tend to um be jealous of friendships. Right,
So when they get into a friendship, they are jealous
of their friends friends to the point where it can
erupt and physical aggressiveness or passive aggressiveness where they're, you know,
ignoring their friend and their friend has no idea. Why. Yeah,
that's basically another way to put it. It's high school. Yeah,
(20:11):
like you know, and I was. I sort of became
friends with a popular crowd in about the tenth grade,
and I never remember being jealous because I was just
so excited to be in the cool club. So I
was never jealous. I was just like, yeah, I like everybody,
and everybody likes me, and it's all great, but it
was the girlfriend that I was jealous of, but I
(20:31):
had reason to be. I think I think it's pretty
normal too. I think high school is how do you?
How do you ever make it through there? Don't know.
I always feel so bad for kids that like take
their own lives in high school because it's just like
just just hung on a couple more years, you know,
gets so much better. Believe me, Yeah, we can message
(20:52):
that out to our high school friends. If you're lonely
and depressed out there on so much better. High school
is really the anyone who who's high school was the
high point of their lives, they are the sad people
in your past eventually exactly. Um so chuck uh. The
that study I was talking about in developmental psychology, it
(21:14):
was pretty comprehensive. They interviewed ninth graders and asked them
about hypothetical situations and found, um, it was reinforced that
girls tend to be more jealous than guys. Um, which
is something that I think psychology is having a lot
of trouble like addressing because it's just such a m
It's a misogynist finding girls are jealous. It's so cliche.
(21:38):
It's so the other word I'm trying to think of. Um,
but it apparently is this open secret in psychological research
into jealousy, right, or again, like you're saying, or are
girls more emotionally Uh, what's the word? Um? Honest? Expressive? Honest? Yeah,
(22:01):
but when it comes down to a study, there's no distinction. Yeah,
that's true. I mean it's open displays of jealousy that
you're looking for, or at least honesty in whether or
not you'd be on jealous right. And I could see
a lot of high school boys not being in a
study like this, not wanting a cop to it. Yeah
for sure. Yeah, Um, you're talking about types of jealousy.
(22:21):
Adolescent jealousy is racked with sibling rivalry, right. Um, that's
just I was second fiddle to my um middle sister,
like my whole Still to this day, I'm like the
baby of the family. I'm like, oh, you know, I'm
going to be on TV next week and everybody's just
like whatever, So, Mandy, how are the kids? Uh you
(22:45):
know about my my handsomer, thinner, smarter, older brother. Yeah,
he and I correspond pretty regularly these days. He guys
writing each other, does that make you jealous? Does uh?
He he is was always better than at me school
and you know, better looking, and like I said, he's
in better shape. But we were I was never jealous
of him because my parents were always really good about
(23:08):
just they didn't you know, Scott was good at this
and you're you're good in other areas, and they were
good about building me up, and you're good at growing
facial hair. Yeah, exactly, Well, actually that is where I
beat him. Yeah, he's he's a little he's he can
grow a little goatee and a little stash, but he
struggles in the facial hair department. Good. Maybe he's jealous
of my facial I bet he is. He would never
(23:29):
admit a chuck, but he is okay take it from me,
and he never rubbed it into That can make you jealous,
I guess if he stuffs it in your face. But
we just always got along really great. Yeah. And you
were saying did your parents stay out of it? Um? Yeah,
I mean they stayed out of fights when we had him,
and they definitely didn't say, Well, look at Scott's report
card compared to yours. He got a's and you've got bees. Yeah, Well,
(23:51):
who does that unless you're like a sadistic out there,
that's crazy. Um. Yeah, my parents stayed out of mine
and my sister's relationship to UM, And apparently that's the right,
that's the that's the way to UM single handedly pretty much,
but that's apparently the way to go according to some
(24:14):
uh child psychologists, like stay out of it, let them
handle it themselves, because um, not only are they learning
how to, but you might also actually like one more
than the other. And then you come through loud and
clear to the one when you unconsciously side with the other, right, UM.
So apparently let your kids as long as they're not
(24:35):
beating the tar out of each other, you're all right. Right.
So that was a sibling rivalry, which is also called
family jealousy. UM. And then I imagine there's other types
of family jealousy to like, um, apparent one parent being
jealous of the other because they're getting all the attention
of the kids. But that exists, um. And then of
(24:55):
course there is well there's all sorts of complexes at
a pole electoral, just all sorts of crazy family dynamics
going on. I got older sister too. I never talked
about Michelle. I should mention that she's six years older,
so there was no there was no jealousy between like
the sexes. We were all our own people. How how
how much older is your brother? It's three years in
(25:18):
six years, so three three and three romantic jealousy, Josh,
you wanna talk about that? That's really the big one. Yes,
this is the one where apparently everyone else on the planet,
but you and Emily experienced this. I know plenty of
couples who aren't jealous of each other. Yeah really, yeah,
(25:38):
is that news to you? Yeah, I've I've never ever
had a relationship that, like, didn't have some jealousy here.
There wasn't a constant, it wasn't a thread, and it
wasn't debilitating by any means. Right, I've never I've never
been in a relationship that didn't have that didn't exhibit
(26:00):
some form of jealousy somehow. And I don't I don't
know that I would feel comfortable in one that doesn't.
I wonder if it's over sharing. But that's how that's how. Well,
let me ask you this. You go to a party
with you me, you split up, and you see her
over at the beer keg because you know the keggers
were good to see at this age just talking to
some guy. Would you immediately feel jealousy or just think
(26:22):
she's just talking to some guy? Um? Honestly, UM, I
would say that in that situation because I trust her,
I would assume that she's talking to some guy. But
I would eventually go over there if it like continued
or if she saw her talking later on or something
(26:42):
like that, And UM, it wouldn't be for her. I
wouldn't be trying to intervene toward her. It would be like, hey, guy,
she's got a boyfriend kind of you know what I mean?
You want to go? I know her and I trust her, Um,
and I don't know that guy, right, And I know
that I don't know the guy and the guy doesn't
know I exist or whatever, although knowing you me, he
(27:05):
does know I exist. So that just makes me more
app to go over and be like take a hike.
For all you know, he could be dropping a roofy
in her in her That's exactly right, And this is
why I think that there is it is healthy to
experience some form of jealousy, because if I was totally
not jealous, I wouldn't have gone over there. I wouldn't
have cared, and you know, I would have had my
back to my girlfriend, which whatever, I don't think that's
(27:27):
a good thing. I guess that's me then no, No,
But here's the thing, Chuck, I guarantee you. I guarantee you.
We're going to get listener mail supporting your view and
supporting my view. I don't think there's a right or
wrong view. I think you should you know, when there's
an uncomfortable amount of jealousy in your relationship or a
(27:51):
bunch you know, you know, and if you're getting beat
up because your husband or boyfriend's jealous and you don't know,
go get help because you that's too much. Well, you
may not know if you're really jealous, though, because a
lot of people might think, well, that's completely normal to
be abnormally jealous, right, Well, we're here to tell you.
(28:11):
And again this applies to women beating up. Man. If
you're getting beat up by your significant other out of
jealousy for any reason, really, that's not okay. That's that's wrong.
Like no other people who also listen to this podcast
think that your relationship is wrong. Everybody out here thinks
that what's being done to you is wrong. It's a
(28:34):
good way to put it. Uh. They did find that
romantic jealousy is uh. Usually the first fight that a
couple will have is over some sort of romantic jealousy,
whereas later on in life it's all about money, money,
and if you're if you're lucky, it's about money. As
long as you're not fighting about trash, who takes who
takes the trash out, you're fine. Really. Yeah, the once
(28:55):
you start finding about the little stupid things, that's a
big problem, you think, so, and my experience, we should
start a relationship show people just like what we think
about things. All right, let's get back to the science,
shall we. Uh. There is work jealousy, of course, and
that is a really ugly thing to have in the workplace.
And that is obviously when people are buying for the
(29:16):
same jobs, are looking for the same promotion or the
same pay raise or the same whatever, and other people
are getting it and or a person gets that raise
over you, and it's just it's it's one of the
uglier types of jealousy that I've seen. It is And
you know, what I think is cute? What's that? And
this is how I feel about you? If I'm ever
jealous of you. It falls much more into the sibling
rivalry than work jealousy. I thought you're can Sara romantic.
(29:39):
I was about say, thank god, thank god. So what
more sibling rivals than work? Yeah? Well that's because we're
we're peers, and we wish the best on each other.
Like occasionally we'll get individual opportunities, not often, but sometimes,
like you write for HuffPo, occasionally. I didn't think you
(29:59):
cared about that. Well, no, that's what I'm saying. Well,
that's what my point is is that we're real supportive
of each other's Like I wrote for Cosmo last week,
you wrote for HuffPo. You wrote for Cosmo. I should
be jealous because HuffPo Cosmo. No, no, no, you wrote
for Cosmo. Yeah. You didn't tell me this, What are
you jealous? No? But I'm proud of you. You're supposed
to tell I was kind of like, you know, Cosmo,
(30:22):
I wanted to know about stress, and that's awesome. It's
like being mad at your boyfriend gives you pimples and stuff.
That's awesome. Chuck, not as heady as hufbo. Hey, Well regardless, Chuck,
I'm proud of you, so you sent me that link
after this, Okay, well when it publishes it well, and
pride is a self conscious emotion. Uh. And then Josh,
we've talked about this kind of off and on. But
(30:43):
abnormal jealously is I think what they called it many things,
psychotic behavior, delusional, morbid. It's also referred to largely as
neurotic jealousy neurotic where it's a habitual, possibly unfounded or
at the very um detrimental to the relationship. Yeah, and
they said it could be uh for a lot of reasons.
(31:04):
Um insecurity of course, always back to that immaturity again
and being a control freak, which I thought was kind
of interesting. It can also be um the result like
we said, of having your trust broken, Chuck, or having
feel like the trust was broken even when it hasn't happened. Right.
But I think if you've broken someone's trust, you know it,
like to a debilitating degree, you know it, right, And
(31:27):
there's actually a lot of help out there. Are you
people who if you've broken someone's trust and you don't
care to find out how to rebuild it, probably just
move along. But if you do care, then there's actual
like steps to rebuilding trust, and we actually did a
little digging around and found something right. That's right. So UM,
(31:49):
we found that I think anybody who says seven steps
to rebuilding trust in like ten minutes, it's not going
to happen. One of the things that we found in
our research was that if you're rebuilding trust broken trust,
it's always going to take longer than you think it's
going to I would like triple what you think you
can't I I think even that would probably fall short.
(32:12):
I think once you start thinking about how long it's
going to take, you've lost focus and you need to
refocus on rebuilding trust with the person. So the first
thing that you have to do is tell your partner,
whether it's your friend, your spouse, your UM, the love
of your life, your co host on your podcast, your workmate,
(32:33):
whoever you broken trust with UM you you you want
them to know that you understand their feelings, that you're
wrong them right, and that you're sorry, and that you
feel totally cool with the fact that they hate you
right now and you're completely responsible. You have to own
that completely, I would think totally. Because some people break
trust and they kind of try and put it back
on you a little bit, which is a natural human emotion.
(32:55):
I think to try and deflect blame, but it's always
better if you just keep it yourself. Well, you don't
want to heap it like you want. You want to
have a conversation, and yeah, you want to accept responsibility
for what you did. Some of the things you don't
want to do is withdraw, um, attack back like you
were saying, or offer excuses or explanations. You want to
do that and apologize, not attack back, but you want
(33:18):
to offer an explanation and apologize in reverse order. After
you've said, I understand that you're mad, and all of
this might not take place in like a ten or
fifteen minute conversation. This could take place over months, depending
on how badly you've hurt the other person. Right, Um,
but yeah, after you have said I know I've hurt you,
(33:39):
and I take responsibility. Um, you want to apologize. You
want to explain your point of view. Basically, you want
to say, this is why I did this, even if
it's as wrong as because I'm a selfish piece jerk.
Selfish jerk. Um, that's an explanation, right, It's how the
(34:00):
person understand why it happened, which I think is a
big part of it. Right, Yeah, I would want I
would just recommend stopping short of trying to defend your
actions though, because there's a difference. Right. Right, You're not
saying it was right, you're saying why you did it.
Those two are separate, or why it's right is layered
on the explanation. Right. And you want to make promises,
Actually you want to go out of your way to
(34:21):
make promises. You you don't want to say I make
no promises. This changes our relationship. You can't expect anything
from me. You make promises by saying this is you
know what you can expect of me in the future,
and it can be Um. One of the examples that
was used in this was, um, if you if you
lie to your wife so you can go play golf
(34:44):
with your buddies on a Saturday morning, which is wow. Um,
you want to promise to spend you know, every Saturday
for the next two months with your family, or you
could just a little maybe, or you could go to
your wife to begin with and say, hey, I'm gonna
play golf on Saturday, right, or even can I depending
on your relationship, but yeah, lying to your wife to
(35:06):
go play golf with your buddies. It's like a Bob
Hope short from the fifties or Kevin James sitcom. Have
you got anything else on trust there? Um? Well, yeah,
you want to make promises. One of the things you
want to do is not over exert yourself with promises.
You don't want to make fantastic promises because the worst
thing you can do is not follow through on your promises,
(35:28):
and you just broken trust again, right, And you also
want to make promises that are not just agreeable to
the person that you have who's trust you broken, but
to yourself as well, because if you're like, well, for
the love of God, I'm like, you know, I've lied
about playing golf with my buddies and now I have
to go get some moon dust because I promised I would.
You're gonna probably resent your partner. So you want to
come to a consensus about what's okay. Um, And then,
(35:52):
like we said, you want to keep promises, and then
you want to kind of discuss how things are going. Um.
There's a lot of steps to this, but again the
rule of them is, um, apologize or say you understand
why their feelings are hurt, and take responsibility apologize, explain,
make promises, follow through on the promises, and just keep
an open dialogue. Try to hustle the other person. Yeah,
(36:14):
if you're a male right now and you're thinking all
those steps come on, that's called being in a relationship,
right and it does take a lot of work in
a lot of steps, and it does if you're gonna
be in a happy one, dude, that's what you gotta do.
And you will know when it's worth it. Oh, sure
you'll know or when to cut bait, So chuck, I
(36:34):
guess that's it. Oh well, no, no, we got I
got a few more things. We never finished on. Abnormal
jealousy actually, uh, because there's a switch that happens sometimes
between normal jealousy that leads to abnormal and dr Hoopka
says it's not always easy to spot and define when
that happens, but you should be aware of it if
you're in a relationship because it can't get really bad.
(36:57):
You know if when they throw acid on you, or hey,
someone to throw acid on you. Did that happen? Yeah,
there was a picture in the article. Yeah, really weird. Uh.
He says that a few things you can look for though,
if for abnormal jealousy is if, like, you go out
or something, you're given permission, or you just go out
(37:17):
with your friends and your mate is always calling to
check in on you. That's something that you should look for.
Or if they're going through your telephone book or your
like text or your address book, that's probably abnormal jealousy too.
It is. And I have other unnamed people I know
it's a friend of mine. Who oh sure, the wife says,
you can go out with your friends. Oh, no problem,
(37:38):
I'm so cool. It's so cool. And then they get
out in the whole entire timet texts in a couple
of hours to the point where we just go why
you even bother coming out? Man? That's supportive, that's supportive.
What should I say? That's awesome? No, but I mean, like,
why you even bother coming out? That's kind of I mean,
I don't know. I can't wait to meet your unnamed friends,
(38:02):
like you're unnamed friend number two. I don't think they
listen to the podcast. They don't know, so I feel
pretty comfortable. Uh. And then one more two more things green, Yeah,
the ancient Greeks, right, that's what did you recognize that?
What do you mean recognize it turning green? Um because
of bile. Remember the four humors we talked about happiness
(38:26):
audiobook that's hitt hint. Yeah, uh yeah. They think that
came from a build up of bile when you're jealous
or envious and would actually turn your skin greeny. Yellow
bible will turn your skin green. I think I think
it would be green bile. Yeah, there's a but well
there isn't. There's yellow bile, black bile, blood, and flagm
(38:47):
were the four humors. I like black bile. We're we're
both black bile and a little bit of a blood.
We're both sanguine and melancholy. And can we talk about
animals real quick? Uh? Animals actually show jealousy, forms of jealousy.
They don't know, they don't chuck this if you read this.
A sense of fairness does not indicate jealousy. And what's more,
(39:08):
the the animals may have envied the other animals treat
The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences did a
study where they tested dogs to give them treats when
they would shake, you know, as a reward. Yeah, And
they saw that if another dog was getting a you know,
a treat a piece of food afterwards, the other what
(39:29):
wasn't that the dog that wasn't would eventually, after a
couple of times, would be like, I'm not shaking right
until I get some uh some food. And they tested
that in monkeys, and they found that the monkeys got
jealous over the kind of treat, even jealous. The ones
that got a cucumber were like, at first, oh, this
is great, I get a cucumber for a treat, And
(39:50):
then they noticed that their buddy was getting a grape,
which tastes a lot better I cast to a monkey.
And the monkeys would actually just stop performing because they
didn't get a treat as good as the other monkey.
You know, it's weird. That came up when we were
doing research for our super Stuff Guide to the Economy
audio book. Oh that's right, I knew that sounded yeah, familiar.
It was that your key's at the emery down the street. Um. See,
(40:11):
the thing is, Chuck is that's a sense of fairness.
It's not the same thing as jealousy. And I don't
think that the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science
has got it wrong. I think MPR did because sometimes
MPR and gets things wrong much has it pained me
to say it five times per podcast? We get something wrong?
So for podcasts for podcast uh, you know, you might
(40:31):
say jealous, Some say elephants get jealous. Elephants can remember.
It's hard to tell with animals because you can't ask well. Currently,
the prevailing scientific way of looking at it is animals
don't have a sense of self enough to have to
experience secondary emotions like jealousy or shame or embarrassment. You
have to have a conscious sense of self. I think
(40:54):
animals do. But science is like, we'll prove it, and
we haven't figured out how to prove it yet. So
that's where we're standing. You ready, I see you've got
a fine piece of listener mail right there. Yeah. Do
you have anything else? Nope. So if you want to
learn more about jealousy, trust all that kind of stuff,
you can type jealousy or trust into the swing and
(41:14):
search bar at how Stuff works dot Com. Since I
said that, I think now nowadays it's time for listener man.
It is Josh. I'm gonna call this just one of
many polygamy emails. We got it blew up, it really did.
We got something from we got one from lou Bega.
Did you see you know? We got two emails from
(41:36):
lou Bega. And I wrote him back the first time
because he said, Hey, guys, I'm not pumping gas. I'm
I'm slicing meat at a deli, just so you know.
And I wrote him back and said slice at then
lou And then he wrote back again and said about
the Mormon one of the Polygamy podcast, Yes he was.
He was defining. Do you think I'm kind of leaning
(41:56):
toward it, dude. I wrote him back today and said, listen,
if this is the real loup Ega of hit song fame,
they'n I'm gonna need photographic of it. That's what I
was thinking too, But I didn't have time to email him,
So I'm glad you didn't want a picture of blue Bega.
You'd see see me on these That kind of makes
me jealous that I don't see see you on fanmail
when it's lou Bega. It depends on who it is. Okay,
we'll see seeing me on the rest, but especially if
(42:18):
you send in photo of it. What's funny is he's
going to send a picture himself. You're gonna be like, wait,
what the hell, little lou Big it look like now
I remember, he looks like what if he doesn't wear
po door? I wonder in the Delhi if he's like
a little bit of turkey, a little bit of pumper nickel. No,
some rye, oh dear. So this one, like I said,
(42:41):
we heard from a lot of um people from the
Church of Jesus Christ of Latter day Saints. A lot
of people said, it's really great, you got it right.
A lot of people said he got it all wrong,
or they said we didn't distinguish that enough. I disagree.
I think we said quite plainly that that most Mormons
don't do this, and that this is the fundamentalist Mormon,
and like with a capital at fundamentalist Mormons. Well, and
(43:04):
a distinction between the Church of Latter day Saints and Mornerism. Right,
maybe that's what the distinction wants. Maybe we'll have a
whole another bath. This is from Susan. Hey, guys, have
said it before, I'll say it again. You guys are awesome.
I just had a few clarifications about the Mormons concerning
their practice of polygamy in your recent podcasts. I myself
am a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of
(43:24):
Latter day Saints and a history buff on this topic
because a few of my ancestors were early members who
practice polygamy. Polygamy was not a blanket requirement for being
a good member of the Church of Jesus Christ of
Latter day Saints. It was only practiced by a small
portion of the membership of the church, and was only
done so at the discretion of the president of the church.
(43:44):
You couldn't just decide to do it yourself unless you
wanted to be excommunicated and or seriously disciplined. Uh. Those
men who were asked to practice polygamy were mostly leaders
of the church, and all parties were willing and gave
their consent to the marriages. You mentioned that after the
church stopped practicing give me, they promised to excommunicate any
who continue to do so. But even when they advocated
(44:05):
the practice, it was selectively practiced among the leaders of
the church. I have to say, in this day and age,
I would be hard pressed to find a good reason
to practice polygamy, at least in the Western world. Back
in the pioneer times of wagons and gas lamps, I
could see some benefits. My great great great great grandmother
who was a second wife. Uh said that not second
(44:26):
wife is in second of two active wives. I think
that's what she means that in a lonely, dreary, dangerous
part of the wilderness that she and the first wife
settled with their children and husband, it was comforting to
have a close friend and neighbor who she knew would
help them any moment for any reason, and there were
no other neighbors around for hundreds of miles back in
the day. As a member of LDS Faith, I appreciate
(44:48):
your respect in discussing the issues that are close to
my heart and in accurately representing facts that are so
often misreported and misconstrued. If you guys decided to do
a podcast on the LDS, I would recommend you visit
the church's official websites and access material there for clarification
of practices and beliefs. So uh, and she said, I'll
give you any help you need to, because I got
(45:10):
the nine one one nice before one one nice. That's
Susan B. Thanks Susan B. That was very kind of
you to take the time to write in and to
say we cheated it respectfully. We thought we did as
opposed to some people who did not think we did.
We tried to totally aside from the Swinger intro anyway, UM,
(45:31):
thank you very much for that, Susan, and everybody who
wrote in with their opinion one way or the other.
That's very cool, Um, and thanks for the bit of
history and research Susan. We always appreciate that if you
have a story about your best country hand month, we
want to hear about it. Wrap it up in a podcast. No,
(45:51):
wrap it up in an email, right? Or I guess
you could record a podcast on it and then email
that to us. He could do, or a link, uh
and send it to Chuck in Jerry and Me at
stuff podcast at how stuff works dot com. For more
(46:13):
on this and thousands of other topics, visit how stuff
works dot com. Want more how stuff works, check out
our blogs on the house stuff works dot com home page.
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