Possessiveness and Jealousy (EN)

(Lee este artículo en español)


In the article I wrote about "Jealousy and Cheating Detection Theory" Juanjo asked in the comments: "Can anyone out there describe clearly and to the point the difference between jealousy and possessiveness?" 

Possessiveness is the feeling that something or someone belongs to you, for example, a slave. You consider that this person is yours and they must obey you. Possessiveness would be what in psychology is called a dispositional factor. It is a person’s disposition and it is not triggered by external (or internal) events. 

This is the result of a person’s education. There was a time when having slaves was socially accepted and that cultural value was passed on from generation to generation. 

Possessiveness in the relationship can lead to jealousy when we see that the other person, not only do not obey us, but also cares for another. This negative feeling of lack of control over our partner, together with the eagerness to regain control at any cost is called jealousy.

Jealousy and Cheating Detection Theory (EN)

(Lee esta entrada en español aquí)


In a previous post Fränk Romeo asked me for some advice to avoid feeling jealous in a long distance relationship.

First of all, I would like to talk about the importance of distance and how it affects relationships in general.

We tend to interact more with people that are closer to us. In an office space, in a school, even in the house of Big Brother, people who are closer together tend to interact more and that interaction leads to other things. Our friends are probably people who we met in our near environment. Research studies show that most people choose as a partner someone who lives nearby (or at least in the same city). In the classroom it is more likely that we become friends with the students that sit next to us, and if we are already friends with someone before we enter a class, we will probably sit together when we attend it.

Social experiments have been conducted to observe how distance affects relationships. We need to distinguish between:

• Physical distance: this is a no brainer, how many meters stand between two people
• Psychological distance: how close we feel to someone or something.

Another thing to take into account is that physical and psychological distance affect each other, as I already mentioned above. We tend to be close to the people we feel close to and get away from the people we dislike or have nothing in common with. However, the opposite is also true. This has been explained in psychology by the feeling of familiarity we get for the things we see more often.