Roxy Ghamgosarnia
Stetson University
In today’s society, we witness that the majority of romantic relationships suffer and falter. Numbers show marriages that end in divorce have sky rocketed. The question persists why? What causes so much dysfunction in a romantic relationship? A topic I found to be intriguing was jealousy. Present in all humans and in platonic and romantic relationships, jealousy has become an unexplainable phenomenon in which researchers are diving into in hopes of identifying the source of this detrimental emotion. Of course with such a loaded and complex topic, it’s hard to uproot all information because there are so many directions and scenarios. However, this being said, I was able to read about some studies and observations researchers have inducted. In my research I concluded that jealousy has no real definition, but rather is a collection of negative emotions that emerge when one person feels they are loosing power over something they think they posses. (Goodboy, Horan, Booth-Butterfield, 2012:374). Because there are different types of lovers (eros, ludus, storge, pragma, mania and agape), there are different reactions to jealousy and a correlation between ludus and mania lovers to evoke jealousy in their relationship. Through reading about a specific scenario involving jealousy in cross-sex friendship whilst being in a committed monogamous relationship I determined that jealousy opens the door to other interpersonal communication factors. For example ones non-verbal behavior is greatly affected. (Williams, 2005). I wanted to really invest time in understanding how different situations call for jealousy and the non-verbal reactions that begin to emerge through this negative emotion.
In my prospective research I wanted to test how jealousy brews between a couples that have been in a committed heterosexual monogamous relationship. I decided for my first investigation to focus more on the jealousy