The base of relationship in marriage is love. In fact, this is the cord that binds the man and the woman together to remain one in that union approved by God. As humans, and as it is experienced in any human relationship that involves any strain of emotions, jealousy is not farther where love resides. Therefore in a loving relationship, jealousy is capable of removing a brick in the foundation of such relationship.
Jealousy is, according to the Oxford dictionary, the feeling or showing a resentful suspicion that one’s partner is attracted to or involved with someone else. While giving the children of Israel the ten commandments, God categorically warned them that He is a Jealous God and that they should not have another god except Him, Exo. 20v5. If God the almighty pronounced Himself as a jealous God, does that make jealousy a normal feeling?
Jealousy as a feeling is usual for humans to experience. However any feeling, including jealousy that leads man to rebel against God is sin. Untamed feeling of jealousy can lead to dangerous turns and act. The first murder committed in the Bible welled from a feeling of jealousy. Gen. 4v1-8, Cain murdered his brother, Abel, because God refused to accept his offering while that of Abel was accepted.
It is therefore important that as Christians, such feelings should be watched and tamed to avoid attracting the wrath of God.
Meanwhile, in relationship between husband and wife, there has been serious argument as to who is the most jealous. Christine Nicholson, in her report said studies from around the world submitted that men are more jealous of sexual infidelity than emotional infidelity while women on the other hand are jealous of emotional cheating than sexual cheating.
Also, according to Psychologists, romantic jealousy is different for men and women because the gender has different level of investment in reproduction. For a man to provide for genetically distance children decreases his reproductive success and because men are uncertain whether they are really the father of the said children, they are most susceptible to sexual infidelity.
For women, they are rest assured that they are the mother of their own children; however, they are more dependent on men for resources, making them more sensitive to emotional infidelity, since it could threaten the supply of provision for herself and her children.
It is also believed that jealous spouse most at times feel they are not good enough for their partners and are by rare luck happen to be in the relationship with their partners. Reasoning like these wells from having a low self-esteem and this makes them perceive others as threat to their relationship.
For the husband having such feeling, he tends to be domineering and wants to control all affairs of his wife. Some husbands even go as far as preventing their wives from having friends. Some go to the extent of ‘ghosting’ on their wife.
Jealous wives on the other hand appear aggressively uncomfortable when their husbands are with any other ladies. They snoop on their husbands, run through their spouse phones for clues that fuel their jealous feeling.
According to a business consultant in Abuja Sulaimon Adams, he believes men are more jealous than women in relationships. “It’s always hard for men to even imagine their women engage old acquaintances that is relatively unknown to them, not to even talk of relating with an ex.”
He pointed out that the difference between men and women in the matter is how each manages the feeling. “When the mention of an ex entered any discussion, as man, we are naturally not comfortable but we try to maintain our dignity and manage the feeling in such a way our spouse will not notice we are jealous. Deep inside us we are boiling”.
For Ese Ufoma, a trader, she submitted that because women finds it difficult to bottle their feeling, the likelihood of emotions to spark is near certain. “No woman can tolerate his spouse eating in another woman’s house especially when they are already uncomfortable with their spouses association with”.
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