- ...jealousy
-
It is important here to distinguish several forms of jealousy:
- to begrudge somebody having what you do have yourself,
- to begrudge somebody having what you don't have yourself,
- and to desire something that somebody else has (as well).
Here, I'm addressing sexual jealousy of type 1 only. This is the type
of jealousy pertinent to the widespread resentment against having
multiple sexual partners in the same period. It may be tempting to
treat sexual jealousy of type 1 as a special case of general jealousy
of type 1. However, there are two important differences: to begrudge
somebody having what you do have yourself is in the non-sexual area
not a common emotion. Moreover, almost everybody agrees that
this kind of jealousy is objectionable, and not something to which a
reasonable man would yield. Therefore it appears sensible to treat
sexual jealousy separately.
Rob van Glabbeek