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Jealousy can be seen as rational or undisturbed when people strongly desire love and affection from others but do not dogmatically insist that they absolutely must have it. When they are irrationally or self-defeatingly jealous, they usually have a number of irrational beliefs leading to their feelings of insecurity, rage, and low frustration tolerance. These are described in this article and several cognitive, emotive, and behavioral methods are presented that are commonly used in rational emotive behavioral therapy (REBT) to reduce irrational jealousy.
Having dealt elsewhere with the general etiology and treatment of jealousy (Ellis, 1985a), I shall limit myself in this article to the rational emotive behavioral treatment of morbid jealousy. What I have called rational or healthy amative heartburn consists of concern about the imminent loss of a loved person or displeasure over a real or imagined attachment that he or she has with someone else. As Bohm (1961) points out, this feeling "can be directed toward the love-object, toward the rival, or toward both" (p. 567).
Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy (REBT) assumes that nonmorbid or rational jealousy consists of one's caring for a sex-love partner and strongly wanting or preferring him or her to refrain from becoming too emotionally involved with others. This often leads to mating problems but the concern and annoyance it produces is not too disruptive of the relationship, nor of the jealous partner's own life (Ellis, 1962a, 1972a, 1985a, 1985b, 1988).
Irrational or morbid jealousy, however, tends to be accompanied by feelings of severe insecurity, anxiety, hostility, self-pity, and depression, and frequently is fatal to good love relationships (Bernard, 1971; Clanton & Smith, 1977; Ellis, 1962a, 1971, 1972a, 1994, 1995; Hibbard, 1975). According to REBT theory, it largely consists of demanding or commanding that because one cares for a partner, she or he absolutely must not, under any conditions, become emotionally involved with others and thereby deprive one of interest, love, or sex
CAUSES OF IRRATIONAL OR MORBID JEALOUSY
Feelings of morbid jealousy arise for many different reasons:
Extreme Ego Insecurity
Irrationally jealous individuals often rate themselves as "good" or "worthy" or "acceptable" only when they are strongly loved by their beloved. They thereby jeopardize their feelings of self-acceptance when they are not loved as much...