The Dangerous Passion: Why Jealousy Is as Necessary as Love and Sex

According to EMT, evolution by selection will favor the inference that leads to the less costly error in order to avoid the more costly error.

And so the co-evolutionary spiral continues, with each increment in one sex producing reciprocal evolutionary change in the other. Adaptations in one sex lead to counter-adaptations in the other, and those in turn lead to further counter-adaptations and counter-counter-adaptations. As long as the strategies of the sexes are in some degree of confli

Partners lower in desirability, in short, are more easily threatened and more jealous.

The intensity of a man’s jealousy, among other things, conveys information to the woman about the strength of his commitment and the depth of his love (topics we explore in the final chapters). At the same time, the jealous man attempts to sequester his mate and cut off her opportunities to meet other men. An intensely guarded woman may feel loved,

As Jed Diamond, author of the book Male Menopause, noted: “A lot of midlife breakups are due to the projection of the men’s changes onto their wives. They blame the wives for what’s happening to them

Modern men are descendants of those who erred in the jealous direction, even when this error produced some marital friction.

The most dramatic threats to the fragile unions between men and women, in short, are the dual specters of infidelity and abandonment. These dangers constituted threats so extreme that, unless they could be successfully combated, or at least partially subdued, long-term romantic bonds of love and marriage could not have emerged at all.

Women are primarily threatened by rivals who embody what men want. Men are primarily threatened by rivals who have what women want.

The German writer Herman Hesse summed it up best: Life is “the struggle for position and the search for love.”