Jealousy and pathological jealousy.

Jealousy is not a disease, nor a personality trait, nor a value, nor a defect, nor a measure of love (or insecurity or mistrust) in a couple. Jealousy is simply an emotion. One of the basic and universal human emotions. Therefore they occur, or can occur, to any person, in any culture and at any time in their biography; although they cannot occur in any situation, because jealousy requires two preconditions without which it cannot occur. These are: an affective bond with a specific someone; and the presence – real or imagined – of a third party that threatens the continuity of that link.

Like any other emotion –whether we know it or not- jealousy has its biochemistry, its historical support, its cultural desirability, its personal biography, its gestural expression, its symbolism, its meanings, its subjective experience, etc. , etc. , ... But above all, and this is what matters to us here, jealousy has: its non-transferable ways of being lived (felt, experienced); their peculiar ways of being thought; and their particular ways of being managed (internally, each one within their skin; and externally, each one in interaction with the other two actors). We cannot help anyone to feel or stop feeling jealousy, but we can help them to live them better, to think about them better and to manage them better.

In cognitive and behavioral couples therapy, the following aspects are worked on to face, accept and integrate jealousy so that it does not continue causing emotional damage to the person who suffers it and to the relationship itself:

• Self-fulfilling prophecy

• Positive thinking versus negative thinking

• Internal-external attribution styles for success and failure

• Thought-emotion-behavior-management

• Increase tolerance to frustration

• Learn to live with a certain degree of uncertainty.

• Learn to ask for and make wishes come true.

• Personal cognitive self-restructuring (thought stopping)

• Realize the game of jealousy and its rules.

• Accept the differences between men and women (communication and expression of

affections)

• Reduce partner expectations

• Reinforce self-concept, self-esteem and body image

• Accept flirting as a form of social expression.

• Accept the desire of the other of others

• Relativize the fidelity-infidelity continuum

• Reduce the need for collateral

• Look for alternative formulas of expression of love.

• Change dominant beliefs about love, desire, and

exclusiveness

• Be aware of family modeling, affective bonds and styles

of attachment.

REBECCA SYNDROME.

In general, Rebecca syndrome causes the sufferer to constantly compare themselves with the other person who was part of their current partner's life, be it a wife, a husband, a partner or a boyfriend, or even all the previous. And it can refer to both the jealousy of one and several sexual or sentimental relationships. The fact is that in the comparison, the person who suffers from it always loses out and it is believed that he is neither as good nor as smart nor as handsome nor does he do things as well as the previous couple or couples.

Compared to another type of jealousy, these are retrospective in nature, since they are based on events that occurred in the near or remote past, not in the present, and they become a real problem when they stop being punctual to become pathological, always and when there is no reason to feel them.