Stuff You Should Know - Jealous much?

Episode Date: October 26, 2010

All of us have experienced the feeling of jealousy at some point or another. But why do we get jealous? Are women really more jealous than men? Josh and Chuck get to the bottom of jealousy in this episode. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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like what we would call a jack move or being robbed. They call civil acid work. Be sure to listen to the War on Drugs on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. Brought to you by the reinvented 2012 Camry. It's ready, are you? Welcome to Stuff You Should Know from HouseStuffWorks.com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. With me as always is Charles W. Chuck Bryant, who better not be podcasting with anybody else behind my back. Are you? You didn't hear about the Chuck and Chuck show? Who's the other Chuck? It's me. You're doing it

with yourself? Yes, but I do your voice. That's cool. As me. That's fine. It's sort of weird. It's just like avant-garde theater acting sort of fantasy league thing. Am I the dummy in it? Like are you just like, oh, I'm Josh. I figured you did that in your underwear in the mirror every morning. It's hysterical. It's really good. And the numbers, like we're rivaling our own show now. People love it. I'm surprised that hasn't overtaken it yet. Wait, it's that one? Yeah. Oh, I didn't know that was you. There's probably people out there like, oh my God, I got to hear this. Let's get to it, shall we? Yes. Enough of this riffraff crap. Enough. Okay, Chuck, you ready? Yes. October this month is National Applejack month. Okay.

National Pickle Peppers month. Nice. National Breast Cancer Awareness month. Did you notice the Delta Stewards and Stewardesses? Pink everywhere. I love it. Yep. It's National Mental Illness Awareness month. National Lesbian, Gay and Bisexual History month. And just so happens that we're recording this on Pride weekend, which makes sense. It is National Country Ham month. Really? There's a lot of... October's a big month. That kind of overshadows breast cancer awareness month. Country Ham? It depends on the country ham, I would say. And then I guess most apropos to this podcast, which I wasn't aware of, but I don't think you were either. It's National Domestic Violence Awareness Month. Really? Yes. And I say it's

apropos of this podcast because this is a podcast on jealousy. Jealousy is one of the more widely recognized triggers of domestic violence. Did you know that? I did not, but it makes sense. Sure. According to a 2003 Illini study, in relationships that were domestically violent, there was male-on-woman domestic violence. And there is such a thing as the other way around. Oh, sure. Women who were abused as long as it was attended by jealousy, it was perceived by the battered woman as less negative. Oh, yeah. That deserved. Okay. But less negative. Really? Than non-jealous violence. Interesting. Yeah. Which is... It's very interesting and it's really weird because it kind of goes... It speaks to our perception of jealousy. It's a weird, undesirable,

unflattering emotion. And yet it also shows we care in certain ways, right? Clearly domestic violence is far, far beyond any level of caring. But it's so... It can even spill over that far. The idea that jealousy equals caring, that it can reach violent levels. That is one of the more messed up things I've heard in a long time. Isn't it? Because I can hear the scenario of, well, he was just jealous because I was talking to that guy at the bar, which means he loves me. Which is like, that's so messed up. It is. Very messed up. Because I, Josh, am of the belief before we get started. Uh-huh. Here's Chuck's opinion rant. Let's hear it, man. These are the two things that Chuck says about jealousy. This is not backed up in any scientific

way. Uh, I believe that, A, there is no place in jealousy in any healthy relationship. In the article it says, like, jealousy can be good as long as both, but I don't agree. B, because of that, I think jealousy pops up when you... When there are trust issues, should never be trust issues. When there is an unhealthy dependence on one another, there should never be that. And when one or both of the parties is really, really insecure with each other. I disagree. All right then. I don't disagree to, like, a polar opposite degree. But I do think, I did agree with the article where it says toward the end, the psychologist that was interviewed for this article suggests that a certain degree of what's

called normal jealousy is healthy. Um, I don't think it's possible to have a relationship that doesn't have some sort of trust issues. You're looking at it. I have zero trust issues, zero jealousy. Emily, I've never had anything like that. That is fantastic for you. I am of the opinion, though, that jealousy in small measure to a certain degree is symptomatic of a healthy relationship. Really? Yeah. All right, let's get into it. Okay, you ready? What is jealousy, Chuck? First of all, jealousy, envy, same thing? Uh, no, not at all. No. They're, in fact, quite different, because envy, Josh, is when you want something that you do not have, that someone else has. Right, usually an object. Yeah, whatever. The job... Job's an object. Is it? If you write it

down, if you draw a picture of your job, it becomes an object. Whereas jealousy is a fear of losing something that you have to someone else. Yeah. Like a job or an object. So you want something that somebody else has an envy, and jealousy, you already have something, but you fear losing it. Yeah, and like, you know, relationships are usually where you talk about jealousy. So you basically fear that you're going to lose your mate to the dude at the bar. Right. And jealousy, Chuck, is an emotion. So let's talk briefly about emotions. There's primary emotions, like fear, disgust, anger, joy, and a couple others. Okay. And these are found in just about any animal with the brain. Right? Okay. And then there's secondary emotions that are self-conscious emotions that

include jealousy. Right? Yeah. Jealousy, shame, guilt, embarrassment, pride. Yeah. You have to have a sense of yourself and awareness of yourself in relation to others to experience secondary emotions like jealousy. Because jealousy, you can't be jealous of anything if there's not another person or another something. It takes two to be jealous. Right? Yeah. And Ralph Hupke, he's a professor of psychology at Cal State Long Beach. He, I know, was interviewed for this article. And he put it really succinctly. He said, jealousy is an anticipatory emotion. It seeks to prevent loss. Yeah, that really sums it up right there. But it also makes jealousy really, really unusual because think about it, like all relation or all emotions are reactionary, really.

There's like a stimuli or stimulus. Right. And it, you react to it. You feel fear because of it. You feel joy because of it. Right. Jealousy is the prospect of experiencing something. So that makes it an antecedent to other emotions like anger or fear. Yeah. Right? It comes first. Yeah. Yeah. It's weird. It's unusual. It is. And what are emotions, Chuck, if not motivators, right? Sure. Yeah. Fear motivates you to like move away from the man coming at you with a knife. Yeah. Joy motivates you to like do that again. Or break out in song. Right? Yeah. And then, I guess, jealousy motivates you to take measures to prevent that loss. Interesting. Yeah. All right. This is going to be a fun one. All right, Chuck. Because rarely do we come at it from different

angles. Since we're talking about envy, do you want to talk about your penis? Sure. That's one of my favorite things to talk about. Freud, Sigmund Freud, the psychoanalyst, came up with the concept of penis envy. Yeah. I had a general idea of what it was, and it wasn't very far off, but it wasn't until this article that I read what penis envy is. It is defined the psychoanalytic concept in which a female envy's male characteristics or capabilities, especially the possession of a penis, right? Yeah. What's that got to do with jealousy? It doesn't, but it is interesting. And I didn't realize, I didn't understand why this was put into this either. This is one of the more feminist articles on the site. Is it? Yeah,

I thought so. Interesting. But in this little sidebar on penis envy, basically what Freud came up with is that all women want to be men and all of their accomplishments and feats are the result of a sense of competition with men, or they're trying to make up for the shortcoming of lacking a penis. Interesting. Obviously, this has been generally discarded, but it pertinent to your question of what it has to do with jealousy, nothing, because that's envy. And we've already cleared the air between what's envy and what's jealousy. I just thought it was an interesting sidebar. It is. Can we talk about jealousy? Sure, Chuck. There have been studies. It's kind of a difficult thing to study because you want to study if gender has anything to do with it,

if age has anything to do with it, if ethnicity has anything to do with it. And it's hard for age, because you'd have to interview someone at the age of 14 as an adolescent. And then again, in their 30s, and then their 50s, and that's sort of a hard study to pull off. The same person you'd have to interview. One of the reasons why it's so hard is because, well, it's a longitudinal study. But with jealousy specifically, it's so contextual, culturally contextual, that as the culture changes, expectations of what might make someone jealous change as well. That was the reason, at least given in this article. But other longitudinal studies have been carried out, and it could conceivably be carried out, but apparently no one's done it on jealousy, right?

Yeah, but there have been some really cool studies just about different aspects of jealousy, and they have found some pretty cool, water cooler things that you can wow your buddies tomorrow in the cubicles. Women, they've always thought have showed jealousy a little more than men do, and we'll get into the emotional and sexual jealousy in a minute. But one study revealed that women, when they're jealous, tend to aim their ire more often at the rival, whereas the male will aim the ire at their partner. Yeah, Amy Fisher. Great example of that. That's a really great example, actually. What lies beneath, fatal attraction, Glenn Close. Yeah. Although she kind of came after the family wholesale, didn't she?

Yeah, and then there's always the Lorraine of Bobbitts who just fly in the face of that. And the woman who ran over her husband in Texas, remember? Right. With her daughter in the car, right? Yeah. So, I mean, I'm going to end up saying this, so I might as well say it. I think it's all very personal. Like, it's hard to do a sweeping study of jealousy and say, people say this, and people do this because everyone's different. Yeah, and this other supplemental study from 2010, I think, that you came up with kind of underscores that supports that idea, Chuck. I think jealousy is far more personal than it's been treated in the past as well. For the most part, it was viewed as, it was divided by gender.

And there are studies that support that, that women tend to be more jealous than men. Right. And that's, I guess, you have to be very careful with your wording there, because it's really easy to skew that idea the wrong way. It doesn't mean that women experience jealousy more than men necessarily. It just means that women display jealous characteristics more than men according to these studies. Well, yeah. And they say that one reason might be that they're not more jealous. They just are more open and honest with expressing that. Exactly. Yeah. Since you brought that study, though, it is pretty interesting. There's long been the belief that men are more upset about sexual infidelity. Women are more upset about

emotional infidelity. Actually, that is true. But they always thought that it was evolutionary in its basis because men, and this is pretty interesting, there's no way for men to have proven that they're the father of a child. Right. So men were always very, like, guarded about sexual behavior. Well, they guard their mate. Because, hey, my wife, my, you know, Tuk Tuk is pregnant. And I don't know if it was, you know, me or if it was Ringo Starr over there. What? Oh, that's from Cayman, isn't it? Yeah. Well, I don't know if Tuk Tuk was, but. And women are more committed to raising a family and having a partner. So, like, an emotional betrayal would be, you know, more devastating to them. Right. But the scientist at Penn State

said, well, what about the fact that there's men who are really upset about emotional betrayal, just like women are? Like, how do you explain that? And they did some studies and they found that that it's not necessarily evolutionary in nature, right? No, it's what they came up with was that it was much more personal and specific. Basically, what these two, these two researchers hypothesized was that men tend to be more sexually jealous, and women tend to be more emotionally jealous, or jealous over emotional betrayal and sexual betrayal. Because men are more likely to detach from personal relationships as a defense mechanism. Right. That was their hypothesis, and they carried out the study, and they found that their hypothesis was generally correct,

that men who are detached from relationships, which they theorize as a defense mechanism, are more likely to report that they would be turned off or made jealous by a sexual betrayal than an emotional betrayal. But what they found and what I think they were trying to point out was that their hypothesis explains why there's a population of men who are in securely committed relationships who consistently report that an emotional betrayal is way worse than a sexual betrayal. So they're saying that there is a division of jealousy by gender, but here's why. It's not because men can't prove that that's not their kid, that it's actually much more personal than that. Did you know that men, one of the most common reactions that a man has when

they first find out that their wife is pregnant is, who's is it? Even in committed, like awesome marriages, it's like a very common psychological reaction to think like, that can't be mine. What? Yeah. Where did you read this? I read it. That's it. I can't remember. You did? Yeah. I did. So many sites I want to rag on right now. All right, Chuck. Well, quickly though, about that study too, it also points out that the person's history has a lot to do with it. So Right. It's a defense mechanism. Yeah. Like I'm not a jealous person at all. Like I said, and I have no trust issues, but if I'd been cheated on a bunch of times, I might. Sure. And I throughout this podcast are, I'm going to refer to you nameless friends of mine. And I do

know this one couple who the guy had a history of cheating and the girl had a history of cheating. They hooked up, they got married and they're both pretty jealous. Are they? Oh, yeah. I mean, and they've been married, happily married. It's not like they're, they're not a good couple, but they're both just inherently jealous because they're both cheaters. Right. It's kind of goes back to that, um, judge, not less G.B. judged her. When you point a finger, there's three pointing back at you. The concept that looked actually encountered the concept that if you have cheated, you are aware that people can do that to other people. Sure. Yeah. Yeah. And on the same coin, if you've been cheated on, right, you're acutely aware that that can happen. And I think both of those

situations can lead to jealousy too. I think that's what that Penn State study was saying, that like you said, it's much more personal than of evolutionary origin divided a long gender. Right. Right. Um, so Chuck, let's, let's, um, there've been other studies too that are somewhere hokey. Some deserve rim shots. Some deserve sad trombones. Right. Um, but apparently some studies have focused on jealousy as an individual, um, emotion, not necessarily needing another person that it, um, is, or it originates in the self, right? Yeah. And one of the things that they found was men who are tall and women who are of average height tend to be less jealous than, um, men who are short or women who are shorter or taller. Yeah. And basically the point is, is that they

know everybody wants them. Well, and I think beyond that, it goes back to what I was saying. I think the root of a lot of jealousy lies in the insecurities of a person. Right. And you know, short guys are often insecure. Okay. So if jealousy is an insecurity, we're, we're breaking new ground here. Are we? Yeah. It sounds like it. Okay. Jealousy is an insecure insecurity based emotion. Right. I believe so. Yes. And what we're finding is that it can be, it can originate from the self feelings of insecurity based on appearance, um, height attributes, what have you. Yeah. Or it can be inflicted by another person, e.g. cheating or being cheated on. Yes. Or doing anything to break someone's trust. Right. Yeah. Right. Wow. Breaking. Dude, we get our PhDs today, Chuck.

You ready? Yes. Uh, should we talk about adolescent jealousy for a little bit? Uh, yeah. Yeah. Adolescent jealousy, Josh, is, um, kids are pretty jealous. Like there's some of the more jealous creatures on earth. If you sit around and watch kids, there's two types. There's one that is inherently wants to share a lot and is very kind and giving. And there's one that doesn't want to share. They want what you got. They want your Lincoln logs. They want to break your toys. They want your log camera Republican log. Yeah. And, uh, kids often display this and especially with, uh, siblings with sibling rivalry, but they say rivalry. Whatever. And they say that's a really normal behavior though and not to get too worked up about it as a parent and to kind of stay out of

it unless it, you know, it gets violent and let them figure it out on their own. Well, that, that makes you wonder, like, are kids more jealous or are they just more emotionally honest? Well, maybe have they, have they not learned that you need to kind of keep a lid on that kind of thing that or not emotionally mature. It depends on how you look at it for now. I was jealous and high school did either way. Is that right? Yeah. Uh, were you, did you happen to be extremely lonely or extremely insecure? I think I was insecure in my high school relationship and that made me really jealous. Oh yeah. Yeah. Okay. So check that that's actually kind of normal to experience jealousy as far as friendship jealousy is an adolescent, uh, according to a study that was

produced in, uh, well not produced, but published instead in developmental psychology, right? And basically found that kids who are insecure or lonely or experience insecurity or extreme loneliness tend to, um, be jealous of friendships, right? So when they get into a friendship, they are jealous of their friends, friends, uh, to the point where it can, um, erupt in physical aggressiveness or passive aggressiveness where they're, you know, ignoring their friend and their friend has no idea why. Yeah. That's basically another way to put it is high school. Yeah. Yeah. Like you, you know, and I was, uh, I sort of became friends with a popular crowd in about the 10th grade and I never remembered being jealous because I was just so excited to be

in the, the cool club. So I was never jealous. I was just like, yeah, I like everybody and everybody likes me and it's all great. But I, it was the girlfriend that I was jealous of. Gotcha. But I had reason to be. I think, I think it's pretty normal too. I think high school is, I had you. How do you ever make it through there? I don't know. I always feel so bad for kids that like take their own lives in high school. Oh yeah. Cause it's just like, just hang in there and what a, just hung on a couple more years, you know, it gets so much better. Yeah. Yeah. We can message that out to our high school friends. If you're lonely and depressed out there, hang on. It gets so much better. High school is really the, anyone who's high school was the high point of

their lives. They, they are the sad people in, in your past eventually. Exactly. So Chuck, the, that study I was talking about in developmental psychology, it was pretty comprehensive. They interviewed 500 fifth through ninth graders and asked them about hypothetical situations and found that it was reinforced that girls tended to be more jealous than guys. Right. Which is something that I think psychology is having a lot of trouble like addressing because it's just such a, it's a misogynist finding. Sure. Girls are jealous. It's so cliched. It's so the other word I'm trying to think of, but it apparently is this open secret in psychological research into jealousy. Right. Right. Or again, like you're saying, or are girls more emotionally, what's the word?

Honest. Expressive. Honest. Sure. Yeah. But when it comes down to a study, there's no distinction. Yeah. That's true. I mean, it's open displays of jealousy that you're looking for, or at least honesty in whether or not you'd be jealous. Right. And I could see a lot of high school boys not being in a study like this, not wanting to cop to it. Yeah. For sure. Yeah. You're talking about types of jealousy. Adolescent jealousy is wracked with sibling rivalry. Right. Yeah. That's just, I was second fiddle to my middle sister. Yeah. Like my whole still to this day. I'm like the baby of the family. I'm like, oh, you know, I'm going to be on TV next week and everybody's just like, whatever. So Mandy, how are the kids? Yeah. You know, about my handsome or thinner,

smarter, older brother. Yeah. He and I correspond pretty regularly these days. Oh, do you? You guys are writing each other? Does it make you jealous? It does. Yeah. He is, was always better at me in school and, you know, better looking. And like I said, he's in better shape. Right. But we were, I was never jealous of him because my parents were always really good about just, they didn't, you know, Scott was good at this and you're, you're good in other areas and they're good about building me up and you're good at growing facial hair. Yeah, exactly. Well, actually that is where I beat him. Do you? Yeah. He's, he's a little, he's, he can grow a little goatee and a little stash, but he struggles in the facial hair department.

Good. Maybe he's jealous of my facial hair. Oh, bet he is. He would never admit it, Chuck, but he is. Okay. Take it from me. And he never rubbed it into that can make you jealous, I guess, if he stuffs it in your face, but we just always got along really great. Yeah. And you were saying, did your parents stay out of it? Yeah. I mean, they stayed out of fights when we had him and they definitely didn't say, well, look at Scott's report card compared to yours. He got A's and you got V's. Yeah. Well, who does that unless you're like a sadistic parent out there. That's crazy. Yeah. My parents stayed out of mine and my sister's relationship too. You messed yourself up. That's the right. That's the, that's the way to single-handedly pretty

much. Yeah. But that's apparently the way to go according to some child psychologist. Yeah. Like, stay out of it. Let them handle it themselves because not only are they learning how to, but you might also actually like one more than the other and they can come through loud and clear to the one when you unconsciously side with the other. Right. Right. So apparently, let your kids, as long as they're not beating the tar out of each other, you're all right. Right? Yes. So that was a sibling rivalry, which is also called family jealousy. And then I imagine there's other types of family jealousy too, like a parent, one parent being jealous of the other because they're getting all the attention from the kids, but that exists. Yeah. And then of course,

there is, well, there's all sorts of complexes, Oedipal, electoral, just all sorts of crazy family dynamics going on. I got an older sister too. I never talk about Michelle. I should mention that. She's six years older. So there was no, there was no jealousy between like the sexes. We were all our own people. How, how, how much older is your brother? It's three years and six years. So three, three and three. Oh, gotcha. Yeah. Romantic jealousy, Josh. Yeah. You want to talk about that? That's really the big one. Yes. This is the one where apparently everyone else on the planet, but you and Emily experienced this. That's true. I know plenty of couples who aren't jealous of each other. Really? Yeah. Really? Yeah. Huh. Is that news to you? Yeah. I've, I've never, ever

had a relationship that like didn't have some jealousy here. There wasn't a constant. It wasn't a thread and it wasn't debilitating by any means. Right. I've, I've never, I've never been in a relationship that didn't have, that didn't exhibit some form of jealousy somehow. And I don't, I don't know that I would feel comfortable in one that doesn't. Really? I wonder if it's oversharing, but that's how, that's how I, well, let me ask you this. You go to a party with Yumi. You split up and you see her over at the, the beer keg. Cause you know, the keggers we get to at this age. Just talking to some guy. Would you immediately feel jealousy or just think she's just talking to some guy? Honestly, none of my business. Honestly, I would say that in that situation,

because I trust her, I would assume that she's talking to some guy, but I would eventually go over there. If it like continued or if she started talking later on or something like that. And it wouldn't be for her. I wouldn't be trying to intervene toward her. Right. It would be like, hey guy, she's got a boyfriend kind of thing. You know what I mean? Yeah, you want to go mark your territory. Because I know her and I trust her. Yeah, yeah. If you don't know that guy. Right. And I know that I don't know the guy and the guy doesn't know I exist or whatever, although knowing Yumi, he does know I exist. So that just makes me more apt to go over and be like, take a hike. For all you know, he could be dropping a roofie in her in her middle life.

That's exactly right. And this is why I think that there is it is healthy to experience some form of jealousy. Because if I was totally not jealous, I wouldn't have gone over there. I wouldn't have cared. Right. And you know, I would have had my back to my girlfriend, which whatever. I don't think that's a good thing. Really? Yeah, I guess that's me then. No, no, but here's the thing, Chuck. I guarantee you, I guarantee you, we're going to get listener mail supporting your view and supporting my view. Oh, yeah, I don't think there's a right or wrong view. I think you should, you know, when there's an uncomfortable amount of jealousy in your relationship, abnormal jealousy, any, yeah, or a bunch. Yeah, you know, yeah, you know,

and if you're getting beat up because your husband or boyfriend's jealous and you don't know, go get help. Yes. Because you, that's too much. Well, you may not know if you're really jealous, though, because a lot of people might think that's completely normal to be abnormally jealous. Right. Well, we're here to tell you, and again, this applies to women beating up men. If you're getting beat up by your significant other out of jealousy for any reason, really, that's not okay. That's, that's wrong. Like no other people who also listen to this podcast think that your relationship is wrong. Right. Everybody out here thinks that what's being done to you is wrong. That's a good way to put it. They did find that romantic jealousy is usually the first fight

that a couple will have is over some sort of romantic jealousy. Whereas later on in life, it's all about money. Money, yeah. The mortgage. And if you're, if you're lucky it's about money, as long as you're not fighting about trash, who takes, who takes the trash out, you're fine. Really? Yeah. Once you start talking about the little stupid things, that's a big problem. You think so? In my experience. We should start a relationship show. People just like what we think about things. All right, let's get back to the science, shall we? There is work jealousy, of course, and that is a really ugly thing to have in the workplace. And that is obviously when people are buying for the same jobs or looking for the same promotion or the

same pay raise or the same whatever. And other people are getting it and or a person gets that raise over you. And it's just, it's one of the uglier types of jealousy that I've seen. It is. And you know what I think is cute? What's that? This is how I feel about you. If I remember jealous of you, it falls much more into the sibling rivalry than work jealousy. Oh, I thought you're going to say romantic. I was about to say thank God. No, no. Thank God. So what? More sibling rival than work. For sure. Yeah, well, that's because we're we're peers. We're buddies. And we wish the best on each other. Like occasionally we'll get individual opportunities. Not often, but sometimes like you write for HuffPo occasionally. I didn't think you cared about that.

Well, no, no, that's what I'm saying. Well, that's what my point is. Okay. Is that we're real supportive of each other's like, I wrote for Cosmo last week, you wrote for HuffPo. You wrote for Cosmo? I should be jealous because HuffPo, Cosmo. No, no, no, you wrote for Cosmo? Yeah. You didn't tell me this. Are you jealous? No, but I'm proud of you. You're supposed to tell me these things. Oh, I was kind of like, you know, Cosmo wanted to know about stress and that's awesome. If like being mad at your boyfriend gives you pimples and stuff. That's awesome, Chuck. Not as heady as HuffPo. Hey, well, regardless, Chuck, I'm proud of you. So you send me that link after this. Okay. I will when it publishes, I will. And pride is a self

conscious emotion. It is. And then Josh, we've talked about this kind of off and on, but abnormal jealously is I think what they, they called it many things, psychotic behavior, delusional, morbid. It's also referred to largely as neurotic jealousy. Neurotic. Where it's habitual, possibly unfounded, or at the very least detrimental to the relationship. Yeah. And they said it could be for a lot of reasons, insecurity, of course, always back to that and maturity again and being a control freak, which I thought was kind of interesting. It can also be the result, like we said, of having your trust broken, Chuck. Yeah, for real. Or having feel like the trust was broken, even when it hasn't happened.

Right. But I think if you've broken someone's trust, you know it, like to a debilitating degree, you know it, right? And there's actually a lot of help out there. People who, if you've broken someone's trust and you don't care to find out how to rebuild it, yeah, probably just move along. Sure. But if you do care, then there's actual, like, steps to rebuilding trust. And we actually did a little digging around and found some, right? That's right. So we found that I think anybody who says seven steps to rebuilding trust in like 10 minutes, it's not going to happen. Yeah. One of the things that we found in our research was that if you're rebuilding trust, broken trust, it's always going to take longer than you think

it's going to. I would like triple what you think. You can't, I think even that would probably fall short. I think once you start thinking about how long it's going to take, you've lost focus and you need to refocus on rebuilding trust with the person. So the first thing that you have to do is tell your partner, whether it's your friend, your spouse, your, your, the love of your life, your co-host on your podcast, your workmate, whoever you've broken trust with. Yeah. You want them to know that you understand their feelings, that you're wrong of them. Right. And that you're sorry. Right. And that you feel totally cool with the fact that they hate you right now. Yeah. And you were completely responsible. You have to own that

completely, I would think. Totally. Because some people break trust and they kind of try and put it back on you a little bit, which is a natural human emotion, I think, to try and deflect. Sure. Blame. Yeah. But it's always better if you just heap it on yourself. Well, you don't want to heap it. Like you want to have a conversation and yeah, you want to accept responsibility for what you did. Some of the things you don't want to do is withdraw, attack back like you were saying, or offer excuses or explanations. You want to do that and apologize, not attack back, but you want to offer an explanation and apologize in reverse order after you've said, I understand that you're mad. And all of this might not take place in like a 10 or 15 minute conversation. This could take

place over months, depending on how badly you've hurt the other person. But yeah, after you have said, I know I've hurt you and I take responsibility, you want to apologize? Yeah. You want to explain your point of view. Basically, you want to say, this is why I did this. Right. Even if it's as wrong as because I'm a selfish jerk. That's an explanation, right? Yeah, sure. It helps the person understand why it happened, which I think is a big part of it, right? Yeah, I would just recommend stopping short of trying to defend your actions though. Right. Because there's a difference. Right, right. You're not saying it was right. You're saying why you did it. Those two are separate or why it's right is layered on the explanation, right? Yeah. And you want to make

promises, actually. You want to go out of your way to make promises. You don't want to say, I make no promises. This changes our relationship. You can't expect anything from me. You make promises by saying this is what you can expect of me in the future. Right. And it can be one of the examples that was used in this was if you lie to your wife so you can go play golf with your buddies on a Saturday morning, which is, well, you want to promise to spend every Saturday for the next two months with your family. Or you could just go to your wife. Or you could go to your wife to begin with and say, hey, I'm going to play golf on Saturday. Right. Or even can I, depending on your relationship, but yeah, lying to your wife to go play golf with your buddies.

It's like a Bob Hope short from the 50s. Yeah. Or a Kevin James sitcom. Yeah. You got anything else on trust there? Well, yeah. You want to make promises. One of the things you want to do is not over exert yourself with promises. You don't want to make fantastic promises because the worst thing you can do is not follow through on your promises. Because then you just broke in trust again. Right. And you also want to make promises that are not just agreeable to the person who's trust you broken, but to yourself as well. Sure. Because if you're like, well, for the love of God, I'm like, you know, I've lied about playing golf with my buddies and now I have to go get some moon dust because I promised I would. You're going to probably resent your

partner. So you want to come to a consensus about what's okay. Sure. And then like we said, you want to keep promises. And then you want to kind of discuss how things are going. There's a lot of steps to this. But again, the rule of thumb is apologize or say you understand why their feelings are hurt and take responsibility, apologize, explain, make promises, follow through on the promises and just keep an open dialogue. Yeah. And try to hustle the other person. Yeah. If you're a male right now and you're thinking, oh, all those steps come on, that's called being in a relationship. Right. And it does take a lot of work and a lot of steps. And it does. If you're going to be in a happy one, dude, that's what you got to do. And you will

know when it's worth it. Oh, sure. You'll know. Or when to cut bait. Yeah. So Chuck, I guess that's it. Oh, well, no, no, we got a few, I got a few more things. Okay, good. We never finished on abnormal jealousy, actually, because there's a switch that happens sometimes between normal jealousy that leads to abnormal. And Dr. Hupke says it's not always easy to spot and define when that happens, but you should be aware of it if you're in a relationship because it can get really bad, you know, if they throw acid on you or pay someone to throw acid on you. Did that happen? Yeah, there was a picture in the article. Oh, really? Yeah, really weird. He says that a few things you can look for, though, if for abnormal jealousy is if

like you go out or something, you're given permission or you just go out with your friends and your mate is always calling to check in on you. That's something that you should look for. Or if they're going through your telephone book or your like text or your address book, that's probably abnormal jealousy too. It is. And I have other unnamed people I know, it's a friend of mine who, oh, sure. The wife says you can go out with your friends. Oh, no problem. I'm so cool. It's so cool. And then they get out and the whole entire time, 25, 30 texts in a couple of hours to the point where we just go, why you bother coming out, man? That's supportive. That's supportive? Yeah. What should I say? That's awesome. No, but I mean,

like why even bother coming out? That's kind of mean. I don't know. I can't wait to meet your unnamed friends. I'm gonna be like, you're unnamed friend number two. I don't think they listen to the podcast. They don't. No, so I feel pretty comfortable. Okay. And then one more, two more things. Green. Yeah. The ancient Greeks, right? That's what they think. Did you recognize that? What do you mean recognize it? Turning green because of bile. Remember the four humors we talked about in our happiness audio book that never got released? Yeah. Yeah. They think that came from a buildup of bile when you're jealous or envious and it would actually turn your skin green. Yes. Yellow bile will turn your skin green. I think I figured it'd be green bile. Yeah,

there's a blood. Well, there isn't. There's yellow bile, black bile, blood and phlegm or the four humors. I like black bile. We're both black bile and a little bit of blood. We're both sanguine and melancholy. And can we talk about animals real quick? Uh-huh. Animals actually show jealousy, forms of jealousy. No, they don't. Yeah, they do. No, they don't Chuck this. If you read this, a sense of fairness does not indicate jealousy. And what's more, the animals may have envied the other animals' treat. The proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences did a study where they tested dogs to give them treats when they would shake, you know, as a reward. Like shake their paw. Yeah. And they saw that if another dog was getting a, you know, a treat, a piece of food

afterward and the other wasn't, that the dog that wasn't would eventually, after a couple of times, should be like, I'm not shaking. All right. Until I get some, uh, some food. And they tested that. And monkeys, and they found that the monkeys got jealous over the kind of treat even. Gel, they, the ones that got a cucumber are like, at first, oh, this is great. I get a cucumber for a treat. And then they noticed that their buddy was getting a grape, which tastes a lot better. I catch two a monkey. Uh-huh. And the monkeys would actually just stop performing because they didn't get a treat as good as the other monkey. You know, it's weird that came up when we were doing research for our super stuff guide to the economy audio book. Oh, that's right. I knew that sounded

familiar. It was at Yerkes at the, at Emory down the street. Um, see, the thing is Chuck, is that's a sense of fairness. It's not the same thing as jealousy. And I don't think that the proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences got it wrong. I think NPR did because sometimes NPR gets things wrong. Well, much as it pains me to say it. Five times per podcast, we get something wrong. So per podcast, per podcast. Uh, you know, you might say jealous. Some say elephants get jealous. Elephants can remember. It's hard to tell with animals because you can't ask. Well, currently the, the prevailing scientific way of looking at it is animals don't have a sense of self enough to have to experience secondary emotions like jealousy or shame or embarrassment.

You have to have a conscious sense of self. I think animals do, but science is like, well, prove it. And we haven't figured out how to prove it yet. So that's where we stand by. You ready? I see you've got a fine piece of listener mail right there. Yeah. Do you have anything else? Nope. So if you want to learn more about jealousy, uh, trust, all that kind of stuff, you can type jealousy or trust into the swing and search bar at howstuffworks.com. Since I said that, I think, uh, now, nowadays it's time for listener mail. It is Josh. I'm going to call this just one of many polygamy emails we got. It blew up. It really did. We got some from, uh, we got one from Lou Vega. Did you see, you know, we got two emails from Lou Vega and I wrote him back

the first time cause he said, Hey guys, yeah, I'm not pumping gas. I'm, I'm slicing meat at a deli just so you know. And I wrote him back and said, slice it thin, Lou. And then he wrote back again and said about the, the Mormon one of the polygamy podcast. Yes. He was, he was defining polygamy. I'm kind of leaning toward it, dude. I wrote him back today and I said, listen, if this is the real Lou Vega of hit song fame, then I'm going to need photographic evidence. That's what I was thinking too, but I didn't have time to email him. So I'm glad you did. I want a picture of Lou Vega. How would you CC me on these? That kind of makes me jealous with that. I don't CC you on fan mail. Yes. When it's Lou Vega, it depends on who it is. Okay. We'll CC me on the rest. Well,

yeah, especially if he sends in photo evidence. What's funny is he's going to send a picture himself. You're going to be like, wait, what the hell did Lou Vega look like? Now I remember what he looks like. What if he doesn't wear a fedora? I wonder what in the deli if he's like, a little bit of turkey for your back. A little bit of pumpernickel, though, some rye. Oh dear. So this one, like I said, we heard from a lot of people from the church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. A lot of people said, it was really great. You got it right. A lot of people said, you got it all wrong. Or they said we didn't distinguish that enough. I disagree. We said quite plainly that most Mormons don't do this and that this is the fundamentalist Mormons that do this. Right. And like with a

capital F, fundamentalist Mormons, that's their name. Well, and a distinction between the church of Latter-day Saints and Mormonism, right? Maybe that's what the distinction was. Maybe so. I'm going to read this. We'll find out. We'll have a whole nother. This is from Susan. Hey guys, I've said it before. I'll say it again. You guys are awesome. I just had a few clarifications about the Mormons concerning their practice of polygamy in your recent podcast. I myself am a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and a history buff on this topic because a few of my ancestors were early members who practiced polygamy. Polygamy was not a blanket requirement for being a good member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. It was only practiced

by a small portion of the membership of the church and was only done so at the discretion of the president of the church. You couldn't just decide to do it yourself unless you wanted to be excommunicated and or seriously disciplined. Those men who were asked to practice polygamy were mostly leaders of the church and all parties were willing and gave their consent to the marriages. You mentioned that after the church stopped practicing polygamy, they promised to excommunicate any who continue to do so, but even when they advocated the practice, it was selectively practiced among the leaders of the church. I have to say in this day and age, I would be hard pressed to find a good reason to practice polygamy, at least in the Western world. Back in the pioneer times of wagons and gas lamps,

I could see some benefits. My great-great-great-great-grandmother, who was a second wife, said that not second wife is in second of two active wives. I think that's what you mean. Okay. That in a lonely, dreary, dangerous part of the wilderness that she and the first wife settled with their children and husband, it was comforting to have a close friend and neighbor who she knew would help them any moment for any reason, and there were no other neighbors around for hundreds of miles back in the day. As a member of the LDS faith, I appreciate respect in discussing the issues that are close to my heart and in accurately representing facts that are so often misreported and misconstrued. If you guys decide to do a podcast on the LDS, I would

recommend you visit the church's official websites and access material there for clarification of practices and beliefs. And she said, I'll give you any help you need, too, because I got the 9-1-1. Nice. The 4-1-1. Nice. That's Susan B. Thanks, Susan B. That was very kind of you to take the time to write in and to say we treated it respectfully. We thought we did, as opposed to some people who did not think we did. We tried to. Totally. Okay. Aside from the swinger intro, I think. Oh, come on. Anyway, thank you very much for that, Susan, and everybody who wrote in with their opinion one way or the other. That's very cool. And thanks for the bit of history and research, Susan. We always appreciate that. Oh, yeah. If you have a story about your best country ham month,

we want to hear about it. Wrap it up in a podcast. No, wrap it up in an email, right? Or I guess you could record a podcast on it and then email that to us. You could do that. Or a link and send it to Chuck and Jerry and me at StuffPodcast at HowStuffWorks.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit HowStuffWorks.com. Want more HowStuffWorks? Check out our blogs on the HowStuffWorks.com homepage. They call civil answer. Be sure to listen to the war on drugs on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you get your podcast.

I'm Langston Kermit. Sometimes I'm on TV. I'm David Boring. I'm probably on TV right now. David and I are going to take a deep dive every week into the most exciting ground breaking and sometimes problematic black conspiracy theories. We've had amazing past notable guests like Brandon Kyle Goodman, Sam J. Quinta Brunson, and so many more. New episodes around every Tuesday, many episodes out on Thursdays, where we answer you, the listeners conspiracy theories. Listen to my mama told me on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you get your podcast.