For as long as we can remember, women have had a reputation for jealousy and cattiness. It’s why studios green light movies like Bride Wars. It’s why the Team Aniston verses Team Jolie debate continues to rage more than five years after Brad and Jen announced their separation. It’s why today, Woman’s Day and AOL Living published a “jealousy survey,” which polled 2,000 women on what made them envious. Here’s what we learned.
Women are more jealous than men.
Seventy-three percent of women admitted to feeling jealous, as opposed to 27 percent of men. What? Men don’t feel jealous of their counterparts who make more money, who can lift more weights, or who can get more girls? We’re pretty sure our boyfriends would feel jealous if we came home singing praises about our super-funny, cute male coworker. Perhaps since jealousy is characterized as a feminine trait, women simply feel more comfortable admitting to envy than men do.
Single women are jealous of their married friends.
Sixty-three percent of single women said they felt jealous of their married friends, while 37 percent said that they loved being single. Fair enough. While singleness certainly has its perks, it can get tiresome surfing Match.com in between skimming through our friends’ engagement albums on Facebook. Still, who says you can’t love being single and feel a little jealous of happy couples?
Married women distrust their husbands.
Initially, less than half the women surveyed said that they struggled with trust issues, but questions about specific instances of jealousy suggested otherwise. Fifty-three percent of women secretly check their partner’s emails and phone history. The same percentage of women flirt in front of their husband to make him jealous, and a whopping 77 percent married women say they would feel jealous if their husband had a close, platonic female friend. Oddly enough, only 13 percent of women said that their husbands would feel jealous if they talked to another man. The 53 percent of coupled-up women who flirt with other guys might want to rethink that strategy.
So what can we conclude from this survey? Women are jealous. It’s normal and, if not always well founded, often functions as a sign that we care. What matters in the end is that you know how to manage it.
Do you struggle with jealousy in your relationship? What makes you jealous?