Some jealous husbands force motherhood upon their wives year after year as a protection against unfaithfulness. A woman disabled by pregnancy and lactation is, of necessity, more faithful. Attempts at freedom on the part of a woman burdened with a numerous progeny can easily be repressed by admonitions such as "Remember the children," etc.
Jealousy and Impotence. Jealousy in a man is often caused by the fact that he has become impotent. Unable to gratify his wife physically, he imagines that she seeks consolation elsewhere and in that way he "gets even" with her: "I am impotent but she is promiscuous," so runs the neurotic's logic.
Not infrequently a woman who has been brought up to consider physical relations as slightly shameful and something which a well brought up female submits to, but never "enjoys," may, if she is very erotic, develop terrible fits of jealousy.
Frink, mentioning one of those rather frequent cases, dissects the psychology of that type of jealous women as follows: "If her husband's caresses leave her unsatisfied, she is caught between the two horns of a dilemma. If she grants that this is enough to satisfy her husband's 'animal instincts' she must then admit that she is more erotic than he is, hence, more 'animal' than he. And such an admission is impossible to a woman of puritanical upbringing. Hence 'logically' she concludes that he must be untrue to her."
Frink adds: "Undue jealousy in a man usually means that he has, or thinks he has, some deficiency of sexual power. It means in a woman, not, as many seem to think, that she is unusually in love with her husband, but rather, that she is not perfectly satisfied with him, and often that she thinks that if he really knew her, he would not be satisfied with her. In most patients suffering from morbid jealousy there is an overaccentuation of the homosexual component of the libido."
Very often some unattractive individual feels jealous because he or she has ceased to attract sexually his or her life mate.
A neurotic, whose face had been made hideous by a discoloration due to illness, was sure his wife must have a lover, because she no longer seemed to feel erotic in his company. His way of reasoning was as follows: "I cannot disgust her, hence some one else must attract her."
Childish Behavior. Some neurotics with a strong father or mother fixation become jealous of an otherwise perfectly faithful and devoted mate because they fail to receive from their husband or wife, the sort of attention and uncritical devotion they would expect from a parent. Those people are still children who never admit the possibility of adult equality between them and their mate. The mate must be the strong father or the self-sacrificing mother. They themselves remain babies, constantly to be petted, admired and consoled. If their husband or wife fails to shower on them the thousand little attentions which a nursling requires, they fly into a petty and unjustified rage, suspecting that some one else has robbed them of their privileges.
The Don Juan and the Messalina are quite as jealous as faithful mates. Men leading a double life may watch wife and mistress with equal suspicion. This is probably due to the fact that they feel unable to satisfy both women sexually. Orientals with a harem are said to be infinitely more tigerish in their jealousy than Western men of the most monogamous type. I have known several married women who, altho they had deceived their husbands on several occasions, were terribly upset when their husbands showed too much interest in some other woman.