THE ROOTS OF JEALOUSY

Jealousy is one of those emotions everyone pretends they're above until it hits them unexpectedly.

- By Kiara Wijewardene

It's messy, loud, and sometimes humiliating. One minute you're fine, minding your business, and the next you're spiraling because your partner liked someone else's post, or your friend achieved something you've secretly been craving for years. It's wild how jealousy can make you feel both irrational and painfully self-aware at the same time. But jealousy doesn't come out of nowhere. It has deep roots in psychology, history, and human evolution. The more we understand those roots, the less power the emotion has over us.Evolutionary psychologists argue that jealousy originally existed as a survival mechanism. Early humans depended on resources, stable relationships, and social belonging. Losing any of these could literally mean death, so jealousy developed as an internal alarm system. If someone threatened your bond with your partner, jealousy pushed you to protect that connection. If someone had more food, status, or power, jealousy motivated you to fight for your place. It wasn't insecurity back then, it was survival.

Even though the world has changed, our emotional wiring hasn't. Today, we're not competing for hunting grounds or firewood, yet jealousy still triggers that ancient alarm whenever we sense scarcity, scarcity of attention, affection, stability, or success. Even when the threat isn't real, the brain treats it like an emergency. It's basically an evolutionary leftover we're still stuck with in a world that has moved on.

The Psychological Roots of Jealousy