A friend of yours is no friend of mine: Jealousy toward a romantic partner's friends van Gomillion, S., Gabriel, S., & Murray, S. L. (2014) - Article

It can be painful for a person to imagine their romantic partners enjoying the company of others. Jealousy toward romantic rivals (also called RRJ, romantic rival jealousy) is a pervasive phenomenon. But a romantic partner’s social network is not limited to interactions with potential suitors. His or her network usually includes friends who routinely compete for a romantic partner’s time, energy and affection. Usually, interactions with close friends outnumber interactions with potential suitors for most partners and it is therefore important to understand how the fun a partner has with friends impacts internal relationship dynamics. This article will be about the relationship determinants and manifestations of partner-friend jealousy (PFJ).

Jealousy and friends

People can experience jealousy when a rival threatens to ‘take’ their place in a valued relationship. Jealousy may help preserve relationships against this threat, but it can also illicit negative and destructive emotional and behavioural responses. Research has almost exclusively focused on RRJ, even though friends constitute the majority of people’s social networks and are popular activity partners. People derive a sense of belonging from their friendships. Research has shown that most college students show more secure attachment to their best friends than to romantic partners. This can be because their friendships often last longer than their romantic relationships. Even in marriage people can characterize time spent with friends as more enjoyable than time spent with spouses. Perceivers might fear that their romantic partner’s most values friends could undermine their central importance to the partner’s life. Usually people expect their romantic partners to be more responsive to their needs than to the needs of the partner’s friends. Friends can therefore threaten the perceivers’ own centrality through their potential to draw a partner’s resources away from oneself and this will violate the expectations. For example when Paula confides her insecurities to her best friend Kim, it diminishes her partner Bob’s importance as Paula’s confidant and it detracts from the time she spends with Bob. Romantic rivals could also detract from the time Paula spends with Bob, but that threat comes from their potential to end the relationships completely. The threat that Paula’s friends pose to Bob comes from the potential to change Bob’s special position in Paula’s social network into a more peripheral one. Romantic jealousy is a pervasive phenomenon, but PFJ may be less universal. Not everyone will be equally threatened by the time and energy a partner devotes to his or her close friends. Friends may be most threatening for people who are more dependent on their partners, because these partners are really central to their lives. If partners are highly central, than people will view their relationship as highly important and meaningful, they will also include their partner in their self-concept and they are especially motivated to maintain their relationship. People whose partners are highly central are usually also motivated to believe that they are just as central to their partner’s life as their partner in to their own life. When a partner gives affection and attention to a close friend, the perceiver’s desired perception that their partner values their relationship just as much as they do can be undermined. By envying their partner’s friends, these people can bolster perceptions of their partner’s caring and regard for them. Friends will pose the greatest threats to perceptions of one’s own centrality to the partner when people already have reasons to questions their partner’s regard and affection. The writers of this text therefore expect people to be most likely to jealously derogate their partner’s friends when the relationship is highly central in their own life, but they doubt their partner’s reciprocal caring. When a perceivers life is also filled with friends and hobbies, that person should be less threatened by sharing his partner with a friend and this gives him/her less reason to derogate the friend.

Study 1

The first study was a correlational study of PFJ and the writers expected people whose partners were highly central to report greater jealousy toward their partners’ same-sex friends and this was particularly the case when they were also less confident in their partners’ caring for them. The writers also expected this interaction to remain robust when several plausible alternate explanations for the hypothesized effects were controlled. RRJ was not the primary focus of this study, but the writers expected RRJ to be higher than PFJ and less related to centrality. The writers operationalized a partner’s romantic alternatives as his or her opposite-sex friends in study 1 (and study 2) because individuals usually choose opposite-sex friends based on the same criteria with which they select romantic partners and they often see opposite-sex friends as potential romantic partners.

In this study, only people who had heterosexual relationships were used. The participants first completed background and personality measures, like measures of loneliness, need to belong and attachment anxiety. Participants also completed measures of their feelings about their romantic relationships (partner caring and centrality) and measures of PFJ and RRJ. Participants also evaluated various aspects of their own and their partners’ friendships. The writers assessed jealousy (PFJ and RRJ) using a two 18-item measures scales. These scales asked them about their partners’ same- and opposite sex friends as a whole.

The results showed that participants were significantly more jealous of their partners’ romantic alternative than their partner’s same-sex friends. This suggests that romantic rivals are more threatening in general. The researchers also found that centrality and perceived caring significantly interacted to predict PFJ. Greater centrality generally predicted greater PFJ, but this relationship was stronger when participants were less confident of their partners’ caring than when participants were more confident. They also looked whether centrality and confidence in the partner’s caring would interact to predict RRJ. The results showed that greater centrality predicted greater RRJ, but this relation was stronger when participants were less confident of their partners’ caring than when participants were more confident. When controlling for certain other factors, it still appeared that centrality was a fairly strong determinant of PFJ, especially among people who question their partners’ caring. However, the interaction effect for RRJ was reduced when the writers included the covariates in the model. This suggests that although centrality may be related to RRJ, other factors may be more influential in predicting this phenomenon.

Study 2

The second study tested the dynamics experimentally by examining the effects of priming partner centrality on people’s derogation of their partners’ friends. The participants were primed with their partners’ importance in the centrality prime condition. Participants were primed with positive thoughts about their relationships in the love prime condition. The researchers expected the centrality prime to make participants’ dependence on their partners salient. Consistent with Study 1, they expected the acutely increased dependence to be more likely to elicit PFJ when participants were less confident in their partners’ reciprocal regard. They expected participants in the centrality prime condition to be most concerned with maintaining their perceived importance to their partners when they had reason to doubt their partners’ caring for them. The researchers also manipulated relationship threat to create concerns about the partner’s caring and long-term commitment. They writers expected centrality-primed participants to restore perceptions of their importance to their partner by jealously derogating their partners’ close friends. They also looked into whether priming centrality would lead participants to derogate their romantic rivals. They asked participants to evaluate the interpersonal characteristics of their partner’s closest same-sex friend and an opposite-sex friend. Because they wanted to examine jealousy’s potential consequences without making jealousy salient, they did not measure jealousy as an outcome. People are sometimes reluctant to admit that they are jealous, because it is considered a socially undesirable emotion.

The participants were all in a heterosexual relationship and randomly assigned to one of four experimental conditions. They were told that the study was about their thoughts and feelings about various members of their social network and their memory for social events. They first had to name various members of their social network, including the same-sex and opposite-sex friends of their partner. They were told that they would answer questions about randomly selected individuals from the names they provided. In reality of course, they just answered questions about their partner’s same-sex and opposite-sex friends. They then completed several background and personality measures.

Afterwards, the participants completed the priming task. In the centrality prime condition, participants were asked to list ways their lives would be different if they had never met their partners. They had to think about the important contributions their partner makes to their lives and the ways in which they rely on their partner. This prime was intended to make the partners’ importance to participants’ lives salient. Participants in the love condition were asked to think about reasons why they love their romantic partner. This prime was designed to activate positive thoughts about the relationship without specifically activating centrality. They were told to read a fabricated textbook passage which summarized recent research in the writers’ lab. The readers were told that they would be asked questions about the passage, so they read the passage attentively. The passage described vignettes in the week of a fictional couple. Each vignette was interpreted from a research perspective. The couple negotiated different coordinating activities and preferences. In the threat condition, the research interpretations suggested that the couple’s behaviours showed evidence of lack of regard for one another and that many couples overlook that evidence and perceive their relationship better than they are. Reading this will cause doubts in one’s relationships and it will trigger risk regulation processes. In the no-threat condition, the research interpretations suggested that the couple’s behaviour was evidence of good relationship functioning. Participants then had to rate their partner’s romantic alternative’s and same-sex best friend’s interpersonal qualities. They then had to recall details from the passage.

The results showed that participants derogated their romantic rivals more than their partner’s best friends. For PFJ, tests revealed that for participants who had been threatened, those who had been primed with centrality rated their partners’ best friend less positively than those who had been primed with love. In the non-threat condition, the two primes did not differ. Centrality and threat did not lead to additional derogation of romantic alternatives.

The current study provides evidence that people whose partners are central to their lives, yet who doubt their partner’s reciprocal caring, may routinely engage in behaviour (jealous derogation) that may undermine their partner’s bond with other people. This study also suggests that PFJ differs from RRJ. Across the studies, people showed higher overall levels of RRJ than PFJ. This is not surprising, because same-sex friends can’t completely replace somebody in the partner’s life. But same-sex friends can compete for time and attention and PFJ should therefore be strongest when a partner’s attention is very important and when one doubts one’s own importance to the partner. Romantic rivals do have the potential to completely replace one in a partner’s life. Centrality and confidence might be related to RRJ, but this relationship was smaller than with PFJ. These results show that partner’s friends may have negative effects on their romantic relationships. The partner’s friend can be a source of conflict and he/she may undermine the stability of romantic relationships. The results also show that more interdependency with a romantic partner can come with high costs. Greater interdependency can be rewarding, but it also can leave people vulnerable to pain and rejection. People who have romantic partners who are becoming more central to their lives and who doubt their partner’s commitment, have negative and defensive reactions to others who might undermined their own importance. The responses may alienate partners and weaken their commitment. Future research should look into how people could react more constructively.