|
REJECTION
SENSITIVITY, IRRATIONAL JEALOUSY
AND IMPACT ON RELATIONSHIPS
by Monica A. Frank, Ph.D.
As a child
Cynthia's hyperactive behavior often annoyed others. Her teachers
frequently reprimanded her in school. The other students called her
"stupid" and refused to let her join them in activities. At home, her
father criticized her and beat her with a belt whenever her parents received a
negative report from school. Due to depression, her mother tended to
ignore Cynthia's needs for emotional support and attention. As a result,
she grew up expecting rejection from others. It seemed that no matter how
hard she tried, all she experienced was rejection.
As an adult she had numerous unsuccessful
relationships. She desperately wanted the acceptance to be found in a
relationship; however, she perceived her partner's behavior negatively often
thinking about how he wasn't as committed to the relationship and that she was
just good enough until someone else came along. These thoughts led to
hostility toward him and accusations "You don't care about me!" Due to her
focus on her worries about losing him she did not focus on his needs and provide
him with emotional support. Her partner tried to reassure her and comfort
her at first but the constant negativity and hostility drained his ability to
respond to her needs.
Jake was physically abused as a child; for seemingly no
reason to Jake his alcoholic father became enraged and beat him leaving bruises
and welts. These beatings included screaming at Jake about how worthless
he was and that no one could possibly ever want him or love him. His
mother was rejecting in a more subtle way by tending to blame him for his
father's behavior "If you just wouldn't set him off, he wouldn't hurt you."
When Jake developed an intimate relationship as an
adult, he perceived his wife's behavior as indicating she was cheating on him.
He examined her phone records and questioned her endlessly about calls she made.
He didn't allow her to go out socially unless he was present and even then he
questioned her about her interest in other men if she talked to someone.
His wife could not convince him she was not having an affair. Eventually,
his irrational jealousy led to slapping her when she denied his accusations.
What do these two people have in common? They
developed rejection sensitivity due to childhood experiences which led to
irrational thinking and behavior about their adult relationships. This
thinking and behavior often reinforced itself by creating situations in which
they were more likely to be rejected.
WHAT IS REJECTION SENSITIVITY?
Individuals who are rejection-sensitive are more
likely to perceive rejection in situations others may not interpret as
rejection. For instance, they may think, "He didn't respond right away to
my text message, so I must not be important to him." This thinking
frequently creates stress and anxiety. Whereas the same situation may not
even register to another person as involving rejection; they may not expect an
immediate response or they may understand that response latency may not be
directly related with how important the other person thinks they may be.
Or even if they do consider it related, they may not view lack of importance as
rejection and may be able to shrug it off as meaningless.
In addition, someone who is rejection-sensitive is more
likely to overreact to rejection. They may view rejection as horrible
whereas someone else may view it as just a normal thing that occurs because
people are different and no one can be liked by everyone. Therefore, the
person who views rejection as "horrible" often feels an intense need to avoid
situations that may potentially involve rejection.
WHAT IS IRRATIONAL JEALOUSY?
Irrational jealousy is jealousy that has no basis
in fact. In other words, the individual perceives situations as meaning
that their partner is likely to reject them when the partner has no intention of
doing so. Thus, irrational jealousy is a thinking style in which an
individual evaluates a situation negatively and makes assumptions base on that
evaluation. Those assumptions are usually related to losing their partner
due to a rival.
HOW IS REJECTION SENSITIVITY
RELATED TO CHILDHOOD ABUSE?
Scott Feldman and Geraldine Downey (1994),
psychologists who conducted a number of studies examining rejection sensitivity
indicated that a link existed between adult sensitivity to rejection and
childhood experience with rejecting parents. One of the tasks of childhood
is to learn how to relate to the world around us. However, our primary
experience is with a select few adults including our family and our teachers.
If this experience teaches us that those closest to us are likely to hurt us and
reject us, we carry this knowledge with us into adulthood.
Erik Erikson described the stages of psychosocial
development over fifty years ago. For our purposes, his first two stages
directly relate to the development of rejection sensitivity: trust vs. mistrust
stage and autonomy vs. shame and guilt. During the first year of
development, if the child learns that his needs are not likely to be met he will
develop mistrust. During the second year of the development if the child
is made to feel bad or wrong about normal exploration of the world around her,
she will develop shame and guilt. Accordingly, if these stages are not
successfully resolved the child will not be able to move on and successfully
manage the other stages of psychosocial development including but not limited to
the stage of identity development and the stage of intimacy.
Thus, in the example above, Jake was physically abused
by his father and blamed for the abuse by his mother. Typically, we are
taught that our parents love us and protect us, so it is reasonable for a child
to come to the conclusion that if he can be treated this way by the people who
are supposed to love him the most, then the rest of the world must be the same
or worse. In fact, sometimes children are taught this specifically.
Imagine Jake's father saying to him, "You better respect me because no one else
would ever put up with you." As a result of his treatment by his parents,
Jake developed a mistrust of people, especially those who love him, and felt
shame and guilt because of his inability to act in a way that would cause them
to treat him better. Therefore, in his adult intimate relationships he
became jealous and controlling.
WHAT IS THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN
REJECTION SENSITIVITY, SELF-ESTEEM, AND SOCIAL ANXIETY?
Although Downey and Feldman (1996) found that there
is a relationship between rejection sensitivity and self-esteem as well as
between rejection sensitivity and social anxiety and the personality
characteristic of introversion, they did not find that this relationship
explained the connection between rejection sensitivity and poor intimate
relationships. In other words, an individual may have low self-esteem or
high social anxiety or be introverted, but their perception of rejection may be
accurate and they may not over-react to rejection. So, the problem is due
more to tendency to expect rejection in intimate relationships, perceive rejection when it may not be present, and to see rejection in an extremely negative manner.
HOW DOES EXPECTATION OF
REJECTION AFFECT PERCEPTION OF REJECTION?
There's an old story about a traveling salesman who
has a flat while he is driving a country road. He looks in his trunk and
discovers that he is missing his jack. So he thinks, "There's a farmhouse
a couple miles back, I'm sure the farmer will be able to help me."
However, as he starts walking he begins to think, "Why should he put himself out
and help a stranger? I'll probably need to pay him 5 or 10 dollars."
As he continues to walk, his thinking becomes even more negative, "Why should 10
dollars be enough? He really has me over a barrel. Why should he
even help me at all?" By the time he reaches the farmhouse he is convinced
that the farmer will take advantage of him. When the farmer opens the door
and asks "What can I do for you?" the man sputters in anger "You can just take
your jack and shove it!"
This story illustrates how we can expect rejection in a
situation, respond to the situation as if there is rejection, and then most
likely create rejection. Downey and Feldman (1996) did an interesting
study with college students to examine the relation between expectation of
rejection and perception of rejection. They had previously developed a
questionnaire to measure rejection sensitivity. The questions asked about
hypothetical situations and the degree of anxiety about the outcome as well as
the expectation of rejection. Some of the situations included: You ask
someone in class if you can borrow his/her notes; You ask a friend to do you a
big favor; You call your boyfriend/girlfriend after a bitter argument and tell
him/her you want to see him/her.
In the study, the students were placed in an ambiguous
situation in which rejection-sensitive people were more likely to feel rejected
whereas others were not. The situation involved having a short
conversation with an opposite-sex stranger (who was actually one of the
experimenters which was unknown to the student) and being told that it would be
followed by a break and then another short conversation. However, after
the first conversation the students were told that their partner chose not to
continue with the experiment and no other explanation was given. The
control situation was similar except the students were told their partner did
not continue due to time constraints.
The researchers found that the students who were high
in rejection sensitivity and were not given an explanation for their partner's
decision not to return for the second conversation tended to provoke feelings of
rejection and statements of " 'I felt so badly. I wondered what I had done
wrong' and 'I was worried that I had bored him (Downey & Feldman, 1996).' "
Whereas people with low rejection sensitivity did not react with negative
emotions.
HOW DOES REJECTION SENSITIVITY
IMPACT AN INTIMATE RELATIONSHIP?
Downey and Feldman (1996) furthered examined how an
individual's level of rejection sensitivity might affect their intimate
relationships. First, they conducted a study to determine the relation
between rejection sensitivity and the tendency to interpret insensitive behavior
by their intimate partner as a deliberate desire to be hurtful. They
assessed students for rejection sensitivity prior to beginning a romantic
relationship. After they began a new relationship, scenarios that could be
considered insensitive but could have occurred for a number of reasons were
posed to them such as "If your boyfriend or girlfriend was being cool and
distant, you would feel he or she was being intentionally hurtful to you."
They found that high levels of rejection sensitivity predicted the likelihood
that the student would interpret their new partner's insensitive behavior as
having hurtful intent.
In a related study Downey and Feldman (1996) recruited
couples in a committed, nonmarital relationship to complete questionnaires
designed to examine how this tendency to negatively interpret insensitive
behavior would impact the relationship. They found significant
correspondence between rejection sensitivity and relationship security,
relationship satisfaction, and behaviors that jeopardize the relationship.
Relationship Security
They examined the relation between
rejection-sensitive people and their perception of their partner's commitment to
the relationship. The results indicated that rejection-sensitive people
were more likely to believe and to be concern that their partner was likely to
leave the relationship. This response occurred no matter what the
partner's level of commitment actually was. In other words, even when the
partner was fully committed to the relationship, the rejection-sensitive
individual still believed he/she wanted to end the relationship.
Relationship Satisfaction
Although they found that the partner's of
rejection-sensitive people were less satisfied with the relationship, the
rejection-sensitive people tended to exaggerate the degree of dissatisfaction
they thought their partner experienced. Possibly, the dissatisfaction that
was experienced was due to the problematic behaviors in which
rejection-sensitive people engage.
Behaviors Jeopardize
Relationship
Therefore, Downey and Feldman (1996)
examined the behaviors of rejection-sensitive people that could jeopardize the
relationship. Although rejection-sensitive people were more likely to
engage in self-defeating behavior, a difference occurred in the type of behavior
in which men engaged and women engaged. In particular, it was found that
men tended to engage in more jealous controlling behavior. These behaviors
may include being particularly reactive to, jealous of, and controlling of their
partners contact with potential rivals. Many of these behaviors could
potentially lead to physical abuse. Downey and Feldman interpreted these
behaviors as being based upon men's tendency to want to actively solve problems.
However, rejection-sensitive women relationship
behaviors tend to include hostility and lack of emotional support.
Frequently, women's hostility is reflected in negative comments/criticism and
non-verbal disapproval. Downey and Feldman attribute the
rejection-sensitive women's behavior as due to women's tendency to worry and to
retaliate for perceived offenses. An example may be a tendency to be
sexually cold when she feels her boyfriend is paying too much attention to
another woman. They believe that this pattern is likely to cause the women
to be less invested in the relationship and less positive towards their
boyfriend.
HOW IS REJECTION SENSITIVITY
SELF-PERPETUATING?
Rejection sensitivity tends to create increased
rejection sensitivity due to the process of self-fulfilling prophecy. A
self-fulfilling prophecy occurs when an individual creates an outcome based upon
his/her belief about the outcome. For example, if a football field kicker
believes he is likely to miss a kick becaue he missed the last two kicks, his
chances of missing are increased and he may create the outcome he feared.
Rejection sensitivity reinforces the irrational beliefs that the individual will
be rejected and that other people can't be trusted because the behaviors in
which the rejection-sensitive people engage will often cause the termination of
a relationship. Thus, with the failure of each relationship the individual
becomes more and more convinced that these beliefs are valid. They often
don't recognize that it was their behaviors due to their fear of rejection that
caused the problems in the relationship.
HOW IS REJECTION SENSITIVITY
CHANGED?
1) Recognize the
rejection sensitivity. For an individual to be able to make
changes, they have to first recognize the problems and the behaviors that are
self-defeating. In this instance, it is important to stop blaming other
people and to stop examining others' behavior for every nuance that could be
considered as potentially rejecting. Instead, the individual needs to
recognize their sensitivity to rejection, how it causes them to frequently
misinterpret others' behavior and intention, and lead to problematic behaviors
that can be destructive to the relationship. Once the individual
recognizes the reality of the situation, he/she can begin to take the steps to
change.
2) Challenge the
irrational beliefs. Cognitive restructuring is a technique that
focuses on changing the underlying thought processes that tend to create and
perpetuate the behavior. One method of cognitive restructuring is
"reframing" which involves recognizing other possible reasons for the behavior.
The rejection-sensitive person often believes there is only one possible
interpretation of a situation and that interpretation involves being rejected.
Thus, if their partner's behavior is "cool and distant" they may believe their
partner's satisfaction in the relationship has declined. However, it is
also possible that the partner may be worried about something unrelated to the
relationship and they may feel they are protecting the partner by not sharing
their worries. Or the partner may be dealing with a problem such as
depression which causes him/her to withdraw. If we thought about it, we
could probably come up with many other reasons for this behavior.
Therefore, the reframing technique requires the rejection-sensitive person to
look at some of these other possibilities and to recognize that if other
possible explanations exist, their interpretation may not be accurate.
Another way to challenge the irrational thinking is to
recognize the fallacy in the belief that we "should never be rejected."
Instead of seeing rejection as a bad thing, we could see it as a good thing.
For instance, many people believe that they should make a new relationship work
at all costs. This is not a good idea. What happens when you
passively allow your partner to make the decisions in the relationship even when
you don't agree? You're likely to build resentment and eventually it will
impact the relationship. It is better to recognize the potential for
rejection as a way of determining the "fit" of the relationship. For
instance, instead of just agreeing with your partner, you voice your opinion.
Now there are different possible outcomes. One possible outcome is that
your disagreement leads to a discussion which leads to a resolution of the
problem. Another possible outcome is that your partner becomes demanding
about his/her decision and refuses to listen to you. Now, based on what
outcome occurs, you have information about whether this relationship is the
right "fit" for you.
3) Mistake practice
technique. Once an individual has begun to change the thinking
about rejection, he/she may try some "experiments" to show that their perception
of rejection may be inaccurate or exaggerated. One way of doing this is a
technique called "mistake practice." This technique helps to change
beliefs about making minor mistakes. An individual who is
rejection-sensitive may believe that relatively minor mistakes that everyone
makes are catastrophic and other people won't like them as a result. An
example of this is calling someone by the wrong name. This is a common
error, one which most people take in stride, often don't think twice about, and
certainly don't view as "horrible" and a reason to reject someone.
However, someone who is rejection-sensitive may be horrified at such a mistake.
Mistake practice involves making a list of minor
mistakes that would cause you to be uncomfortable, put this list in order from
easiest to hardest, and then deliberately make a mistake. So, if you're
concerned about calling someone by the wrong name, you would deliberately do so.
The idea is that after you make this mistake a few times, you find that are
other people aren't reacting as negatively as you anticipated.
See also:
Making Mistakes to Enhance Self-Esteem and Improve
Performance
4) Exposure practice to
rejection. Exposure practice is similar to mistake practice except
it is to deliberately elicit rejection and to prove to yourself that you can
handle and survive rejection. For instance, Albert Ellis, the founder of
Rational Emotive Therapy, was terrified of asking women out for fear of being
rejected. To overcome his fear he was determined to ask a hundred women
out recognizing that he would be rejected by the majority. I guess it
worked because he did eventually get married.
I often tell people, "If you have two men who both want
to have a date on Saturday night and one man asks 10 women out and one man asks
one woman, which man is more likely to have a date on Saturday night and which
man is likely to have more rejections?" Obviously, the answer is the same
man, the one who asked 10 women out. This is an example of how rejection
may be a good thing because taking the risk of rejection leads to potential
success.
In
conclusion, what we have reviewed is that people's early experiences in life may
lead to increased sensitivity to rejection. This rejection sensitivity
often leads to misinterpretations of others' behavior and irrational
jealousy leading to problematic
relationship behaviors by the rejection-sensitive person. These behaviors
may cause dissatisfaction and termination of the relationship reinforcing
the irrational thinking about the likelihood of rejection. However, there
are methods that can be used to reduce rejection sensitivity.
Downey G. & Feldman, S.
(1996). Implications of Rejection Sensitivity for Intimate Relationships.
Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 70, 1327-1343.
Erikson, Erik H. Identity and the
Life Cycle. New York: International Universities Press, 1959.
Feldman, S. & Downey, G.
(1994). Rejection sensitivity as a mediator of the impact of childhood
exposure to family violence on adult attachment behavior. Development
and Psychopathology, 6, 231-247.
Copyright ©
2009 by www.excelatlife.com.
Permission to reprint this article is granted if it includes this entire
copyright and link. |
RECOMMENDED
ARTICLES
"If you truly want a chance for your partner to
change, the best place to start is with yourself. "
"To be betrayed, the person must first experience trust in the
betrayer."
"...the way we make attributions about behavior
affects relationships and self-esteem."
Recommended
Books
Romantic Jealousy: Causes, Symptoms, Cures
By
Ayala Mal Pines
Self-Esteem: A Proven Program of Cognitive Techniques
for Assessing, Improving, and Maintaining Your
Self-Esteem
By Matthew McKay, Patrick Fanning
The
Self-esteem Companion: Simple Exercises to Help You Challenge
Your Inner Critic & Celebrate Your Personal Strengths
By Patrick Fanning, Carole
Honeychurch, Catharine Sutker
|
