Alrø, Thore Birkkjær

Byrgesen, Manja Evelyn Blume Sommer

Rulis, Martin Moe

Sell, Mie la Cour

In this project, we thoroughly examine how people in polyamorous relationships experience and cope with jealousy. We found these questions particularly interesting, as we expected people in polyamorous relationships, to be able to provide unique and well-founded views on jealousy.In order to examine these two questions, we have made interviews with four people who are currently in polyamorous relationships. These four people are closely connected in both their ages, but also their hobbies and interests. This in turn makes it hard to generalize our findings. These interviews were both performed and processed through the method of phenomenology. By using phenomenology, we have been able to examine each of our four informants unique views, and accurately depict how they experience and cope with jealousy. This was very deliberate, as we believe polyamorous relationships are unique in the way that they invite jealousy into the relationships, by having to manage multiple partners and relations. Therefore, it was important to us, that we, as much as possible, tried to maintain and communicate their respective experiences and coping strategies. In order to further process and compare their individual interviews, we’ve used evolutionary psychology theories from mainly David M. Buss and Don J. Sharpsteen. We’ve used these theories to explain and make sense of the data that we collected, and to further understand why they experience and cope with jealousy in their respective ways. Using these theories helped us expand their respective views beyond their own understandings, and thus raise the quality of every informants interview. In the end we conclude, that our informants experience and cope with jealousy in very different and unique ways. Thus, it is hard to conclude on specifics for coping with jealousy, as coping with jealousy is unique to every individual. The main ways for our informants to cope is through open and honest communication, and turning their jealousy on themselves, in order to not limit and restrict their respective partners. In the end though we conclude, that these findings are limited to our informants, making these findings hard to generalize for other groups of polyamorous people. <br/

Jealousy in polyamorous relationships: How do people in polyamorous relationships experience jealousy and how do they cope with it?

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Roskilde Universitet