Quote · Lex Fridman Podcast
#483 – Julia Shaw: Criminal Psychology of Murder, Serial Killers, Memory & Sex
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Jealousy
At 57:00 · chapter starts 56:38
Shaw offers an uncompromising take on jealousy: it is not love, it is control. The person who is jealous is either in the wrong relationship or insecure in themselves, and research consistently links jealousy to intimate partner violence — not as a cause in all cases, but as an almost universal precursor [1] — Julia Shaw "Jealousy feels like love, but it's actually a desire to control and possess. Research consistently shows jealousy is a precursor to intimat…" 56:56 . Much jealousy, she notes, is not grounded in real evidence of wrongdoing but in faulty 'lie detection' — the same overconfident pattern-matching that leads police officers to wrongly identify suspects. The conversation then enters coercive control territory: the systematic use of financial control and psychological manipulation within relationships. Shaw connects this to the broader false security of relationships built on poor communication rather than explicit agreements, setting up the next chapter's discussion of monogamy.
Jealousy feels like love, but it's actually a desire to control and possess. Research consistently shows jealousy is a precursor to intimate partner violence — and much of it is based on imagined threats, not real evidence. Shaw's view: persistent jealousy is almost always a red flag.
