Level of jealousy and marital adjustment amongst rural and urban working and non working couples

Abstract

Jealousy, the shadow of love and green eyed-monster that on the one hand has ruined marital homeostasis of millions of couples by creating fraction amongst the families and on the other also seems equally beneficial for promoting their La Dolce Vita philosophy of happiness across the world. It seems that foremost source of this covetous issue might be the insecurity and fear of being abandoned by one of the cherished partner due to extra marital relationship. The reason behind such apprehension might be the excessive flow of money, poverty that push away the people to leave sedentary mode of life and to adopt nomadic way, mismatch of thoughts, emotions and behavior, values of life, over involvement, much or less care, violation of customary practices, eating and sleeping habits, pro-social attitude, less mindfulness and more money mindedness; selfishness, performing job and business outside the native place. Such issues may results jealous by hampering their marital relationship in general and personal development in particular. Once a time when there use to be a faith and sacred relationship in marriage in India, that in contemporary Kaliyug scenario has diluted and faded away by converting into suspiciousness and jealousy. The level of jealous may differ among the working and non-working people in general and the rural and urban men and women in both developed and developing countries in particular as well as in hilly areas like Himachal Pradesh where the people are very honest now has followed the path of astuteness that in turn has disturbed their marital homeostasis. In the present study a pioneer attempt has been made to explore the relationship between jealousy and marital adjustment among 200 Working and Non-Working Couples of Rural and Urban areas of Himachal Pradesh. Based on locality and gender, 8 groups namely Urban Working Men, Urban Non-Working Men; Urban Working Women; Urban Non-Working Women; Rural Working Men, Rural Non-Working Men; Rural Working Women; and Rural Non-Working Women with n = 25 subjects in each have been formed. These subjects were assessed with the help of Multidimensional Jealousy Scale as developed by Susan M. Peiffer and Paul T.P. Wong in 1989’s with seven point scale where the score ranged from minimum of 8 to maximum of 56 with the reliability of r = .83 to r =.92 respectively. The marital adjustment was measured with the Revised Dyadic Adjustment Scale as developed by Busby, Christensen, and Larson in 1995 that has 14 items with five and six point scale with a minimum score of 0 and maximum of 69 and reliability of r = 0.90 respectively. The result revealed that Men reported well adjusted marital life but were more in Jealousy as compared to their Women counterparts. The Non-Working Men enjoyed satisfied life thereof were well adjusted despite being reporting more Jealous as compared to Non-working Women counterpart. In the same tune, the Urban people reported better adjusted marital life but more jealousy than to the people of Rural area. For promoting better marital life there is need to reduce jealousy, promoting faith, self-esteem, mindfulness, self-esteem, confidence and vision by following honesty and yogic way of life amongst the men who seems to suffer from aforesaid issues.