With effects similar to a drug uncontrolled doses of jealousy expose vulnerabilities. A simple and honest envy of the success of others need be no more than a personal recognition of what appears to be desirable in life. Such an appraisal can be a positive spur to the individual to strive to attain a similar success. No harm in that. But when the envy is simmered with an adverse and negative comparison with real or imagined personal failure the whole seething brew progressively distills and concentrates into a debilitating toxin.

Some individuals are not motivated to strive for loftier goals or to try to compensate for a perceived failure by looking for strategies and methods to correct the situation. When they are frustrated by the actions of anothers they don't explore more creative strategies that might enhance their own circumstance. They focus all their compensation options and any reactionary anger on the source of the perceived frustration. A purified jealousy has had distilled out every factor of a perceived failure and left only the essence of an individual identified as the cause ...whether that individual has actually contributed to the situation or not. The standard jealous lover, displaced for whatever reason by an interloping rival, chooses to simmer and brew the frustrating failure until it poisons all thought and behaviour. The only possibility of resolution focuses on the anger-driven destruction of the object-cause. The typical jealous employee, thwarted in promotion and status by a colleague, conspires to plot and intrigue and use opportunities for vindictive retributions whenever possible. The generic jealous child, displaced from being the focus of parental attention by the arrival of a new baby or adopted sibling or pet or whatever, adopts a course of action designed to harm the intruder and restore the former status quo. Even the archetypical custodiae of dark and cryptic secrets will tend to view those secrets as theirs and theirs alone. If the secrets have come to the knowledge of an outsider the fomented jealousy has often been sufficient to action the extermination of the recipient of their security failure.

Whilst such generalized examples are occasionally identifiable life is much more chaotic and complicated than any of the above scenarios. The elements of deception, egotism, humour, trust, avarice, power, et al... are all more than likely to play some sort of role in any scenario where jealousy might be the principal distillate. Many egocentrically biased individuals actively promote their own interests at the expense of others and to expect those who have been deliberately disadvantaged not to be resentful is unrealistic. Whether such resentment is then immersed and permeated with jealousy, will depend upon the capacity of the slighted individual to devise creative and pragmatic strategies that will gain compensation and restitution.

Invoking the humourous can be one of the more satisfying antidotes to jealousy...but only if the very real possibility of violent retribution can be avoided. A wronged spouse, for example, might well enjoy the results of managing to subversively enable the cuckolding pair to experience a quantity of cayenne extract in the genital regions. Certainly, not everyone would see the comic side of that.