Other egotists fear the ridicule that might follow upon exposure and which might destroy some of their self confidence. They would be too weak to bear up well under their friends' open or concealed sarcasm.
The jealous scenes they make to their suspected wives are in the nature of a punishment which they inflict on the faithless one.
Other husbands, entangled in extramatrimonial affairs, are in no way desirous to create a scandal but work themselves into jealous moods to keep up a pretence of interest in their wives.
Others, very old fashioned, believe in a double standard and, while condoning their own weaknesses, condemn every appearance of evil in "their" wives.
=Very Few Men or Women Admit Their Jealousy.= Most of them cover it with ethical veils of the most transparent type: "You neglect your household," "you are a poor mother (or father) to your children," "you are making yourself (or me) ridiculous," etc.
Some husbands deny they are jealous but declaim against low neck gowns, flesh-colored stockings, face powder, rouge, lip sticks to which they object on "moral grounds."
The last two groups derive a great comfort from their assumed ethical and moral superiority which they use as a justification for their endless nagging.
Some jealous husbands force motherhood upon their wives year after year as a protection against unfaithfulness. A woman disabled by pregnancy and lactation is, of necessity, more faithful. Attempts at freedom on the part of a woman burdened with a numerous progeny can easily be repressed by admonitions such as "Remember the children," etc.
=Jealousy and Impotence.= Jealousy in a man is often caused by the fact that he has become impotent. Unable to gratify his wife physically, he imagines that she seeks consolation elsewhere and in that way he "gets even" with her: "I am impotent but she is promiscuous," so runs the neurotic's logic.
Not infrequently a woman who has been brought up to consider physical relations as slightly shameful and something which a well brought up female submits to, but never "enjoys," may, if she is very erotic, develop terrible fits of jealousy.
Frink, mentioning one of those rather frequent cases, dissects the psychology of that type of jealous women as follows: "If her husband's caresses leave her unsatisfied, she is caught between the two horns of a dilemma. If she grants that this is enough to satisfy her husband's 'animal instincts' she must then admit that she is more erotic than he is, hence, more 'animal' than he. And such an admission is impossible to a woman of puritanical upbringing. Hence 'logically' she concludes that he must be untrue to her."