Hiya,

I'm working on a story which revolves around jealousy and how it affects people. The main character in this story is suffering from severe jealousy of his wife and while I do understand the basic concept of jealousy (we've all been jealous of something, it's human nature), I'm having difficulty figuring out the consequences and actions one takes when the jealousy is very severe. What would a man do when he gets obsessively jealous?

I'm not asking you to tell me anything personal, I'm asking you to give me ideas and perhaps examples of a fictional situation.

And why I'm asking here instead of another forum? Well, this is pretty much the only forum I frequent and this place is more mature.

Every bad feeling/behaviour has an egoistic component. Thinking of yourself before the others is the root of many misbehaviours. If you take the 'biblical ones' for instance : gluttony, sloth, wrath ... it's always related to taking things for yourself without thinking of the others, not investing yourself for the others, thinking that the others owe you things you didn't really earn.

In short, you can work different steps of jealousy on a scale of self-centeredness.
A small form of jealous behaviour would be : Bob is jealous because Alice speaks more often to Oscar than to him.
A bigger form of jealousy would be : Bob is jealous because Alice did something Oscar asked without even asking him if it was ok.
And the last step would be : Bob is jealous because Alice speaks without his agreement.

Bob is an asshole!

I've heard of very jealous men making some crazy demands.
Let's start with spying. Insisting on his wife to give him any passwords so he can check her e-mails and track her phone calls. Not letting his wife visit friends (so afraid she's cheating on him). He could convince her to give up her career or even actively sabotage it. When they go out, he doesn't let her wear nice clothing or make-up.

Think of it as extremely paranoid. Anything he can conceive of as a path to cheating is cheating and taken to an extreme, he doesn't want to let her go anywhere. He could convince her to sell her car, is there is only one in the family.

It's not clear to me what meaning of jealousy you mean to use. Copying from M-W, it can be "an unhappy or angry feeling of wanting to have what someone else has" or "an unhappy or angry feeling caused by the belief that someone you love (such as your husband or wife) likes or is liked by someone else".

Because it's his wife, I imagine that it's the first meaning, but then you say "we've all been jealous of something", and that seems to refer to the second option.

An obsessively jealous person usually makes up wild theories about how the thing he's jealous about happened, that is what his wife does when he's not looking or how his neighbor got his job or whatever, based on no evidence. Then goes on blaming the ones involved for the conspiracies this jealous person thought up in their head and then goes spreading false rumors about them.
Anonymous threats to people they envy, stalking of people they suspect of cheating, anonymous rumors trying to defame, planting false evidence to make up a scheme to "catch" the one they're jealous of in the act and so on.

Jealousy affects me because if I don't keep my wits about me I can be jealous of everyone and everything, and that sucks to admit but it's true.

Personally, it's like rage, it pops up regardless if I want it to or not but it's my job as a civilized human being not to let it fuck with me ie: when that guy cuts you off in traffic, for a brief second you want to kill him, but you don't. You take a deep breath, calm down, get on with your life, and maybe feel just a little bit guilty about having gotten that upset to begin with. That is pretty much how jealousy works with me.

Would this coincide with paranoia? Would those two things go hand in hand?

A jealous guy can also turn into a complete control freak - he might lock her up and keep her a prisoner in her own home when he goes to work, straight-up forbid her to see friends or even close family or, if he's more sly, work to turn her against them so he can keep her all to himself, physical and mental abuse etc.
This is all at the extreme end of the spectrum, obviously!

Depends on what is the object of jealousy I guess. If say a work colleague of the jealous person gets stuff, promotions, popularity or whatever, the jealous person might come up with a conspiracy theory how everyone around is trying to undermine his efforts in benefit of the colleague. Or a man jealous of his wife might make up a conspiracy theory about how she and her suspected lover are plotting against him and either trying to kill him or divorce him taking everything he has.

Jealousy is a very interesting feeling.
i find if all else fails the best thing maybe to end the relationship for everyone's benefit.
otherwise a man could find himself acting irrationally and further undermining the existing relationship.

actions could range from spying /stalking, other inappropriate behavior public and private.
things could get really dark if u wanna go kidnapping, or planing the deaths of individuals responsible for this feeling .

of course there are people that can deal with this better.

not sure if this is anyway close to what u need but very interesting concept, i wonder how dark u want to go with this, but either way, lots of possibilities.

i also wonder if there will be choices on different actions one can take to deal with jealousy in this game
could be really creepy indeed.
looking forward to more in4

He invents a stupid religion aimed at keeping women in check.

I was going to write a story about jealousy, but you started this first. I am cool with that. I mean just because your wrote this first, I am man enough to write about something else. I will write about my wife, she is beautiful. She always likes to read things that I write. I bet she would love to read what I was going to write about jealousy, but you already started it. I bet she would rather read what YOU write about jealousy than ANYTHING I was going write! Damn you, your story is going to suck! Did you hear that? This is going to be so far down the ladder of suckage compared to what I was going to write. Everyone knows I am a good writer, so I should just write about jealousy anyway. Fuck this shit! I am going to play Blood or something, I ain't even writing anything today...

Now there is a redundancy. :P

Oh man, I'm gonna get my ass kicked for that.

It's called a rhetorical tautology, very very useful :)