Interracial Couples and Jealousy: Dr. Kyle Killian and New Research on Love, Race, and Unity

Intercultural Relationships

Sep 19

Written By Daniel Dashnaw

Thursday, September 18, 2025.

Despite what you may have heard otherwise, jealousy is a human universal.

But in interracial relationships, it often shows up wearing cultural fingerprints.

A new study in the Journal of Social and Personal Relationships (Pham, Sasaki, Naeimi, & Impett, 2025) finds that interracial couples report higher jealousy than same-race couples.

Not more public drama—no door-slamming or partner-policing—just more worry, more suspicion, more sleepless thought spirals.

The inside of the relationship hums louder, even if the outside looks calm.

Jealousy in Interracial Relationships: What the 2025 Study Shows

Pham and colleagues surveyed nearly 400 adults in the U.S. and Canada. Interracial partners reported:

More general jealousy (frequent, intense worry about rivals)
More cognitive jealousy (rumination about outsiders’ interest in their partner)
More emotional jealousy (anger and suspicion toward threats)

But crucially, they did not report more controlling behavior. Jealousy was mental static, not action.

When researchers accounted for attachment anxiety—the fear of abandonment that grows when love feels fragile—the interracial/same-race gap in jealousy almost vanished. The driver wasn’t race, it was rejection anxiety amplified by social disapproval.

The buffer was couple identity.

Partners who saw themselves as a united “we” neutralized jealousy’s sting.

For same-race couples, solidarity was a nice-to-have relationship feature. For interracial couples, it was utterly non-negotiable.

Kyle Killian’s Research on Interracial Couples: The Long View

My supervisor, friend, and colleague, Dr. Kyle Killian’s body of work stretches across two decades and offers the deep context Pham’s study now quantifies.

Killian (2001, 2002, 2013) has shown again and again that interracial couples are not just managing household chores—they’re managing an audience.

Killian (2001): Couples rewrite racial histories in their narratives to validate their union when families won’t.
Killian (2002): Social marginalization seeps into daily fights, intensifying otherwise ordinary disagreements.
Killian (2013): Couples who deliberately build solidarity—what researchers now call “couple identity”—show greater resilience and satisfaction despite outside disapproval.

Pham’s survey results map neatly onto Kyle’s insights: jealousy in interracial couples isn’t personal weakness—it’s the echo of cultural doubt.

How Jealousy in Interracial Relationships Looks Globally

The North American story isn’t the only one. Cross-cultural studies show jealousy shifts depending on the local script.

Brazil: Interracial unions are more common and socially visible. Telles (2004) finds that jealousy looks more like the usual intrapersonal kind, though skin tone and class still complicate the picture.
South Africa: Apartheid outlawed interracial marriage until 1985. Erasmus (2001) notes that couples remain hyper-visible today. Here jealousy carries the residue of state-sanctioned repression, with history itself acting as a rival.
U.S. and Canada: Disapproval is quieter but constant. Families rarely yell; they smile and whisper. Killian (2002) called this “chronic micro-aggression.” Pham’s data shows how it seeps into attachment and fuels jealousy.

The pattern is consistent: where interracial love is normalized, jealousy stays personal. Where it’s stigmatized, jealousy becomes political.

Therapy for Interracial Couples: What Works

Clinicians need to stop treating jealousy in interracial couples as mere insecurity. As Killian (2002) argued, the social context must be part of the therapeutic frame.

The practical intervention?

Strengthening couple identity.

Pham’s study confirms what Killian has long observed: when couples build solidarity, jealousy loses its teeth.

Or, to put it bluntly, know who you’re married to: each other—not the skeptical relatives, not the strangers at the café, and certainly not the peanut gallery online.

Conclusion: Love With Armor

Jealousy in interracial couples isn’t proof of fragile character—it’s evidence of cultural pressure.

Dr. Killian’s scholarship shows the long shadow; Pham’s new data shows how solidarity shields against it.

And here’s the irony: while society’s disapproval raises jealousy, it also forces interracial couples to become unusually skilled at unity.
They’re better at forging “we-ness” than most.
Which might be the best definition of intimacy: not just two partners lost in each other’s eyes, but also two partner glaring back, together, defying everyone else.

Be Well, Stay Kind, and Godspeed.

REFERENCES:

Erasmus, Z. (2001). Coloured by history, shaped by place: New perspectives on Coloured identities in Cape Town. Kwela Books.

Killian, K. D. (2001). Reconstituting racial histories and identities: The narratives of interracial couples. Journal of Marital and Family Therapy, 27(1), 27–42. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1752-0606.2001.tb01136.x

Killian, K. D. (2002). Dominant and marginalized discourses in interracial couples’ narratives: Implications for family therapists. Family Process, 41(4), 603–618. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1545-5300.2002.00603.x

Killian, K. D. (2013). Interracial couples, intimacy, and therapy: Crossing racial borders. Columbia University Press.

Pham, V., Sasaki, E., Naeimi, H., & Impett, E. A. (2025). Jealousy in interracial and same-race relationships. Journal of Social and Personal Relationships. https://doi.org/10.1177/02654075251310981

Telles, E. (2004). Race in another America: The significance of skin color in Brazil. Princeton University Press.

Daniel Dashnaw