Anyone else feel unsettled after visiting someone with seemingly perfect life

[Eastie77Returns]

I went to visit a friend today. She was more of an acquaintance to begin with, friend of a friend, but we’ve become closer since she moved near to me.

Her DC are the same age as mine and like me she works FT. Her house is immaculate. It wasn’t like that because I was visiting. I’ve dropped by before (unplanned) and it’s always like that. She is always well turned out, never a hair of place. She appears to have a life without any problems whatsoever. I know that can’t be true but it’s the impression I get. She describes her husband as perfect. He was in the house and gave her a hug when she said that so added to the whole domestic bliss. The children never present any issues.

When I mentioned I volunteer at a food bank she said she couldn’t ever do that because it would break her heart to see people whose lives are not as wonderful as hers. She also said it’s so sad that most kids are not as loved and cared for as hers as few parents put in the effort she does😐.

I came home feeling really unsettled. She has messaged asking for us all to get together for Xmas drinks with the DC and I don’t want to go because…I don’t know. I don’t think I’m envious as I definitely don’t want her life and the smugness is annoying but it’s not that either, I just find her really unsettling and can’t rationalise it!

I think what’s happening here is that your values don’t align, but you’ve been conditioned to see the things she values (perfect appearances) as markers of success. So on the one hand she’s out performing you. But on the other you’re aware that she’s not on the same wave length as you.

That’s really interesting and I wonder if perhaps that’s it - she thinks that she is actually more emphatic because she cannot bear to work with people she pities so much.

I was chatting to DP about it and he said well everyone tries to project an image of themselves to others, think about what you were sub consciously trying to project when you told her you volunteer at a food bank?

That’s a good point but I’m also very honest about things in my life that are a bit crap, my parenting fails etc. Whenever I say any of this to her she just pulls a face and either responds by saying “oh how strange” or that issue has never arisen with her parenting/children and then completely changes the subject. So I sit there wondering if she is judging. And then the immaculate house with the flower arrangements and candles…I think I just feel more comfortable in homes that are messy like mine😭

So comments on this thread and have helped me illuminate what I couldn’t quite work out in my own head. I’ve realised that part of what makes me so unsettled is her lack of interest in anything outside of her immediate world. She looks a bit blank when I refer to anything occurring in the local community or current affairs. She has said she doesn’t really look outside her bubble and I suppose she doesn’t really want to be exposed to anything that might spoil that. I can’t really click with someone like that. And then on top of that, as PP’s have pointed out, there is the sense that I’m not really engaging with a real person…

She's annoyed you with her smug attitude, perfectly understandable.

I think that's all there is to it really.

Just make your excuses and let the friendship die a natural death, I couldn't associate with someone that self satisfied and smug either.

When I mentioned I volunteer at a food bank she said she couldn’t ever do that because it would break her heart to see people whose lives are not as wonderful as hers. She also said it’s so sad that most kids are not as loved and cared for as hers as few parents put in the effort she does😐.

She's not perfect, she's a delusional twat.

She sounds a right self satisfied smug pain in the neck. Her DH is probably having an affair with a colleague.

My sister has a huge house in Oxford, huge career, slim, pretty and married to a highly successful doctor and she is a highly successful doctor herself and has one perfect son. She would say similar.

she is deeply unhappy. Suffered with anorexic for years, she is a narcissistic person and her son has to be perfect - he isn’t allowed to not be. He also failed his 11 plus and she lost the plot - has paid for an independent school but the school that he failed his 11 plus on shocked her so he has activities x3 a week eg rugby training and x4 times a week he has a tutor for 3 hours in the evening - he is 12. Every weekend he has rugby all morning and tutor all
afternoon. Sundays are for perfect days out for culture.
mum has paid for him to meet numerous famous people and have his picture taken etc literally Tim peake, David Attenborough, Sean bean etc hundreds of them. he isn’t allowed coke or sugar and seems fucking miserable 😭.

give me my non perfect life any day!

She sounds like someone who believes The Secret - that the universe provides what we project to it. So it's important not to contaminate your life with poor people, challenging current affairs issues, friends who discuss their problems.

It's a very unhealthy mental state because it denies you the right to a vast swathe of the valuable, natural, healthy and normal range of emotions - all the negative ones. Not to mention blinkering you from what in the world might need your help.

As PP have said, whenever I meet 'perfect' people I get the impression that something is very fragile in their lives - either their relationship or their self-worth or their finances. That level of putting on a show is usually concerning.

That poor child! I hope he rebels .

I actually think she sounds like someone very young (in maturity), perhaps naïve and shielded from the realities of life. But I don't think she is necessarily bad.

I remember being young and some of the attitudes I had made me laugh to look back now. The saying the older you get the less you know... That rings true to me - the more you are exposed to life, the more you face difficulties or hardship - the more you learn and the more you realise there is SO MUCH to learn. She has chosen not to expose herself to life's difficulties and she has been fortunate in that they don't seem to introduce themselves to her. Which makes her safe, but doesn't provide any opportunities for growth.

You don't have to be friends with her, but maybe if you do keep her in your life you will see changes - maybe you can find some common ground. She appears to always see and highlight the positives in her own life and that's not necessarily a bad thing!

I know someone who looked like this- her and husband had great jobs, perfect bright kids at private school, travel etc. I was jealous. Then they hit the teen years and the daughter got angry, then got anorexia due to the pressure put on her. Then the husband died of a stroke when the kids were at uni (partly due to the pressure). Then the son got a job abroad. Then the daughter took her own life. Now she’s on her own. Grass ain’t greener.

I just came on here to write a thread about this. I've just picked up my DC who went to play with their DC. I've come back feeling odd as anything. I'm really counting the pennies at the moment. The mum in question has a stunning house in a posh area. However she was moaning she wants a bigger house worth over 1 million, not a 600k house. Then she was listing all the things she needs. I meanwhile am counting every penny and scrimping and saving like mad. The other mums were lapping up her conversation but I just wanted to get out of there, as lovely and warm and plush as it was.

I have felt this in the past but - sadly - I now know that the friend with the most perfect life of all was very much struggling, and still is struggling 20 years later. So appearances can most definitely be deceptive.

The scenario is unsettling. Imagine living with her and the demand for perfection.

i have a real thing about people being disrespectful, ungrateful, about money in that way. It makes me hugely uncomfortable.

I used to have a very rich friend - married to a banker - who told me I should work fewer hours and "money isn't everything". My father warned me she was a horrible snob - she was always asking why he "couldn't" pay things for me, like I'd ever ask..and then when she came to my flat - after years of making excuses for me to see her in her huge posh house - she was visibly shocked.

to be fair, that probably made her uncomfortable. She changed her attitude - for the better - after seeing my home, but the friendship ended anyway, because she didn't want to help when I had a spine injury and actually said on the phone "so when will you be back in circulation, darling?"

she also seemed to look down on her DC when they were ill, I think she was raised to see illness as a terrible thing that only happened to weak people, in her "perfect" world.

I have relatives who have worked for very successful ‘perfect’ families like the one described above. The children are hot housed to within an inch of their lives but have no real time with their parents because everything is outsourced. They are like products to their parents. Often the relationship between the parents isn’t good and often they have issues of their own. I’m always suspicious of families who seem ‘perfect’.

I would bet my life on it that she’s miserable and it’s all about appearance.

Next time you see her look for the on/off switch. She sounds robotic.

I suspect threads like these are used as therapy for the OP, they have a friend with a seemingly perfect life, house, husband, kids which makes them feel insecure and a bit envious and by posting about it on here they will get loads of posters agreeing with them and saying that the woman secretly has a terrible life, she is shallow, smug etc and this makes the OP feel a lot better about herself, seen it loads of times on here.

OK, I'm about to defend the indefensible here...

I understand the foodbank comment.

I volunteered at one for a year and I hated the emotional hangover. I'd finish a shift, come home and have a cry for the people I'd met. I worried about them, I was frightened for them in their desperate situations. The help we could offer was such a tiny drop in the bucket faced with the despair, desperation and structural unfairness. The stories I'd hear from clients break my heart.

Some people are terrible at compartmentalising. My (amazing) colleagues could listen with compassion and do their jobs but not bring it home with them. I didn't manage that. I was better suited to back office support than client facing.

Should say I’m not blaming the lady I know for the tragedies that have happened to her- she’s a great mum and a lovely person- just that it was a lesson to me in not wishing that your life was more like someone else’s.

I get that too. But I suppose it's the way she said it. If she said "I wouldn't be able to cope" that would be different.

She sounds like a smug selfish twat. What an awful thing to say about food bank users.

I'm sure others have said this, I haven't rtft, but I imagine you are unsettled because there is something disingenuous about her and her situation, and you are subconsciously picking up on it.

@EmmaAgain22 that sounds awful. Especially the lack of help when you had an injury.

I’m really honest about people who make me feel envious and I can say hand on heart I do not envy her. The friend I do envy has a house that is always cluttered and over-run and just feels so homely as she is amazing at upcycling. I would give my right arm to have her skills. I’ve tried to replicate some of her decorating hacks in my own house and failed miserably