I know IABU but I'm jealous of my friend's 'perfect' life and don't want to be

[TougherThanTheRest]

We've recently got to know another couple and really like spending time with them but their life appears so perfect that I'm starting to feel jealous and resentful.

He's funny, successful, a great Dad and a thoughtful husband. She's a great Mum, naturally good at things like cooking and entertaining, who manages to have a job she enjoys that also fits around their clever, attractive children. They're popular, well-travelled, live in a lovely house, drive nice cars and have several holidays a year plus weekends away and nice grown up nights out. And on top of all that they're really nice people. (That's a lot of 'nice' but it sums them up).

We on the other hand muddle along like most people, never quite on the breadline (which I am thankful for) but never very comfortable money-wise either. Neither of us hates our job but nor are we especially happy with them. We haven't got as many children as I'd have liked for lots of reasons which makes me sad. My DH is a fairly good Dad and husband but will never be a go-getter (although neither am I so not in a position to complain), mostly we get on well but there are times when I wonder how the hell I ended up with him.

I think generally what I feel is that nothing we have is quite good enough or what I would have hoped for - not just material things but life in general - especially when I compare us with our friends. I'm sure their life isn't as perfect as it appears but there's no area where I feel we can even begin to compete with them (I do know it's not actually a competition) and it's beginning to really get to me.

I know I probably sound like a shallow, ungrateful bitch but this is how I feel. I don't want to but I do. How do I get some perspective and stop feeling dissatisfied with my really not that bad life?

You're not unreasonable to be envious, and as some others have said, you don't know what goes on behind closed doors. That's one of looking at it. But another of looking at it is that they might be happier than you. They are wealthier and have better jobs. Some people will get a better hand in life than you, but then there are people huddling under a tarpaulin sheet in Africa, having seen their home destroyed by floods and their child dying of malnutrition.

I know for a fact (because they told me) that a couple of people viewed me as "perfect" when I was younger. What bollocks! I am a very sociable person and I love entertaining, I get on well with people and I make conversation easily. I think all of that makes it look I'm a happy happy person when in fact I have dealt with heaps and heaps of shit in my life. Being the "perfect" one is horrible actually because, as someone else mentioned, it's as if you're the yardstick for other people, they aspire to be like you as they believe they'll be happy once they are. If you reveal that you are in fact human and flawed just like they are some people are very disappointed and drop you like a hot brick. I've even been in a situation with friends where, when I started to talk about my problems they've said "what are you on about, you've got no problems, you have everything going for you." Basically they were saying "shut up we don't want to hear it." I've had people say I'm amazing and an inspiration and as weird as it sounds I absolutely hate it because it puts me in an impossible position where I feel I can't put a foot wrong.

A couple of years ago having finally buckled under the pressure I moved away with my DH from my home town to a new country. It's been the best thing I ever did. I realised a lot of my outer crust came from my mother - I was unconsciously projecting the "perfection" image because that's what she expected (while at the same time criticising me for being perfect, what a headfuck that is!). Since moving here I make a conscious effort to let new people know from the start that I struggle and that I have problems, I don't present myself shiny side up anymore. It's such a bloody relief to not be maintaining that image and I feel happier now than I have done in a very long time. I think anyone who portrays a perfect image has to work very hard on it and is inevitably covering something less perfect.

Please don't put your friend on a pedestal, it is a lonely horrible place to be.

Great post Cailin - I totally agree that no-one knows what lies beneath. It's often the 'perfect' couples that shock everyone to the core by splitting up (IME).
Glad you sorted yourself out.

Your friends DO sound nice OP. Get yourself round their house more often!

I've got a lovely friend - successful, funny, rich, beautiful, generous, excellent company etc etc. I spend loads of time with her. She doesn't make me jealous, she makes me happy because she's my friend.

Remember - some people have really shit friends. Aren't you the lucky one?

I accept that people don't have 'perfect lives. However,i really have a problem with some posters who seem to almost 'enjoy' the misfortune of others.They then conclude by stating that they are just trying to prove that life is not perfect. Yeah right
DH and i live a good life after having a few difficult times in the past. However, what really annoys me. is the number of so called friend who tell us to 'enjoy it while it lasts.

I've fallen victim to these feelings more times than I can count.
Time and experience has led me to think of life as a huge waterwheel with people clinging to every spoke. Sometimes they are in the top half of the wheel, smiling, waving and eating M&S food whilst I am on the bottom waving a Lidl carrier bag.
But the wheel always turns, sometimes slowly, and once again I will be on the top wearing bright red Jimmy Choos with 6 inch heels and lifting my glass of bubbly to toast everyone in sight.
Makes me feel a bit better whether it's financial worries, my extra half stone, my messy house, my sometimes-naughty children, or my neverending list of failings.

' Some people have really shit friends. Aren't you the lucky one'?
Fantastic point Yus..

CailinDana - I can identify with a lot of what you write. People have said to me that my relationship with my DP is inspirational and something they aspire to. And yes if there are any problems, they just didn't want to hear them!

I actually think in some ways it said more about them than me. Our relationship isn't perfect. But DP and I do love one another, show respect to each other and enjoy being together. Some of my friends have finally got great relationships, but have had crap ones along the way. When they found good relationships, they stopped saying this kind of stuff to me.

I was dropped by my 2 best friends when I became pregnant and got married. I found out later that it was simply because they were jealous of how they perceived my life to be moving forward as they were not yet in that place.
It was one of the most hurtful things I've been through, and still hurts me now as I have no close girl friends to speak of. If they'd only stuck around, they'd have seen it wasn't all roses - I had an awful pregnancy, suffered from pre-natal and postnatal depression, and could really have done with their support.
I don't mean to hijack the thread, but my point is, as others have said, peoples' lives may seem fantastic to you, but it says more about you feel about YOUR life when you envy others' lives.
Find one thing you really want to change, that you have the power to change, and go for it!

I agree SayCool, people being jealous of you is very hurtful and makes you feel like you have to apologise for how "good" your life is.

I don't see why people are being personally affronted at the notion that the wheel turns. It always does! Just life innit.

SinicalSal, I just disagree - some people will have overall better lives than me and you, and some people will be worse - it won't all balance out in the end (except we all die)

It is difficult not to be jealous, especially if you are having a tough time financially. I know what it's like to be the friend with the least money and appearing to have the worst marriage at times as well!

But, as so many posters have already said, no-one gets through life unscathed. Even if they have a beautiful home, they may have lost people close to them. Even if they have a great career on the surface, they be desperate to give up being a lawyer and work for a charity.

I think it's quite strange if you genuinely don't know anything realistic about their lives. Even the friends I have who have great careers and beautiful houses still have a raft of 'issues' between them, even if it's pretty minor stuff like their husband doesn't really understand them or that he's sociable in public but quite grumpy at home (this one seems very common).

I don't love socialising with couples that much for this reason, or at least not if there's too much social front. I don't think you have to wear your heart on your sleeve, but most people have the odd money worry, or the children fall out with a friend, or they are worried about what will happen to their mum who is having memory problems. I'd rather hang out with people who I can be honest with and we all have a laugh about the ups and downs of life.

OP, get some dates with DH and the kids planned. Make some happy times, then you won't care what anyone else is doing.

Comparing yourself, your life, to other is a recipe for unhappiness. There will always be someone brighter, thinner, richer, apparently happier, with more/less children, better organised etc etc.

Sounds to me perhaps the MAIN difference between you and your new friends is attitude - yours will keep you unhappy and unsatisfied - but it's completely in your power to change it.

I don't believe there is any such thing as "better" or "worse" lives. That notion leaves people striving for some mythical place where everything will finally be perfect. That never ever happens for anyone, ever. No matter how good or bad things are things can always change, sometimes in seconds. Absolutely everyone has to contend with disappointment, death, fear, anxiety as well as all the good things that life offers. No one is better or worse. On the outside my granny had a terrible life - 9 children in a two bedroom house with a feckless husband and no money but if you ask her she says she had a fantastic life and wouldn't change anything. All her children grew up to be successful adults who live close to her and gave her loads of grandchildren and great grandchildren and she has had an amazing retirement.

A really interesting psychological study revealed that if you compare two people who've had two very different events happen to them - one has a lottery win and the other a car accident that left them a paraplegic - their happiness is poles apart just after the event but a year later their happiness levels are right back to where they were before the event. That seems to suggest that it doesn't really matter what happens in your life in the long run. Yes when you are going through a particular thing then it consumes you and changes how you feel but over time it all evens out and how you view life really depends on you and your own attitude rather than outside events.

Interesting TED talk on the phenomenon here for anyone interested.

but, by my age, most people have had some horrible, hard things happen to them and carry their baggage silently

this is very, very true. very well put.

I have a friend who admitted she found it hard to hang out with us as we are so "perfect".

It's hard to swallow, especially as I KNOW I have been lucky, but even so, I have still had PND for over year, followed by panic attacks for over 3 years and a very rocky patch in our marriage where we almost divorced in the middle of all that. DH has a lot of stress at work and I worry he's heading for a burn out or a heart attack. I had a slipped disc as well a few years ago and had excruciating back pain for months. One of my children has SEN and struggles at school, got bullied....I constantly worry....

I am not complaining, just illustrating what goes on beneath the surface in this "perfect" family. I know that we are very lucky in other ways!

I am positive by nature though, and usually quite cheerful, so I think people assume everything in my life is always brilliant.

...a lot of it is, actually

You say you regret not having as many children as you would have liked, I would have dearly loved 1 or 2 more, but I generally just overwhelmingly grateful for my 2 fab sons . I can feel whistful about friends with 3rd or 4th babies, but I don't think it's jealousy.

Maybe count your blessings to start with?

Cailin - I have read that research as well. It has been used to theorise that as adults at least everyone has a default level of happiness. Events may temporarily boost or dampen it, but we end up back at the same place. It has been shown that it is possible to boost your happiness long term, but not with material things.

Things like, supportive friends, exercise, access to green space and counting your blessings every day can have a longer term impact on increasing happiness. And that is even when people's lives are hard.

I disagree though about comparing lives. Some people's lives are harder than others. Although this doesn't mean they are unhappier. We have all met people who have had pretty easy lives, but moan miserably about really petty things and think their life is really hard - when any sense of objectivity would tell you its not.

I agree about lives being harder and easier lesley although having had depression I would say that it doesn't depend on material things. Nothing makes life harder than feeling hopeless. The person who has nothing and struggles on the material front but is happy and content has a much easier life IMO than the person who has everything materially but never feels happy. Feeling life is pointless makes even getting out of bed seem impossible, hell it even pushes people to ending their life. That IME has nothing to do with how hard or easy a person's life is in material terms.

Wow, I didn't expect so many responses, and sympathetic ones as well!

You all make some great points and I'm sure it's true that our friends' lives aren't really as perfect as they appear. We are fortunate in many ways but I do find it hard to keep perspective sometimes - I had some tough times in my family growing up and I have a tendency to blame that every time something isn't going well in my life. Sometimes it probably is a factor but not always.

Both of our friends seem to come from quite strong, secure family backgrounds and I think that has given them confidence and the skills to get the best out of life. They do seem to have less money worries than us but not to the point that they're rolling in it (they don't actually have a cleaner or anything which makes it more annoying that she's such a domestic goddess!) but it's more about their attitude than the money I think.

It's true that I'm not entirely satisfied with life at the moment, I feel in a bit of a rut in lots of ways and that is probably contributing to my envy and grumpiness!

Thanks so much, this has given me lots to think about.

PS KeepinMind I bet she makes her own bloody Pombears! Or him, he cooks as well as everything else

I think everyone has their own heaps of private baggage - we all have our personal tragedies and sadnesses. You are using them as a sounding board to think about your own life. I bet their worries are completely different to yours, but just as omnipresent.

I remember one of my DDs friend's mother commenting on our enviable life.

It was when she ws collecting her daughter from my DD1s birthday party.
Earlier that afternoon.... we were supposed to be taking a dozen early teens swimming. My husband has a (not particularly visible to outsiders) chronic health condition and 30 minutes before the kids turned up told me he was on the brink of a vertigo attack and wouldn't be able to help. I'm used to that- managed 8 primary school children solo at a skating rink on a previous birthday so swimming party no big deal. Until DD2 asked me to look at the rash on her legs and NHS direct told me to bring her in immediately as it looked like meningitis. Out of hours of course so had to go miles away. (She was sent home that afternoon but admitted the next day, proved to be something different but still stressful). I called my sister who lives ten miles away urgently to come and look after the birthday party. Thank goodness she could help. I got back from the hospirtal just towards the end of the party.

On top of this we were all fragile to say the least as my mum had died unexpectedly the previous week.

Not the greatest afternoon of my life. But the point is the other mother had no idea about all that was going on. We managed, she thought everything was fine but that doesn't mean it was easy. You really don't know what is in anyone else's life.

You have no idea what happens behind closed doors. Or what things she might grapple in private. You only get to see their public face (even as a close friend) and this is often absolutely no reflection at all of reality.

Many people would think our life is perfect from the outside. Living in it is a different matter.

I feel uncomfortable as well with the schadenfreude here. It's one thing to be a little envious of other people, but to rejoice in their misfortune (or nod sagely saying you knew it was coming) is quite another.

Dh was quite upset by mil last week. He told her that we'd been for a nice day out by the seaside, and she replied acidly that she was glad we'd enjoyed it because in a few years' time dh would be old and stuck in the house like her. Nice one, mil.