Comparison is the thief of joy…

[GreenEyedGremlin]

So how do I stop myself?

This is about the boy (let’s call him Jim) who bullied me at school but I also had the odd confusing ‘thing’ with. He was the most popular, good looking, sporty, from a wealthy family. He married his childhood sweetheart, moved to another country, bought a beautiful house and had beautiful, talented children.

I married my abuser and had kids (later diagnosed with SEN and developmental trauma) just as I was completing my studies. I eventually left and had to raise my kids, one of whom was very violent towards me, on my own with no financial support and with my own health conditions. Things are better now, I managed to buy a flat in a crap area but we are secure which I know is more than a lot of people have.

I know life isn’t fair and there may be people feeling this way about me when looking from the outside in, but there’s no denying that Jim has been a very lucky bastard. I had to hide his SM years ago so I wasn’t always reminded of the disparity. But very occasionally I will see something through a mutual friend and it will trigger intense feelings of jealousy and failure. I don’t feel like this about anyone else, even those who objectively have things better. I don’t know what it is about Jim - maybe because his words from back then still affect me now.

How do I stop comparing myself and be happy with what I have?

With great difficulty.

I quite like the analogy of why are you letting them live in your head rent free. I can guarantee this person never thinks about you, you won’t be on their radar for a nano second and they probably don’t even remember you so why have such a huge investment in their life.

I don’t necessarily feel invested in his life, I don’t think about him at all or seek out information about him, but sometimes our mutual friends will share something or tag him and then I’m stewing for days and feeling really downbeat about how my life turned out comparatively. Everything I know is based on his SM posts a decade ago, I only hear tiny snippets these days so it could have all gone tits up for him but I very much doubt it.

Everyone has some sort of grief in their life and it is naive to think his life is totally care free. Maybe he does not put all his negative stuff on SM.

To live is to suffer, to survive is to find some meaning in the suffering.

Oh, absolutely! I know he will experience problems too but there’s no denying he’s lived a charmed life.

I’m not so concerned with his life being awful but with me feeling content with mine and coming to terms with the shitty hands I was dealt. Some of this is tied up in the disparity of opportunities for men and women, especially after becoming parents. Perhaps I feel he represents what I could have had if I’d married a supportive partner or been born male.

Having said that, I’ve carved a small life for myself which I’m mainly content with. Still hard not to sometimes wonder how different things could have been…

The trick is to remove yourself from social media to stop making these comparisons and only keep in touch with people who are important to you.

Friend I fell out with a million years ago ... said a hugely wise thing. It was about not having regrets: "We make the best decision we could at the time."

Read Victor Frankl's book Man's Search For Meaning about his time in Auschwitz. It will put things in perspective.

Not making light of your journey but many us have first world problems.

So we should ignore our feelings and not try to understand them if they’re triggered by a first world problem? If it helps, I often worry about the state of the world and I’m very involved in activism so have a good grasp of context. You might not have meant to make light, but it certainly comes across as dismissive.

I think this is probably the most sensible option. I use SM a lot for work and other things I’m involved in so not easy to do. I might just unfollow everyone from my past. They’re just reminders of a darker time.

Social media is bollocks.it’s all smoke and mirrors. No one posts their vulnerabilities or failures. No one posts anything but the image they want to create. That’s why it’s so damaging . In fact I know that the most vocal and smug ones are often the unhappiest.
I went through a really rough patch in my life and posted about it and I cannot tell you the amount of private messages from friends with what look like perfect lives I got telling me they went through similar. It blew my mind.. all these messy lives I had no idea about!!

eg I have a friend who is rich, lovely kids, slim and beautiful.. perfect “happy” life.. it seems.. but I know for a fact she is living in constant fear that if the rug was pulled from her and her husband left she is in a very precarious position. She cannot ever keep the lifestyle up on her own and there are some gaping cracks in the marriage they plaster over with perfect family portraits..
you have what you have and in life we go through good times and bad times. Nothing stays the same and luck changes in an instant.
i would work on concentrating on very tiny things to be grateful for and prioritise each day. For me it’s a lovely warm bath before bed, first thing in the morning I sit outside with a coffee for 10 mins or so and just listen to the sounds around me.. a good book to read or a nice walk.. all these little things add up and when you start noticing them life often starts to feel pretty good xxx

'To live is to suffer'. Really? Sure we all go through things, but 'suffer'.

Also further to my other reply another thing I recommend to my clients is to look at your own life from the outside- what things would other people be envious of you for? It can take a while to really identify what you have going for you because we often see our own selves through a very foggy lens of all the trauma and crap we’ve collected through life. It sounds like you’ve had a lot and what you’ve survived many haven’t survived nearly as well as you.. so you are strong and should admire and acknowledge those things. I bet many would be so grateful to have half the mental resilience. There will be loads more! Xx

I think you have to keep in mind that some people are very good at curating a perfect image on social media. Sometimes because their job relies on good marketing and they are the product, or they see it as a personal family photo album and want a collection of happy memories to look back on.
That doesn't mean it's entirely real. I have a friend who is a very good photographer and puts together beautiful artistic family pictures. But that's her hobby and she cares enough to make everything look beautiful.
Another acquaintance lives in a beautiful part of the world, has money, gorgeous kids and that's on her sm. But her dh is seriously ill and will die much younger than he should - that isn't on her Facebook!

And it's also true that some people are just fortunate - it isn't fair that some skirt through life and others really suffer, but without sounding Pollyanna about it, you are better to focus on what's good about your own life. Yes you could have married someone else, but then you wouldn't have your particular children and in having different life experiences, you wouldn't be exactly you anymore, but someone similar.

People only post what they want on social.media ,I have a disabled child and we haven't been on holiday for four years for various reasons it's hard looking at other peoplesl. social media with their seemingly perfect lives and wonderful holidays , Facebook friend of mine is taking a six month sabbatical to.Indonesia with her dh,and kids ,just because ,but realistically we have no.idea what's going on in their actual lives ,we only see what they choose to post .

I think the only thing for it is to eschew social media- if you didn't have a means to see his life, you wouldn't know about it to be hurt by it IYSWIM.

Also, as PPs have said, a lot of it is smoke and mirrors. A lot of my friends have very slick, impressive-looking social media accounts (I check Facebook once every six months or so 😆.) In real life, they're just normal people with the usual amount of happy stuff and crap stuff but you'd never guess from their SM. Nobody puts the shit bits on SM.

Some people are lucky enough to lead completely charmed lives but I think they're the exception and definitely not a good yardstick to measure what your life against.