To struggle with this friendship because of the sheer inequality?

[friendssship]

I know I’m probably being unfair. I have a new friend I met while we were both pregnant, I’ve been back at work a year now, as has she. We became quite close and speak every few days at least via text.

Her life is so so so easy in comparison. She logs in from home 99% of the time and will shower in peace over her lunch break or go to the shops in peace etc. She will do all admin for the home and hoover or clean the kitchen. Her house is always spotless. She works for a company in a professional role and her salary must be well above 50k. I earn 40k and I am slogging my guts out in the nhs. Last week she had to go in for a meeting and was telling me she was ‘going to have to find’ 30 quid for travel and parking… I have to pay for parking daily. I have no time at all, the moment I am home after collecting dd I am on the go with dinner and Bath time.

she has gone to nursery early to collect her child and mine is in until the latest moment as I just can’t leave work early and get away with it! I’m really struggling to maintain the friendship which I know is NOT her fault at all… I guess I just want to rant. It’s so much harder for mothers who can’t work from home when they have young kids. My life really couldn’t be more stressful in comparison to hers and I feel like it’s a constant reminder whenever we chat in the week. I don’t want to lose her as a friend, I wonder if maybe she doesn’t actually realise how bloody difficult it is when you can’t work from home?!

My life really couldn’t be more stressful in comparison to hers

Really? Really?

You could have a DC with profound SEN. Or serious mental or physical health challenges. Or worse.

You could be struggling with infertility.

You could be seriously ill yourself.

You could be unemployed.

You could be homeless.

You could be drowning in debt.

You could be a victim of DV.

The list goes on. Usually I'd be the first to say that just because other people have it worse, you are fully entitled to your feelings about your own challenges in life. But honestly, I think you need to seriously concentrate on your own relative good fortune if being a knackered working mother is creating enough jealously that you would consider ending a friendship over it.

@Theunhappiestchild … I said in comparison to hers

I agree with the pp - you feel the way you feel (and as a teacher I do get the slight WFH envy at times!), but to say your life couldn't be more stressful in comparison... Well it could 🤷‍♀️. I can't wfh, have young kids, and have to spend half my weekends caring for a terminally ill parent so I can't even relax then! I'd have a narrow social circle if I ditched everyone who I thought was less stressed than me 🤣

It sounds like you are feeling overwhelmed. Without knowing the exact ins and outs of your life/kids dad availability it's hard to know what to suggest but maybe there are changes that you could make to help relax or with work life balance?

But you literally said your life couldn't be any more stressful in comparison to hers. Wheras the reality is that there are many, many ways it could be more stressful than it already is.

In the scheme of things, the "inequality" between you is really very small compared to that between many, many people who successfully maintain friendships. Just of the top of my head - one of my friends has a DC with very profound LD who will never, ever live independently. She's survived on a few hours of broken sleep a night for over 15 years. She can't work. Every day is a battle for her to get him the support he needs.

Within her wider, very long standing friendship group, there are women with high flying careers and children who are heading to Oxbridge. I'm sure she finds it fucking hard to take sometimes. But she has never let it destroy her friendships.

I have a 3yo DS, and I work in health care (albeit not in Britain, another European country with more accessible child care options). I wfh one day a week and at the hospital 4 days a week (32 hours put together). I love my one day wfh, but I definitely wouldn't want to wfh all day - I'd lose my cookies. Despite a long commute (one hour each way, parking is free, though!), I love the professional medical environment and want to be a part of it. It's a little stressful at times, yes, and I do get tired, but I don't feel like others need to realise how hard it is for me.

Do you seriously believe that your friend having a more flexible work schedule constitutes as “sheer inequality” - what a sheltered life you must have.

You are the very definition of a frenemy.

but WFH is very new for most people. The vast majority of working people under the age of 25 will have spent most of their career working outside the house. So it's a bit odd that you're assuming she doesn't know how 'bloody difficult' it is when she probably has done it. It's not like you suddenly get amnesia and forget all your previous roles once you start WFH.
if anything, out of the two of you, she likely has experience of both, whereas you don't, so not sure why you think you're uniquely able to comment on how hard her job/life is compared to yours.

Generally I think wfh is easier, yes. But most jobs have things that are harder and things that are easier. Do you honestly not have any other friends or family members whose jobs are different to yours? Why is it just this one friend you're jealous of? £40k, good pension, and a pretty much guaranteed job would be amazing for some people - how would you feel if a friend on minimum wage or in the private sector on a temporary contract dumped you because they were jealous of how good you had it and how ungrateful you were?

Her life is easier than yours

You're pissed off because of this inequity

There are only three things you can do:

Choose friends who have a worse life than you

Change your job

Grow up

Inequality?

I think it's ok to want a similarly flexible job but unless you actively do something about it, you'll forever come across as ridiculous.

How can you live like this ha!

I WFH full time now. I can tell you that my house is a tip. Same as it was when I had a 30 min commute, and 2 hour commute. And the period of my life when I altered weeks abroad. That’s me - I’m a messy person.

You have one child by sounds of it. You do have time to clean your bathroom every week. You just - and no shade, I’m the same - don’t prioritise it.

I expect she’d have a tidy house if she worked for the NHS too.

Do you kinda see from the responses how unreasonable you are being?

I understand where you're coming from OP.

My children are school age now but I have a friend who was sahm for 10yrs while her DC where little and I have worked 4 days per week since mat leave. She has now started very part time work, 10 hours per week (2hrs per day) and bangs on constantly about how hard it is to fit everything as a working Mum. How she doesn't have time to go shopping or cook during the day or do her yoga.
What does she think the rest of us are doing!?! She works two hours a day and her kids are in school! I've never had time for cooking, shopping or exercise because I'm at work all day!

I know comparison is the thief of joy and all that, she's still a great friend but it is so bloody grating. She can't see how easy she has got it.

Just because you're struggling doesn't mean she doesn't have shit to deal with.
Sick of women bitching about other women in such a "woe is me" way.
I live in a shit hole, have a fucked up body and solo parent AuDHD twins, but I don't think Mums or Dads with more money, better behaving bodies, NT children etc etc have it 'any easier' than me.
Everyone, EVERYONE, has their own crap to deal with.
And, even silent comparisons and bitter/jealous musings do not an healthy friendship maketh!

Just because she’s at home doesn’t mean she’s working any less hard than you are! And she’s rushing round doing household tasks on her lunch. It doesn’t sound like she gets a minute either, she just does her household jobs at a different time of day to you.

But the issue here isn't that your friend seems to have had it easier - is that she's self-centred and boring on about non-issues.

The OP hasn't said anything to suggest that her her friend is tactless or lacking in empathy about their relative situations. Just that the OP can't forgive her for, as she perceives it, having it easier than she does.

What exactly do you expect your friend to do? This is just a post hating her for WFH.

So change jobs. Retrain in something that allows you to wfh.

You are run ragged, but it's interesting that you project this feeling onto a friend. Have you looked closer to home, could DH/DP do something to make your life easier, like clean the bathroom.

I assume if you were a single parent, you'd have said so as that would be another way to show how hard things are for you. If there's no DH/DP, sorry for assuming - it just reads as if you want to blame friend because it's easier than someone else

OP she's chosen her career and you've chosen yours. We all make choices in life and it sounds like you're not happy with yours. The only person who can make changes in your life is you! Stop being envious and comparing yourself with your friend. It's not her fault that your life is the way it is. Start thinking about what you can do to improve things and get the life you want?

She ‘must be on 50k’ but you’re on 40. To be fair they’re pretty close salaries op! You need to go looking for a new job op, this is all fixable x

If it's any consolation, my WFH job has almost destroyed my mental health. I'm starting a busy in person job soon instead. I hate being trapped in the house working, I feel like I'm in some sort of weird haze where nothing is real, like I disappear entirely between drop off and pick up of DC.

So I'd resist the narrative that WFH is always easy.

If all the teachers, nurses etc took that advice, the shortages in education and the NHS would be even greater than they are.

It's all very well saying that OP made her choice, but assuming that she trained for her NHS job pre -COVID, she was lacking the information that she'd have needed to have chosen it over a WFH job (which barely existed back then).

When I was a new mum having to budget to the penny and be super frugal to stay in the black every month, my two best mum friends were very well off. Range rovers, big houses in the expensive parts of the area, holidays to US Disney etc. We had no holidays at all until our kids were school age. But I didn't resent them, and I know that there were also areas where they envied me. Like having a husband who was an equal parent and home at 5 every day, as opposed to their husbands who were away abroad on business half the time and commuting from London the other half, getting home after the kids had gone to bed.

BUT if I was a teacher or NHS worker with small children now, I think I'd be consumed with envy for those WFH (and who are swinging the lead while doing so).
And yep, I know that not all do swing the head. My closest WFH friend is the opposite. Her day never ends and she'll work until 10 at night, whereas at the office she'd leave by 6 because everyone was going home.

This is quite sad as it speaks of your insecurity rather than anything to do with your friend.

I made a very good friend in hospital when we were both admitted to a wee 2 berth ward at 34 weeks. Her twins were imminent, and my complex pregnancy looked like it was coming to an early end.

She said she lived on an estate not far from Glasgow. I said I did too. Only I meant a housing estate, and she meant 100's of acres with deer, pheasants, partridge, a game keeper and shooting weekends, workers cottages and farm hands. Peacocks on the lawn. You know, like any other estate 😂

She is from a different planet than me, but a dear friend. She really struggled to breastfeed her girls because they were wee starvos and she had supply issues, I struggled with 1 due to medical issues. We had an overlap in Nicu together. We had a rough ride and very few people understood the terror of Nicu.

We emerged relatively unscathed, very fortunately, and our friendship has flourished. So has that of our children, despite my dc pointing out that visiting them is like visiting a national trust property we go to fairly often. Except they do not have to share the playground (an amazing thing, better than any park I can think of).

Our circumstances are very different, but we take turns to host, or to pay for coffee/dinner etc when we go out. We talk about the difference and I will just say if I cannot afford something.

Friendship comes in many forms!!

Comparison culture is a disease. There will ALWAYS be people who have it easier.

Genuinely, I am confused, because apart from telling us "she was ‘going to have to find’ 30 quid for travel and parking" you haven't said what else it is that she's saying to you to make you feel how you do.

Why are you run ragged. It doesn’t make sense. You work 40 hours a week and have a family? With kindness-so do so many of us!

Why can’t you and your partner keep on top of the chores? I do not understand this