Competitive friend

[the7Vabo]

I have a friend that is very competitive about everything. It’s never been a massive issue between us as she mainly directs it at a girl she grew up with. She has a lot of self awareness about it and will often refer to the fact that she likes to be doing better than X etc.

Im fairly laid back about certain things, I’m not massively driven so mostly it’s never caused an issue between us.

My friend will often refer to how good looking she is, how thin she is etc. Most of the time I don’t care.

Recently it has caused a couple of issues. The first is both me & my husband have put on weight in middle age. Neither of us are happy about it. My friend has managed to refer to it a couple of times which has been hurtful but I try to block it out.

The bigger issue for me is that almost every time we talk she spends a lot of tike talking about our kids ages. My kids are 6.5 & 4. Hers are 5 and nearly 3.5. When 4 year old was barley a toddler my friend was very keen to tell me repeatedly that I no longer had a baby. She kept saying “you’re done with babyhood.” She now refers to her 3.5 year old as just out of babyhood. There is 9 months between the two of them. In our most recent conversation she acted shocked that my younger child had turned 4 and said “your kids are middle aged now”.

I know this sounds silly but this has been almost every conversation for about 2 years / my youngest is still a baby etc. If it was anyone else I wouldn’t think much of it but because it comes from a place of competition - like ha I have a baby/young cute kids and you have old kids I find it annoying. The tone is very dismissive as well - oh but your kids are so old, you’re life must be so easy. (I’m bloody exhausted). Anyways back to my cute little babies.

What I’m hoping for is any suggestions about how to shut this conversation down and get the point across. I don’t want a row about it, I just don’t want to listen it any more. Humour would be good.

You need to end the friendship before your kids are old enough to understand and be affected by this loon and her strange ideas and comments.

Because once she's over the age thing, she'll find something else about them to start having digs at.

To be fair to her she doesn’t have digs when she is around them. She’s pretty nice to them.

The digs are all at me. About things other than kids she wouldn’t generally have direct digs but it’s more she insists on talking about certain things repeatedly.

We were travelling around the States with her friend she grew up with. My friend kept saying she was just so tiny she can’t get anything to wear. She is small but we were in shops where they sold loads of size 0 stuff. And she made this huge show of going over to a small staff member and being like OMG you are small like me what are you wearing???!! This was dressed up not very subtly as a “problem.” Then almost in the same breath she announces somewhat gleefully to me that her friend has put on weight. We were still standing in the shop and I vividly remember being like WTF.

I could of course bang on about how small my daughter is. She has said that she worries her daughters will be big like her husband’s sisters. But I just wouldn’t, it would be toxic as fuck. And I’m not going to do that to her kids. When she said she worries I just said their size isn’t what is important in life. If the situation was reversed and strongly suspect she would have mentioned it more than once and then I probably would have ditched her. Because it’s one thing to comment on my weight, my child is off the table.

I can assure you once she can't make digs about the age thing, if she doesn't comment on your child's weight in future it will be their reading level, or the way their adult teeth are growing in, or that they're too shy or too outgoing, or they're not sporty enough or whatever.

She sounds toxic as fuck and the only reason I can see that you've remained friends with her is in your own words "I don't have so many long time friends that I'd be happy to lose one", like we all have this quota of particular types of friends that we have to fill and she ticks a box.

I see where you are coming from it’s not a quota as such, it’s more that she’s known me for a very long time and that shared history and experience means something to me.

And while she is hyper competitive it’s usually directed at her other friend. I’ve had to spend an unhealthy amount of time listening to how gorgeous and thin she is but 90/95% of the time she doesn’t have a dig at me.

She also has supported me when times have been very tough.

I have taken a step back because I just can’t deal with some of her chat at the moment.

I still don’t get it. How can you ‘win’ at your children being younger? I mean, her children are younger than your children. And they’re younger than every person in the history of the world born before them. So they ‘win’. But they ‘lose’ compared to all the millions of children on the planet born after them. Plus she gets that they ‘lose’ because they’re ageing every second…?

As far as I can tell it’s that she sees younger equals cuter equals more worthy of interest. Babies do generally get a lot of attention. And she’s not competing with stranger’s children born after them, she’s competing with my children who are older.

Maybe tell her to just stfu and eat some bloody chips?!

I agree with other posters who have said that now she's started picking about the kids it won't EVER stop!! She will be competitive about her's being smaller/bigger, more clever, more sporty, more musical, better at reading, and so it will go on for as long as you put up with it. Quite honestly OP, think to the future, if you keep her as a friend, before you know it, it will be her kids going to a better university, better grades, getting married earlier, buying their first home, then who's the first to have a grandchild. THIS WILL BE IT FOR EVER!!!

I don’t disagree. I have taken a step back.

Having thought about it more I’m not sure whether I’m hurt or angry. She told me two years ago when my youngest child was barely 2 that I didn’t have a baby and she didn’t just tell me she snapped at me, then she said later she feels sentimental about her youngest growing up and was glad she still had a baby. Now her youngest who is 3.5 is “just out of babyhood.” While my 6 & 4 year olds are “middle aged.” And the story involving the autistic child was bizarre, instead of talking about the autistic child and his mother’s struggles she snapped that the trigger couldn’t have been toddler her then 3 year old was also a toddler like my 2 year old.

I get that I’m ranting & repeating myself but I’m pissed off my kids are dismissed as so old/not cute. And her kids are both tall so if they stood beside my kids they just look like a bunch of kids of a similar age. Her youngest child is at least as tall as my youngest.

For some reason I’m way way more triggered about this than I am about implications about my weight or not being as gorgeous or whatever.

She's just going too far.

OP life is too short for this nonsense. Honestly just fade away and stop replying as much to her, stop having her over, just begin the process of slowly fading the friendship away. It sounds so tedious

Sounds super tiring, OP. I’d be tempted to just sigh, “Can you not?” when she starts.

She's not your friend. Narcissists don't have friends, only competitors.

If she kept on about hers just coming out of the 'babystage', I'd deliberately misunderstand her and say ' are you worried then about X missing his/her milestones? I'm sure it's nothing to worry about, they all develop at a different rate, she/he will get there in the end'.

One of you might have a third child OP that would put the cat among the pigeons. You could keep going a 4th, a 5th until one of you eventually cracks and concedes " OK you have the baby!"

Or just love your children at whatever age/stage they are at.

I don't have a competitive streak so couldn't stay friends with someone like that so I would distance myself

You are not a social worker or counsellor if she has real issues she needs to work on that herself

Twinkly laugh then a swift STFU should do the trick. She sounds deranged, middle age children?!.

I don’t want to “win” by having a younger child. That isn’t the point. The point is that my children are as important to me as hers are to her yet she constantly dismisses them as so old and somehow not interesting and how eat my life is now that I don’t have the same young children challenges as her and turns the conversation back to herself.

Ive been dealing with her wanting to be the queen of all castles for years. And a lot of the time I don’t mind. I feel like it’s quite daft and can be funny.

There have quite a few WTF moments. One was at a wedding where the friend she grew up with told my friend she had the nicest dress at the wedding and then told another girl that she loved her dress, nicest one at the wedding. And my friend went mad and was saying to me “but but she said mine was!!! And I was thinking like who the hell cares!!!

I haven’t fully worked out that if she thinks she’s good looking, thin, has the nicest dress, the baby etc why she can’t just enjoy herself and all those things but instead insists that other people have to acknowledge these things. And she is an attractive, fun flirty person, men love her and she is great fun to hang out with so she gets away with saying outrageous things that a less charming person wouldn’t.

And she’s aggressively insistent about whatever topic it is she’s like a dog with a bone because she s looking for an acknowledgement that she’s gorgeous, thin, has the baby, nicest dress whatever it is.

And when it comes to kids I’m like F off I’m as entitled to be a mother and have kids as you are.

If you keep her in your life you are agreeing to all her bullshit. It’s up to you. But passively accepting all her toxicity will rub off on your kids. They will sense and hear all the better-thans and put downs.

Fair enough if you choose to passively coexist with this shit but believe me it will affect your children. For them to observe their mum accept this nastiness will make them more likely to accept abusive digs as adults. They’ll think it’s ok, or at least they’ll think ‘it’s not possible to do anything other than accept this bad treatment’.

Your friendship with this woman will help you raise kids with low self esteem.

She sounds like the kind of mum where her kids will always be the best and no one else's kids are worth talking about or praising and such.

This will continue when they are teens and adults.

Her kids will always be the darlings and yours are rubbish no matter who is happiest and doing better in life.

The only way to stop this is to respond in equally ridiculous and offensive ways, to have a proper conversation with her about how she acts, or to quit the friendship

This.

I would not entertain a conversation where someone repeatedly put their kids above mine or praised their kids while putting mine down.

Ive been dealing with her wanting to be the queen of all castles for years. And a lot of the time I don’t mind. I feel like it’s quite daft and can be funny.

You’ve spent years indulging her nastiness, even finding it funny, when it’s aimed at other people.

You’ve posted about plenty of bitching she’s done about other friends. You don’t like it now it’s openly aimed at you.

The whole dynamic between all of you sounds crazy unhealthy and more fool you if you think your children won’t pick up on it just because she may not make comments about your own children directly in front of them.

Wait till your daughter hears her bitching about how Friend A has put on weight and you’re indulgently rolling your eyes and telling her “yes, you’re the fairest of them all”. What an example to set.

You do realise that this "supporting you during a tough time" thing you think proves she's a good person was very likely her 'winning' and feeling like she's better than you by you needing her help and support rather than any genuine desire to support you because she cares about you, don't you?

@IncompleteSenten That is so true.
The superiority thing is not a quirk, it's a defining character trait. Super toxic.

She insecure and lacks a sense of self

the constant need to benchmark agains her friends on very odd metrics is childish

she needs therapy!