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.