To envy my sister's freedom?

[soloholidayenvy]

My sister is a few years younger than me (both late 30s), and has no children (by choice). She earns really good money and has decided to book a spontaneous last minute solo holiday this weekend. I'm a mum of 2 and I couldn't contemplate doing that. I mean we have lovely family holidays obviously but I just got a pang of envy when she told me she'd booked a solo trip! Am I strange for feeling this? Anyone else get what I mean?

Perfectly normal case of envy AFAIC! Why wouldn't you be envious?

I think it depends…

I’m in your boat and wouldn’t be remotely jealous but I travelled extensively pre kids.

I could be having that life now but i chose children

i do however understand the “wanting a break” or wanting to clock out of your responsibilities. 2 small child can be quite relentless and sleep deprivation doesn’t help….

Every mentally well adult has the life they choose. 100s and 100s of decisions over years have led you to where you are today. So your situation is your choice. If you have serious envy, then that may mean you've made a series of stacked up bad decisions that have led to a place you don't want to be in.

If you are just talking about a minor sense of 'wish I could do that' in the way you might look at Simone Biles tumbling, then everyone has that from time to time because any situation has advantages and disadvantages.

I fell envious of your sister too! I've been dreaming of a quiet weekend away, just me, a nice little cottage by the sea. One of my colleagues did it earlier this year and she said it was amazing. Sadly, not so easy with a DH who travels a lot for work and a small child!

@user39501790
yes more just a fleeting, oh I wish I could do that sort of thing. I love my children immeasurably and would never be without them, being a mum is everything to me. It was just a moment of, imagine being able to do that! Ironically my sister said she felt anxious about her first solo holiday but all I felt was envy 😂

It's understandable how you feel - I love having kids but occasionally feel nostalgic for my "younger carefree days", although I think I'd feel like that even if I didn't have children as it's partly (for me) just being a bit older.

However I think it's worth considering that what you see as freedom may well be loneliness for your sister and she may envy you (you say she's nervous about her first solo holiday, and that might just be normal nerves but might be her way of telling you she's lonely).

Obviously she might be very happy with her choices - plenty of people are happily childfree, but equally it's possible she isn't childfree by choice.

One of my friends used to tell everyone including her family she didn't want children. 7 years after getting married she announced her pregnancy. Turned out her and her husband had been struggling to conceive.

My sister went on a break a way to a location I've wanted to go for a long time, due to my children having no interest in this, I know i won't be following in her foot steps anytime soon. Not dragging 3 kids somewhere they will be bored.
Yeah I felt a pang of envy when she told me, as I know it will be a few years till I can do it for myself. She had an amazing time and did nothing related to what I would have done myself in that location 😅 Envy moment not needed

It’s certainly reasonable to feel the way you do, I envy my friends without children who are able to be spontaneous and get away. What is unreasonable, not saying you are doing this either, would be to treat them differently or act out on them because of the way you feel. You can acknowledge how you feel, while also realizing they are not doing anything wrong and therefore should be able to come to terms with it within yourself to not let it come out sideways in your relationship. Resentment over things like that can be sneaky though and can hide, so do take care to digest your feelings towards it and address it internally so it doesn’t show up later between you two!

Can your husband or partner look after the kids one weekend so you can go away to catch up with friends, book a solo night in a hotel somewhere nice or just go out locally? I did this occasionally when my children were little and so did one of my friends, you can do the same for him another weekend.

@user39501790
'Every mentally well adult has the life they choose. 100s and 100s of decisions over years have led you to where you are today. So your situation is your choice. If you have serious envy, then that may mean you've made a series of stacked up bad decisions that have led to a place you don't want to be in.'

Really? You think people never end up in a life they didn't choose? Or if they do that means they aren't 'mentally well'? Wow.

There's nothing wrong with envy. It's just a feeling of 'Ooh, you lucky bugger, I wish I could do that...'. Don't we all feel like that from time to time? It's different to jealousy, which is more like 'She's a fucking nasty cow, she doesn't deserve a holiday, why can't I have one...'.

This is fair. You chose your life as your sister chose hers.

@TreesWelliesKnees
^^
'Every mentally well adult has the life they choose. 100s and 100s of decisions over years have led you to where you are today. So your situation is your choice. If you have serious envy, then that may mean you've made a series of stacked up bad decisions that have led to a place you don't want to be in.'
Really? You think people never end up in a life they didn't choose? Or if they do that means they aren't 'mentally well'? Wow.

Yes I do. By the phrase mentally well - I meant not suffering from some intellectual disability that affects intelligence so that they have no real opportunities in life to learn and get and education.

It's absolutely true. Everyone chooses their own path whatever their circumstances.

Of course everyone faces accidents and adversity but how you deal with that is your own choice.

You can choose to work hard at school or smoke round the back of the bikesheds and bunk off. You choose who you are willing to even go on a date with let alone entertain a relationship with.

Once you discover your partner is a bastard/drug user/cheat/alcoholic you can choose whether to stay or to leave.

You get pregnant - you can choose whether to have the child, terminate it or give it up for adoption.

If you choose to get married and have children, you know that you are choosing a life that may put you in a position of being a single mother - it's a risk because men leave, men die unexpectedly. But the underlying choice to have children puts you on that path. If you don't want to take that risk, don't have children.

No matter what life throws at you - barring an intellectual inability to learn and attain education - you choose your path every day a million times a day.

What you eat, whether you exercise, which jobs you apply for, whether you give up, whether you keep trying.

Whatever you are doing today, it is a thousand choices you have made over your life that put you there. If you didn't like any of it at any point you could have chosen to do something else. If you really think that is not true, it is a sign you aren't taking responsiblity for your own situation.

@user39501790 But our choices are constrained by the circumstances of our lives. If I get pregnant accidentally my options are narrowed to three, and I'll be stabbing in the dark when I make my choice, because how do I know in advance if it's a 'bad decision' or not? Perhaps I can make an informed choice if I'm reasonably intelligent, understand myself, and have some wisdom and experience of the world. But what if I'm a 16-year-old victim of lifelong abuse? Am I equipped to make sound decisions? Has anyone ever taught me how? Do I even know what it feels like to have agency over my life?

Where we end up is largely down to luck - 'There but for the grace of God go I'.

Even if she didn't have children through her own choice she probably has fleeting moments of envy of you and your family.

Do you have a partner? Can you and your partner take turns staying home with the children, so you can both have solo holidays?

Thank you! Such a weird comment and outlook on life.

OP I’m not going to put down your sisters life like some others have. Ultimately you will be envious of other people at times and people will be envious of you at times. And those are perfectly valid feelings.

Or maybe this woman is someone you know nothing about and it’s comments like this that genuinely make me believe women with children have a distain towards childless women. It’s very much a superior attitude.

When I lived alone the comments I’d get were horrible “but aren’t you lonely on your own?” And “that house is too big for just you”.

Or not. I’m child free by choice and I’ve never envied my siblings for having kids. 😂

Why can't you have solo holidays?

Gosh I really did not mean to be at all disdainful to childfree women. I was just basing that a couple of friends very happy to be child free with very fulfilling lives who sometimes like to enjoy more kid focused activities with us/our kids as well (and like to leave at the end of the day).

It's a bit bleak for people with children if people without children never think 'that looks like fun' about any aspect at all, ever.

Ha fair enough. Probably just trying to make myself feel better.

I kind of see what you mean in theory but real life isn’t like that.

What about if you have a career you love and plan to travel but then your dad dies, your mum has an illness that leaves her disabled and then gets cancer with no one to care for her? You might choose to look after your mum because you love her but the choice wasn’t influenced by any decisions you made.

Then what if you work hard in that career and save money and still plan to travel after your parents died but get made redundant and then the world goes into lockdown and you end up living off savings and struggle to find another job you love
because it was a niche position and you end up in debt?

What if you have a happy marriage with someone from another country who ends up having to return to his family because his parents are dying but it’s not a country safe for you to travel to and live in. What if you end up alone in your late thirties when you always wanted children and assumed it was on the cards for both of you then find out you have early menopause?

What if you have a great career, a happy marriage and you end up having an accident that leaves you paralysed and your husband leaves you, you end up out of work and left to survive on benefits with your adult children caring for you?

All those scenarios are ones that have happened to me and close friends. I don’t see how “stacked up bad decisions” led us to any of it.

A lot of life is luck, you can make all the right decisions but sometimes things happen that change everything and it’s nothing to do with being “mentally well”.

Statements like yours make people who try and try in life but keep getting knocked down feel like they failed when they did everything they could with the cards they were dealt.

I actually think you are lucky for living a life where you haven’t had the chance to understand this yet. I hope your life continues in this way but have some compassion for those who haven’t had the same opportunities.

I felt the same about a well-dressed woman with a high-end shopping bag yesterday. It would be so nice to buy lovely things for yourself.

I had gone shopping the previous day to buy cheap shoes for the kids and realised when I got home that I had snot on my shoulder from the 2yo. Of course my 2yo is adorable and loves her cheap unicorn shoes.

It's a bit bleak for people with children if people without children never think 'that looks like fun' about any aspect at all, ever-

I don’t. Sorry if that makes people’s life bleak but I really don’t!