I probably am being unreasonable but i need to vent.....

[smileitlightsupyourface]

I have an "friend" who is on benefits. She receives universal credit, PIP ( for MS) and has a car on the motability scheme. I know she has MS and has bad days but she lives a very active life...goes to the gym regularly, goes on active days out with the children each week and has a very active social life. This friend has literally never ever worked a job. She had kids young and has always been on benefits. Her dc have expensive hobbies such as horse riding and golf and are also season ticket holders at a premiership football club. She has none of the dc fathers on the scene and her family don't have much to do with them. She is constantly posting pictures on social media of her dc doing their hobbies and expensive days out. They are currently on a very expensive long haul holiday for half term. Its really starting to grate on me that she doesn't work and never has but lives this type of lifestyle while i work full time and as well as being constantly knackered i would struggle to afford her lifestyle. I know im being unreasonable but she seems very tone deaf when posting all this stuff on social media when so many are struggling to pay bills. I really don't want to be bitter but its winding me up!

Seriously OP!!

MS takes years to diagnose and that’s only after symptoms are presenting which means damage has been done. For all you know, this has been disabling to her for decades.

You try to justify your reasoning - you argue that she hasn’t contributed to the system so she shouldn’t take out from it. What is the alternative? She lives on the street? Begs? Or should she curb her life accordingly so as not to offend people? Because at points what you are intimating is the latter and seriously, you need to move on from her. And you know what, she’s pretty bloody young to be diagnosed with a life ending disease. You need to have a long think about your values and what it means to be kind and also why you are so frustrated in your own life to be obsessing about this woman. Just be thankful you don’t have her diagnosis.

Such a carefully crafted bingo card of circumstances, every possible box ticked. I call absolute bullshit.

More worrying is the attempted cultivation of a mindset suggesting that even the "genuinely" disabled or vulnerable should be othered, marginalised and considered an unworthy drain on society, because that's exactly what happened roughly a century ago in a particular European country. The steady drip of propaganda......

We see you and your "need to vent".

Absolutely vile.

I live in fear of people like the op knowing I’m in receipt of PIP (enhanced rates on both elements and an ongoing / indefinite award to give you some idea of how severely disabled I am). This is why in real life I don’t tell anyone I get PIP. At all. People are just so ignorant about it all and it’s actually very upsetting to think people are so quick to judge.

I have a nice mortgage free home that comes from a time when I was a very high earner, before I became seriously unwell with lupus and other issues. And I have a motability car and a husband that works full time. We have nice holidays, why shouldn’t we? Or maybe I should just sit and rot in my chair till I die - probably earlier than most people.

I don’t tell anyone about my struggles. You don’t really have a coffee with someone and launch into sharing that you’ve had to change your clothes twice already because you’ve peed yourself due to bladder issues, and the pads don't work. You don’t tend to share that yes you’ve popped out to Tesco but half an hour earlier you were pacing around howling in pain waiting for the Tramadol to kick in so you can do the simple act of buying some food.

The one week I go on holiday I double my steroids and take extra painkillers with me, but I cannot do this all year round because of the side effects and long term impact of doing this. That one week of the year is something that I enjoy but it can’t be a regular occurrence.

You know nothing about your friends condition. Nothing.

I have suspicion the OP meant to say ME @ChronicallyMEAgain so you are right to come in and say your piece. ME is low hanging fruit for these sorts of threads.

You sound very bitter. I’m a single parent to one child. I have MS, thankfully in remission for quite some time. But living with the fear of a relapse that can happen at any time without warning is very scary. I could wake up in the morning and have no power in my legs.

Any spare money I have is spent on things me and my son can enjoy.

I would happily swap my MS for your tax paying job please.

Some of you need to do a bit of research before making your sweeping statements on the lives of people with MS. The MS Trust and MS Society websites are a good start. (And this is not a defence of the OP, trust me).

My daughter has Elhers Danlos syndrome and fibromyalgia and lives in chronic pain every day. As a family we help her out to give her and her son a good life. She's only 27 and may have to use a wheelchair in future. To look at her you'd never guess there was anything wrong with her. Life's hard enough for people suffering hidden disabilities, you need to be kinder not jealous of her.

I just wanted to vent and understand why i felt this resentful

I get what you are saying OP. When you're working hard and struggling financially, it's easy to feel resentful of someone who seemingly has it all handed to them on a plate. Especially if she has never had a job, even prior to being unwell. It seems that some families never work, and this passes down from generation to generation.

Im sure that it feels like rubbing your face in it when you see her posts on social media, but like others have said, you are only seeing her good days. You know that you wouldn't really want to swap lives with her.

I think you need to block her on social media, focus on yourself and your family, and try to stop comparing yourself to others.

I'm a single working parent, and I'm always skint, but I try to treat myself to something (very!) cheap after payday, so I dont feel quite so much that I have worked all month for nothing.

It is shit, but I think the real problem is that so many people are working hard with bugger all left for anything else after bills and food. That's stressful and depressing, but it's not your mate with MS on benefits fault.

Keep on keeping on - life's hard for everyone, just a different flavour of hard x

@MurdoMunro I agree, it’s such a stigmatised illness. I hate having to tell anyone I have ME because I hear their eyes rolling in their heads.

My DH has MS , diagnosed in his late 20s, unable to work since early 30s. We did our best to give dc ( who were babies /toddler when he was diagnosed) as normal a childhood as we could including holidays abroad, days out etc. Some days DH couldn't get out of bed. No one sees those times, they just see the Disney pics.
At that time DH sometimes used a wheelchair to allow us to do things as a family. Now aged 48 he can’t walk at all, has a daily carer & little quality of life. Please don't begrudge your friend a life while her health allows it.

In all fairness being jealous of a single mother with MS is mind boggling and you need to give your head a wobble.

My daughter was diagnosed with a degenerative condition at the age of 14. It is already rapidly progressing. She knows that eventually she will require a wheelchair. She is currently at uni doing a degree, working in a fulfilling role and has an active social life, loves going to gigs and wants to travel. She wants to live her life as fully as she can for as long as she can because she knows it won't always be like this.

She also has days where she is in constant intense pain, cannot use her hands, cannot walk 25 metres, falls multiple times a day, is fatigued, is on medication for life with other bonus meds to counteract the side effects of her medication, we have had to make adaptions to our home and she is in the disability flat at halls and needs support for simple daily activities at times. Not to mention fitting Dr's, specialists, bloods, physio and OT around both of our jobs and her studies.

Her Insta reflects the life that makes her happy not dwell on the negative. People could look at her Insta and question why she gets PIP and a blue badge but they don't see the other side of the story.

PIP isn't means-tested - it's designed to help someone with a disability to live their life as if they didn't have that disability i.e. like everyone else who is able-bodied. And if you think any benefits are "automatically dished out" then you've had no meaningful contact with the UK benefits system. Given that OP's "friend" has a Motability car, she's likely in receipt of the enhanced Daily Living and Mobility elements of PIP which from April this year will amount to £187.45pw i.e. £9,747.40pa, but most of that will go towards paying for the lease on her Motability car. If she's renting her home, in addition to her standard allowance of UC, she will get a housing element towards her rent (Local Housing Allowances haven't kept pace with rising rents in recent years so it will be unlikely her rent is paid in full) plus a disability element for herself and child elements for two of her children (she gets nothing for the others due to the "two child benefit cap"). She will not be living the "high life" on benefits - either the children's father(s) are paying maintenance or maybe she's getting help from family in order to live her apparently "luxurious" lifestyle - the truth is, of course, EVERYONE makes their lives out to be fabulous on (anti)social media.

She isn't "poorly" OP - she's disabled. She isn't going to get any better, only worse. Please don't keep digging.

I think you feel resentful OP because you have no idea what her day-to-day life is like and you think she's raking it in in benefits and living the high life which, of course, is utter nonsense because no-one gets rich on benefits despite what the likes of GB News say.

@AngelicKaty you are right when you say I have not had meaningful contact with benefits. In fact I have had none. I have been lucky. My point was only if she comes from a wealthy family she shouldn’t receive those benefits because they are a scarce resource and should be left to those who really need it. But as you say social media often portrays something that is not.

Hey op I get your frustration some people just know how to milk the system and now she’s passed it on to her kids. I would stop following her and not get too wound up as it’s only going to do you harm and not her. I know loads of people who do this and have a better life than people who work. It makes me so mad but the government are working on sorting out the lazy people who can work but choose not to.

Block her and delete her. She deserves better friends.

So what benefits was she receiving for 23 years before UC and PIP?

You sound like a bunch of nasty bitter bullies.

🤢🤢🤢🤢🤢🤢🤢

Milking the system? FFS, she has MS. She is not going to make old bones, and her life leading up to then is just going to be increasingly limited in terms of what she can do. People with MS go to Dignitas.

Gosh this is terrible. Leave this poor woman alone @smileitlightsupyourface

You're getting a lot of grief, OP, predictably, because that's what tends to happen on MN. But I agree, it's counter-intuitive that there are many people who don't work who are better off than those who do. Yes, many of them have significant problems (health related and otherwise), but that doesn't mean you don't have the right to vent about it. Having sympathy for their life situation and questioning how your friend can afford to live a life that is apparently more luxurious than yours aren't mutually exclusive. Know that some people will sympathise with you, just not many on here.

MS is awful, I’ve seen what it does to someone. It robs them of their life so she’s probably making the most of the time she has before she’s wheelchair/bed bound and not able to communicate. Not all MS sufferers will be the same or progressive to this extent but wouldn’t you try and enjoy life in her circumstances?

@smileitlightsupyourface
It would be interesting to see what the results would be if you'd put a poll on. I'd bet more votes would be YANBU.
FWIW I totally get how you feel.
I also don't think anyone on benefits should get more than someone working a full week on minimum wage and paying full rent/mortgage etc.

This is depressingly common unfortunately. I know someone with ME (not MS). They haven't worked in 20+ years, if ever, and live totally (and comfortably) on disability benefits. Her DH was apparently her carer, so he didn't work either, got carer's allowance instead. While they were together DH did all the domestics, school runs etc, while she stayed home and wasn't well enough to help out. She split up with him and told him to leave about the time that their youngest dc started secondary school (conveniently just as the kids had all reached a level of independence).

She now leads a very active lifestyle - regularly out going to concerts and sporting events (season ticket holder), out socialising, drinking and smoking with no apparent financial concerns or health limitations. But if there's ever anything she doesn't fancy doing, the ME conveniently strikes her down.

A mutual friend lives on a council estate, she works full time, but a lot of her neighbours seem comfortably better off, without working or showing any health issues.