AIBU to compare myself to a seemingly perfect family?

[Enjoyingmyicecream]

There's a family I know that just seems so perfect. Beautiful husband and wife,two gorgeous children, they have the perfect work life balance and always seem so friendly and relaxed. I'm really struggling not to compare myself to them, but how does one stop it??

You say OP that they made 'the right decisions' - this is something I've noticed about my friends with good lives. They have had really good powers of decision-making, often because they are intelligent, rational people and use that to think skilfully about their own lives. Sometimes intelligent people direct their abilities into getting great qualifications or a good career, but in my view it's just as important to direct your powers of judgement into making good decisions about your life.

If this is something you've noticed, getting better at making decisions is definitely a skill that can be learnt.

Just be happy for people you know who seem to you to have a perfect life; happiness creates happiness.

Everyone's life has ups and downs, celebrate the ups, whether they are yours or someone else's, because no one escapes the downs, illness, death, worries over children etc etc etc.
Your life sounds lovely too; be content.

there is truth in that comment

Why is it so difficult to accept that other people are ok?
Many families have no health issue, there's no abuse, no drama, they just.. have a normal life.

They might look better and have more money, why does it mean their life would suddenly turn to shit behind close doors? Is everybody really that miserable as well? If not, why would they be specifically?

I'm just a bit in awe I suppose

It’s ok to objectively admire other people. Doing that doesn’t have to mean you feel they or what they have is better than you and yours. It sounds like you are happy with what you have. What they have is just different although tbh it doesn’t sound much different.

Here I am just being spiteful and wishing ill on people. I’m a truly awful person - you got me bang to rights 😂

Alternatively I could just be trying to help the OP by telling her that things aren’t always as they seem on the outside.

Nothing spiteful and no ill wishing.

Honestly the ability of some Mumsnetters to read something into a comment that absolutely isn’t there is hilarious.

I think the two child thing maybe at the root of this. Have you ever had counselling to discuss that aspect a bit.

Going through people I know well, I can honestly say that there is no family that I have been jealous of. I’m logically aware the every family has unhappy periods and challenges at some point. There was only one friend that gave me pangs of perfection….

I know a previous poster has said they hate these posts but with the family I was slightly in awe of…, the H was very high flying director of international companies so they’d lived in UK, Switzerland and south of France. They had lots of friends, three happy, academically confident children and always seemed to do things harmoniously together- somehow the wife managed to pull off looking elegantly glamorous in that pressed linen kind of a way and kept a perfect house and worked. They weren’t pretentious though, really warm, welcoming and interesting. I felt sort of like a shadow in their presence and embarrassed about my own marital difficulties. Relatively recently it emerged that for pretty much half their marriage he’d been secretly keeping a mistress. The wife was broken when she finally discovered it and they are now split.

I just didn’t know them well enough!

it is there, you are the one who said it.

It's coming time and time again, if people look happy or slightly better off, it must be because they live a nightmare behind close doors

How could that possibly be helpful to anyone?

I think it's just a very lazy, instead of admitting that many people have a seemingly better life because.. they make better choices or work harder?

@YourPoliteTurtle Firstly can I ask why you aren’t responding in a similar way to the other posters who have posted along the lines that I have? It seems a bit weird that you’ve taken it upon yourself to just chastise me when there are people saying similar. Why are you targeting me? Were you the poster from the other thread perhaps?

Secondly I’m confident that you absolutely cannot extrapolate anything about the kind of person I am from me saying that things aren’t always as they seem. You certainly cannot conclude that I’m spiteful and wishing ill on people.

I have just read back at your posts; you don't seem to me to be being miserable or spiteful. You were just pointing out that sometimes people's lives on the inside can be different to what others see on the outside.
Nothing wrong with that imo.

Thanks. I appreciate that.