EverettI should have been happy for her.
My college friend had just landed a book deal, the kind of book deal that was major enough that the media newsletter I subscribed to was covering it. Prominently.
She'd always been talented. Based on the credentials they ticked off in just the article stub, she'd clearly worked hard to get to where she was today (and as a writer myself, I knew exactly how rocky the road from "talent" to "book deal" could be if you weren't born with platinum-level connections). Beyond that, I really liked her. She was an awesome, funny person who absolutely deserved success.
Advertisement - Continue Reading BelowI knew all of this.
I was still jealous.
I'd just landed a book deal of my own, but hers sounded better. And media people already cared about her book; that had to mean it would be more successful than mine once it actually appeared. And of course she had been a year behind me at college, so she was basically doing a year better than me, success-wise.
After nearly a decade of slogging, I was finally achieving a few of the goals I'd set for my own life. There should never have been a better time for me to feel genuinely thrilled for my friend than in that moment.
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ELLEBut I couldn't get rid of the nagging feeling: Is my success enough? Is her success somehow more valid?
Why couldn't I just be happy for her without a footnote?
We've all been there before (at least I hope I'm not alone on this one): unable to summon the feeling we want, instead left dredging through the nasty, mucky swamp of wanting what someone else has. Of all the negative emotions, jealousy has always felt like the most corrosive to me; not only does it make you feel bad about yourself, it makes you feel bitter towards someone you care about, suspicious of someone you love, spiteful towards someone for whom—on paper, at least—you should want to find happiness.
Which for me adds another layer of negativity: my jealousy not only makes me feel awful, it makes me feel guilty. Why can't I feel consistently happy for other people's successes? What about me is so emotionally crippled that my response to someone else's good news is a fake smile and a real stomach ulcer? It's bad enough feeling like a sour, pessimistic witch; it's worse suspecting you're somehow responsible for the transformation.
I wanted to learn more about why I was acting—or at least feeling—like such a bad person, so I reached out to the only people capable of helping me untangle the problem of unwanted jealousy: the psychiatric community.
Dr. Jeannette Raymond, a Los Angeles psychologist and the author of
Now You Want Me, Now You Don't!, noted that if I really wanted to understand my bitter behavior, "it might help to distinguish jealousy from envy."
"Jealousy is being concerned that someone is going to take away what is already yours," Raymond told me; it's the overly-protective boyfriend or suspicious girlfriend. "Envy is wanting what someone else has or has achieved."
Raymond said that deep-rooted emotional insecurity underpins both emotions, but excessive jealousy is usually the result of feeling like past relationships, especially those from your earliest youth, were unstable and inadequately loving.
Envy, on the other hand, "is one of the key markers for narcissism," according to Raymond.
Her assessment wasn't exactly making me feel better about myself. Which, come to think of it, was probably a pretty narcissistic response.
Trying to find myself an out, and knowingly embracing a reductive stereotype, I asked Dr. Raymond whether jealousy and envy might be more common amongst women (see:
The Devil Wears Prada still that accompanies this article). If we're not already comparing ourselves to the other girls in our class by middle school, a mean girl will do it for us; surely being female makes this almost unavoidable, right?
Not so much.
"Neither jealousy nor envy are gender-based," Dr. Raymond told me. Dr. Tina B. Tessina, a psychotherapist and author of
The Ten Smartest Decisions a Woman Can Make After Forty, agreed, and neither doctor saw higher incidences of jealousy or envy in women than in men, though both said women and men tend to deal with those emotions differently.
In a final bid for blamelessness, I asked whether social media was the culprit. The idea isn't that farfetched; a 2013 study found that the more time people spent on Facebook, the less happy they felt. Another study from that year found that the more time you spend passively on Facebook (browsing instead of actively creating or engaging with content), the higher your reported feelings of envy.
But for every study that links malaise to media consumption, another one claims to prove the exact opposite. So was it contributing to my envy? More importantly, could it get me off the hook?
Raymond acknowledged that social media could affect these feelings "a great deal," though she wouldn't go so far as to say it actually caused envy.
Tessina likewise refused to blame social media for the problem: "[all] media strives to create insecurity that will cause the hapless to buy goods and services that purport to soothe the fabricated insecurity. The byproduct is leftover insecurity." Still, she argued, "Those who are truly self-confident and comfortable with themselves won't be prone" to jealousy and envy. She even claimed that social media could help "calm" those emotions by painting a more realistic portrait of our friends and lovers. As much information as there is that might undermine one's self-confidence, she said, "there is [also] a lot of information out there to help people gain self-confidence."
So apparently my envious nature wasn't unavoidable, and I couldn't fix it by simply unplugging.
But it still wasn't doing me any favors. In the abstract, I wanted my friends to all be the most amazing, successful, fulfilled people possible. In reality, when they achieved astounding things—especially when those things happened in fields nearer to my own chosen path, the happiness I felt for them, however real, had a thread of bitterness woven through it. (For the record, I've never had to contend with resentment over a friend's acceptance into an awesome med school program or rise in the business world; those things I'm apparently capable of looking at and saying "that's great; nothing I'd ever want to do, but—or perhaps therefore—great.")
So how could I stop it?
Tessina says honesty is always your friend in these situations. "Don't be afraid to talk to friends" about the problem. "Honesty minimizes jealousy. And the older we get, the more we need friends. Friends will help you through times of no partners better than partners will help you through times of no friends."
Raymond suggested dealing with envy head-on. "Use the energy of the envious emotion to go get what it is that you want. Use it for self-empowerment instead of resting on a sense of entitlement," she said. Acknowledge that you want what this person has, but go a step further, she recommended: "I want it, and I'm going to get it for myself."
That advice resonated; over the last decade, I've learned that few things motivate me more strongly than failing. (Perhaps narcissism isn't my only mental problem.) Getting a rejection—and I've received hundreds upon hundreds of them to date—makes me feel like shit…then, almost immediately, gives me an idea. Feeling bad has always been like fuel for me (call it "dark matter"); on some level my subconscious, narcissistic and damaged though it may be, seems to understand that the only way it can deal with the negative without crumbling is to turn the anxiety and pain failure leaves in its wake into something new. Something better. It's my brain's "fuck you" to anyone that tells me no: "Oh yeah? Well wait until you see this."
Of course none of that will disappear my envy.
It might be too late for me to be the kind of person who can look at someone else's win and feel like it's my win, too. I may never really buy the idea that your rising tide raises my boat.
But I can smile. And congratulate you (even if I have to do it via email). And turn around and work on the next thing.
After all, once I really nail that next thing, I'm going to want all my friends to pretend to be happy for me, too.
Photo: Getty Images
Getty ImagesPhoto: Getty Images
Getty ImagesPhoto: Getty Images
Getty ImagesPhoto: Getty Images
Getty ImagesPhoto: Getty Images
ImaxtreeAdvertisement - Continue Reading BelowMichael Kors' spring 2010 collection was a myriad of pastel purples and blues with pops of cream, white, and black—and makeup maestro Dick Page captured the palette perfectly, all on one eye. According to Page, the eyes reflect "amped-up" versions of the hues seen on the runway; lavender becomes a striking amethyst tone, pale blue transforms into a silvery aqua, and cream comes forth as gold. All swirl around the white of the eye, with bold black liner and fringe as a frame.
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Courtesy Film ArcadeAdvertisement - Continue Reading BelowPhoto: Courtesy Film Arcade
Courtesy Film ArcadePhoto: Courtesy Film Arcade
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