This is going to sound bad, and I feel bad for having this bad feeling, thus perpetuating a cycle of sad and bad and mad…but lately I’ve been struggling a lot with jealousy of my close girlfriends.
It’s been hard for me to genuinely be happy for their happiness because I instantly get disappointed that my life isn’t as good as theirs. Most specifically, I have been getting jealous of their perfect relationships, which seem to dominate and thus fulfill their lives.
This jealousy of mine grew rapidly in the past few months. It started when my best friend started dating The Perfect Guy. She had been a serial online dater and had absolutely no luck. She could write volumes on all of the awful dates she had to endure. But she was on a quest to find her Mr. Wonderful. And like all fairy tales, after she had nearly given up on finding him, he found her.
You see, she works as a stylist at a mid-to-high end retail shop in a major city. She is confident, knows her industry, and is able to charm her way to a comfortable commission. It’s like she’s the prodigy of Dale Carnegie and Coco Chanel. Being as charismatic as she is, guys come to the store and ask her out from time to time. Usually it’s no one she is interested in, but Mr. Wonderful was quite the exception.
They went on a few dates, and it was magic. For her birthday (their third date), he took her to Hamilton and gave her hundreds of dollars’ worth of clothes. After two weeks, he insisted she get a passport ASAP so he could take her to London and Paris. “Get the kind of passport with extra pages,” he said, “so we can fill them up together.” (I rolled my eyes but was envious nonetheless.)
It seemed like everything was going so well for her. I should have been happy. She went through a lot of awful dating, so maybe it was the universe balancing things out. But I was so jealous. My relationship wasn’t that perfect.
To an extent I rationalized that it was just the first few weeks of their relationship. That time is supposed to be exciting and grand. I can’t compare a long-term relationship with bumps and curves (and the occasional sharp edge) to that of a brand new couple. It’s just not the same.
Unfortunately, it got even harder for me when my other best friend had a long-term relationship, and hers sounded perfect too. It sounded like they never had fights. Like they were just deeply in love and happy and it was just so… easy. One day she told me that when her car broke down, her boyfriend came to her aid and they spent the day together waiting for AAA. I didn’t think much of it until two weeks later when my boyfriend’s car broke down and he had to yell directions to me to push on the brake and with a bright red face I had to yell even louder “I’M TRYING!!!” We spent all day together too. But it wasn’t fun or easy. I just kept thinking “I bet when my friend’s car had issues, they had a great day together.”
I even had a THIRD friend with another perfect relationship. They met at law school; they hadn’t even had as much as a single fight in six months. Everything was just perfect perfect perfect. Marsha Marsha Marsha!
During Thanksgiving, everyone was having perfect plans with their perfect boyfriends and I was home with family. To me, that was the final straw. While sitting on a gray cloud of jealousy with little lightening bolts flashing, I began to contemplate everything I was feeling and thinking. But, instead of starting with the more obvious and internal question, “Why am I jealous of my friends’ relationships?” I chose to ponder the questions, “Why do I feel like their relationships are perfect? Why do I feel like this means their lives are perfect?” These questions led to much more interesting answers.
Here is what I came up with. I am jealous of my friends’ relationships because women are conditioned to showcase their relationships and make them look as perfect as possible. Women are also conditioned to believe that their relationship is the single most important part of their life, which affects how they communicate with their peers.
(I know that sounded like a SO-AN thesis of a college paper, but I promise that I’m fun and dynamic.)
I felt like my friends’ lives are perfect because as young women, our conversations center around our relationships.
I know that no relationship is truly perfect. I know that two people aren’t even perfect for one another. Relationships are about kindness, communication, commitment, and constantly remembering the other person’s perspective and emotions are valid and well intentioned. They are about things that take work and effort. Those things are hard to do and it is so easy to make mistakes. It is so easy to make a lot of mistakes. Relationships are about working through those issues together and being supportive partners to one another. They are not about perfection.
But yet, when I would talk to my girl friends, I heard nothing but perfection. I heard the highlights. I heard how everything was simply wonderful. I heard about their perfect plans and their perfect holidays. It became a fact. Their relationships were perfect. Mine wasn’t.
It made me feel so discouraged. And then I just felt even worse because I knew I should be happy for my friends and all I could focus on was myself.
I’ve realized that it’s especially hard because young women are conditioned to make their relationships the focus of the conversation. When you and your friend are both in relationships, it acts as currency. I exchange my story for yours. “What are you getting him for Christmas?” “Wow he’ll love that! I’m getting my boyfriend…” The same rules do not apply when a person in a relationship talks to their single friends. You don’t gush. You don’t share as many stories. You know not to make the other person “feel bad” for being single.
But right now I’m at a point where all my close friends are Relationship Friends. I’m one of them, and not only that, now I’m one of the The Long Term Relationship Friends. The stakes are higher. Things are more serious. There is more emphasis. There is a greater need for perfection.
As women, we are taught that our relationship is the most important thing we can have. We are taught that it is the most interesting thing to talk about with other girls. We are taught to be competitive. We are taught to make our lives look as shiny and pleasant as possible. With this conditioning, it becomes obvious why we make our relationships the constant thread in our conversations with our friends. It becomes obvious why we portray our relationships as so perfect to other people.
It is clear to me now. My friends do not have perfect relationships and they have a lot more going on in their lives than their boyfriends. But that’s not the narrative that they create. And don’t get me wrong. My friends don’t want to look superior. They don’t want to make their boyfriends look like their whole world. They know that they don’t need to look perfect in order to be my friend. But this conditioning runs so much deeper than our intentions.
While part of resolving this whole jealousy issue falls on me, I believe part of it falls on you too. On my end, I need to minimize my desire to compare. I need to accept that my relationship is different from everyone else’s and that’s perfectly fine. I do not need a perfect relationship and to be honest, I don’t even know what one would really look like.
But I can’t do this alone. I need you to help me. I need you to make this whole thing easier for me. It makes it so hard not be jealous when all I hear from you is about your supposedly perfect relationship. Please stop making me think your relationship is perfect. It isn’t and it’s just hurting me when you make me think that it is. I know your relationship has moments of joy. I know your relationship has love. I know your relationship has seasons of relative ease and comfort. And I want you to share that. But it wears me down when I only hear the good stuff. Your subconscious desire to showcase perfection has a price. I want you to know that.
While I want my friends to share more balanced perspectives on their relationships, I also want us women to start talking about things besides our relationships! Let’s stop making relationships the automatic go-to conversation starter. Let’s stop feeling like a conversation is incomplete without the mention of boyfriends. Let’s have the courage to admit when our friends leave us with feelings of jealousy. Let’s stop giving each other our highlight reels, and start being real.