Ok so let’s say, I see a guy that has what I wished I had. Taller, strong body, confident, girls attention, organized life, attractive, intelligent, well spoken.
How do I stay their friend, without feeling jealous, and having negative feelings towards them.
I have had friends like this, and I sometimes I think they are trustworthy people, and I like them and admire them as human beings sometimes, but I can’t help but feel jealous about how cool they are and be reminded about what I lack and feel negative feelings about.
Then I get concerned about having my negative feelings be visible, so I feel ashamed for feeling jealous of a good friend/ good person. So I feel lots of shame that others might have seen my weakness and how small I feel.
So then I get stuck and refuse to socialize, and accept invitations to socialize for shame.
Anybody have any thoughts!
It probably has to do with me being very needy for women’s attention right now
11 comments
Therapy
Your jealousy is due to the fact that you’re actually just unhappy with yourself.
**Why are you unhappy with yourself?** is the question you should ask
I really love seeing my friends be successful. I’ve got a great friend that’s just killing life. Good looking, wealthy, has awesome cars/trucks, has something like 15 houses in cool locations, gets women, travels a lot, etc. He’s got it all. I hope he continues to kill it because I honestly love that guy and hope the best for him.
I think the secret is that you’ve got to be confident and happy with who you are. You also need to realize there is not only “x” amount of success in the world, your friend being successful does not take away from your success, if anything it provides you more opportunities to meet cool people and do cool things.
I suspect as you make your mark in this world those feelings of jealousy will subside a bit.
This is one of those things that’s just kind of “life.” You do have a couple of things you can do to try to help, but at the end of the day there’s always going to be someone cooler/more attractive/better at something than you are. Doesn’t mean you don’t have value. It also doesn’t mean that they don’t have insecurities or things that you might be better at than they are without realizing it.
1) Try to learn from people that have the life you want. You can watch how they behave, how they organize their lives, etc, and try to learn from it. How did they learn their organizational skills? Do they read a lot which makes them well spoken in a variety of topics? Try to find out and adopt some of their practices.
Some of these things you’re talking about are based on self esteem and general communication skills, so there will be work to do on self acceptance and also some amount of trial and error as you try to improve, but it’s possible. Note that I’m not referencing PUA or other manosphere type people. Find people you know in real life and talk to them directly. Most people are willing to give advice if you ask the right questions, and asking these questions will help with your communication skills, which will help with your self esteem, which will help you be confident in talking to people… it’s a big loop once you start.
2) Realize that some people are mainstream cool and some people are offbeat cool, it just depends on the environment. The guys you reference might be mainstream cool, but someone who has a significant place in a niche environment might also be cool. Think of authors within specific genres of books, or big names in certain hobby groups. You can be *the* guy in some cases but still be a nerd to the regular world. Likewise, the guys you think are cool right now are going to feel like a fish out of water in that kind of environment because they aren’t familiar with it or necessarily have traits that those groups appreciate. Everyone has a spot; you just have to find yours.
3) Maybe talk to a counselor. I’m not sure how old you are, but most schools (and many private industry companies) have mechanisms to put you in touch with someone if you aren’t sure how to do that yourself.
“You are who you hang out with” so embrace your friendship with this person and adopt some of their lifestyle traits that help them be the type of person you look up to. If they rub off on you enough, eventually others will be looking up to you too!
This seems like a really simple thing to me. You’re jealously is born of envy for those traits because of what they bring and lacking those traits causes feelings of insecurity and overall feeling less than.
Now, there’s a couple of ways to do this. You could go to therapy and get to the root cause of WHY lacking these traits makes you feel less than (my moneys on some ideal image of man in your head that you don’t live up to for X reason), possibly finding some inner zen along the way.
This a self-esteem problem that doesn’t go away with time unless there’s work being done both in background as well as the forefront. I’d personally recommend working on yourself and trying to develop as many of these desirable qualities as you can while seeing a professional, getting to the bottom of this and living a relatively enjoyable life.
How to deal with the shame part of it. Like, let’s say I’m a 4 at something on a scale of 1 to 10. I’m trying to become at least a 7. It will take me a while.
How to deal with that shame socially when people notice my jealousy and desdain ?
Like I’m about to be 32, sometimes I meet young guys in their young 20s that have it better than me. I have been on a self-awareness and healing journey for so long but there is still so much work to do. It’s frustrating.
However I don’t want to have a negative energy towards them “cool guys” and look at them with a bad disdainful face while I’m working on myself. Because it ends up causing me loneliness which is not helpful.
Being friends with Chad sucks.
Compete
Work on yourself. Everything there but height you can get if you work for it.
Think of him as a good role model and work on yourself to be more like him.