Title says most of it, I can be pretty jealous.
I’m a guy with a pretty large friend group both male and female. I don’t have a gf but I’m also currently not really interested in someone.
For the last year or so I doubled or tripled my social contact to different people in order to get over a hard time in my life (which worked pretty good) and I have build a large friend circle consisting of several friend groups. In most of them I’m something of the group leader.
Due to me using social contact and my success in befriending new people as a way out of my hard time and me taking large pride in being the group leader all this takes up a lot of my attention and I kinda started to define myself through it.
In the last months I brought together some of my friend groups and they started to connect with each other. I always knew I could be quite jealous but now everytime I see 2 people (again, male or female) who know each other through me interacting my mood drops and I get jealous.
This is hurting my ability to enjoy my time with them because I always see myself in a competition. This is mostly to vent, but maybe someone has some good ideas to handle it 🙂
3 comments
I think you should maybe find a way to feel proud/happy about making it so other people can widen their friend groups. You mentioned how having more friends got you through hard times. Now that your friends have more friends as opposed to less friends they may be better prepared to take any hits the world throws at them. In addition, it will be hard to forget that you were the person that introduced them to each other so your friends should be thankful to you for helping start their new friendships.
Do those positives help at all?
Jealousy might be rooted in fear of abandonment, insecurity, possessiveness, unrealistic expectations and such things
The fact that you mention being the leader and identifying with that role could mean you are getting something out of that role which you are lacking/wanting / needing
You mention you’ve been through hard times and these friends etc helped you on your path – could it be that you had a newfound purpose or meaning as the leader or whatever and now that is slipping away and it manifests as jealousy
Like, just sit down and actually think about why you want to be a leader within a friend circle for….why is it important to you, why do you even see the need for a leader amongst just friends, why do you feel the need to be the main character in this story etc
What is your meaning or purpose other than being some leader of friends?
In my own life I’ve gone through hard times and personal issues…..I found myself clinging to things which made me feel valued, important, respected and fed my ego
In my case it spoke of my insecurity and ego problems as result of ‘daddy issues’
When I became a manager at a bank I had to quickly realise that the true measure of a leader is whether people want to follow you…..not just because I adopted the role of a leader, or thought of myself as a leader
The test of my leadership capabilities was whether people *wanted* to follow me and then also whether they felt *free* enough to be themselves fully and contribute in their own way
Leadership is about inspiration and freedom……..it has nothing to do with control……control speaks of underlying personal issues to me
I don’t know what your previous personal issue was, but could it be that you haven’t actually dealt with it truly and you just found something to keep you busy, give you a sense of purpose and motivation etc
There is obviously an underlying personal reason for the feeling of jealousy so you will need to think of the real reason and resolve it
In a high performance corporate environment the talent is recruited and then we let them be everything they can be and do their thing because that’s what is required to get the most out of them
We don’t micro manage talent they manage themselves and that’s why they were recruited in the first place
Are you looking for friends or minions to do your bidding and feed your ego
Are you looking for employees that must be micromanage, or are you looking for the talen that manage themselves
You could see yourself as a facilitator? I have a special talent. Everyone I date meets the love of their life after they date me. You would think this would upset me, or that I would spend my time watching for that person to appear on the horizon. I don’t. I enjoy every minute I spend with the person and I take all the best of everything they have lol. So whatever they want after me doesn’t matter. And sometimes they come back. So do the Little Bo Peep or the 5 little Ducks thing or whatever your vision is for your role and let them go. You’ve done your part. Make sure you have things going on irl too. And get ready for all the weddings you’ll go to. It’ll be great.
Get dates for yourself in the town somewhere or on OLD, because these are like your students and that might be icky. Which is why you’re not getting the results you wish for. Now if I just knew what I was doing wrong lol.