When it comes to affairs of the heart, we are all beginners. Some of us, however, at least speak with authority. Introducing Shon Faye, author of The Transgender Issue (2021) and the forthcoming Love in Exile (2025), whose advice caught our eye. Contact her at DearShonVogue@gmail.com for your own chance at enlightenment.
Dear Shon,
I am struggling with jealousy and comparison with one of my long-time friends. I hate this part of myself; I feel like a bad friend and feminist. She’s someone I have always felt a little inferior to. Numerous people, including my mom, have commented on how beautiful she is; she studied at a prestigious university and had a glamorous TV job; she has a doting husband, adorable child and owns a house in London.
Some of these things I’m not even sure I want, but the latest – she’s written a novel, and has about 8 different offers from agents – has gotten to me. Writing a book has always been a dream of mine, but I haven’t yet achieved this goal. Added to the dynamic is she’s someone who often gives me unsolicited advice, whether it be about my career, dating, or buying a flat. Recently, her advice has started to rankle me, because it feels like we’re in unrelatable situations – for example, she’s in a long-term relationship and has never been on a dating app, while I’ve been single for years; she quit her TV job and depended on her husband’s income to finish her novel; and she had financial help from her partner and in-laws to buy a home. (These aren’t options for me.)
She has also worked really hard for all of her achievements, and I can learn from and be motivated by her too. But I am struggling with how to set aside my jealousy, stop comparing myself to her, and find the confidence to both tune out unhelpful advice (I recognize the irony of writing into an advice column) and focus on following my own path. Is this something you’ve dealt with, and how did you do it?
B
Dear B
It is indeed something I have dealt with in the past, something I will certainly deal with again and something most of us will deal with, from time to time, as envy is a natural part of being human. Especially as it’s very much a tendency fostered by our consumer culture: Ambition and aspiration, which we are told are virtues that can propel any of us to material success (despite evidence to the contrary), are often daughters of the more base feeling of envy. From what you have written, it sounds like your own feelings of envy directed at this friend have not caused you to be cruel toward her, and she is largely unaware of how she makes you feel. In which case, the person suffering the most here is you. You are bathing in resentment and resentment is a destructive thing. Buddha compared it to holding onto a hot coal: In the end it burns through you. Nowadays we often say it is like drinking poison and hoping the other person dies.
The first thing you need to do is drop the guilt. You’re not a bad person, you’re someone stuck in an unhealthy pattern of relating to a friend you most likely care about deeply and began to envy because you admired her. When I am confronted by feelings of jealousy and resentment it’s usually because I’ve started engaging in behaviors that don’t sit well with me: commenting behind someone’s back, contradicting praise of them, or just feeling annoyed about their happiness. When I’ve identified that I am jealous, I try to flip the script: What if my jealousy isn’t about the other person at all, what if its an opportunity to learn more about myself?
Take, for example, the fact that you took time to specify that your mother has praised your friend’s beauty. How does your mother talk about your appearance? How did she talk about it growing up? Perhaps here you perceive your friend to be receiving the praise and attention you crave from your mom. You say you feel inferior. Inferiority tends to be a self esteem issue—the less of a robust sense of self we have, the more we rely on other people to attribute values to ourselves. (“I have a better job than her so I’m better,” “She’s prettier than me so she’s better.”) I wonder how you were raised to judge your own value and if there’s work here to be done with a professional therapist on identifying negative attitudes you have toward yourself and working on changing those.
Trust me when I say I can relate to the envy over your friend’s novel! Being a writer is hard, precarious, inconsistent, and unreliable in terms of pay. People will get shiny book deals you absolutely don’t think they deserve, or will receive attention because of a famous aunt. It is the same in many creative industries. I’m afraid it’s also just something we have to live with. Many great writers go unpublished and many mediocre ones make a small fortune. I would take your jealousy as a cue to direct more of your energy towards your own writing. You might not be able to quit the day job but perhaps it’s time to set aside a couple of hours a week on fostering your own creative writing practice.
Finally, it s ok to politely and calmly tell your friend you don’t think dating advice from a person who has never used a dating app is all that useful. (It reminds me of a meme I saw recently that anyone who has been with the same partner since the age of 25 cannot advise those of us attempting to date with a fully developed prefrontal cortex.) Perhaps you could plan something nice for you and your friend to do together, just the two of you, and talk to her about how her advice sometimes makes you feel. In many spiritual paths, people are told to pray for the people they resent every day as a way to free them of the resentment. You perhaps don’t pray, but I would suggest trying to take time to wish your friend success and happiness in her life and considering practical ways you can show her small acts of kindness—going out of our way to help someone we resent can often be the best tonic for the harm it’s doing to us.
