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What do you envy about other people’s relationships?
Danny!
Deactivated Posts: 560 Incredible Poster
I asked last week “what annoys you about other people’s relationships”, and it was really interesting seeing how different people responded. There are obviously a lot of things about other couples that annoy people, and a lot of them seem to be quite similar.
I thought we could look at it from another angle this time - “what do you envy* about other people’s relationships?”.
We’d really like to know more about what makes you look at someone else’s relationship and think “I wish I had that”? What are the different things that make you envious? Can you describe why they make you feel that way?
* note on terms – people often use the word jealousy to mean envy. My favourite way of seeing the difference is that when you care about something: “envy is wanting something that you don’t have, jealousy is the fear of losing something that you do”.
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The fact that they exist. That people know what that feels like, that they have someone they can trust so much and be so intimately familiar with.
Pretty much this.
(I also get jealous when my friends boyfriends are fine looking!)
Either way you just have to keep meeting new people, and one day you'll find your match. The longer it takes the better because then you'll appreciate them all the more and that all relationships come down to, appreciating another person and enjoying their company
Especially when it's someone I'm friends with and everyone still hits on them anyway.
That there's always someone better than me and that I'm apparently not good enough to be in a relationship with yet the same guy will then start a relationship with someone else not long after.
Not that I'm bitter as fuck today.
Franki, it sounds like you're feeling other people's relationship choices as a reflection on you?
I remember a girl at university that I started dating breaking up with me because she wasn't ready for a relationship. She was engaged to someone else within a year! In hindsight, we would have made an awful couple
It can be difficult seeing other people have something that you want. But maybe if those particular guys don't see the potential that you do, then they're just not the right people for you?
Although I’m sorry that you and others feel like that
Scary Monster and frankipanda also add in more specific issues about aspects of relationships.
Envy can be a difficult feeling but it has a useful flipside – it can help you see what’s most important to you that you feel like you’re missing. So in Scary Monster’s case, I’m assuming your envy relates to you being in a situation where work forces you to live too far apart from your partner?
The clarity that we can get from looking at our own envy can be really useful in working out what’s most important to us. From that point, we know better where to focus our energy.
So, if you see another couple that are always there for each other and you find yourself wishing you had that, it can tell you that you really need to feel more supported in your life (which might not need to come from a romantic/sexual relationship).
Through a rather inconvenient set of circumstances, we pretty much constantly have to balance work choices and our relationship. I moved several hundred miles away from where he and I were both living (separately) for a job that was a really good move for me career, although realistically we couldn't have continued our relationship with the jobs we both had at that time. Currently, it's weekends only and a lot of travel - but both of us work in operational jobs so even weekends need some balancing.
We've both got some changes to work arrangements coming up this year, so going to see how they go. The potential is for a lot more time together, in exchange for longer blocks of time apart. Best option is to try it and see how it goes.
I can see why you envy it when you see other people in an easier situation - that must be really hard. It sounds like you're really committed to each other - I imagine other people might envy that!
I hope the new arrangements work out