Sometimes, bad feelings can make a friendship better. Here’s how.
Most people go out of their way to avoid feelings of jealousy and envy.
Unfortunately, avoidance can be harmful to friendships and romantic relationships.
When people are honest about their feelings, they leave more room to strengthen the connection.
Julia a middle school teacher in her 40s, told me that her friend Maya* had been behaving strangely ever since Julia got an award at work.
“She’s been angry and irritable with me,” Julia said. “And she hasn’t even suggested that we go out for a drink to celebrate. I can’t figure out what I did wrong. Maybe I’m crazy to have this thought since she has a job that pays better and has a higher status than mine, but do you think it’s possible that she’s jealous of me for getting the award?”
Jealousy and its sibling, envy, are painful feelings that most of us go out of our way to avoid. Unfortunately, sometimes the avoidance causes even more problems.
Jealousy Hurts
Psychotherapists have long been aware that when we hide jealousy and envy from ourselves, we sometimes express our resentment without realizing what we’re doing. These indirect expressions of our feelings can be more harmful than the feelings themselves.
How does that work? What can you do about it when it does happen? And is it possible that these feelings could even play a positive role in your relationship?
Jealousy and Envy
To answer these questions, let’s first define the terms. According to the Merriam-Webster dictionary, with one exception, jealousy and envy are used interchangeably to mean “covetous,” or wanting what someone else possesses. We get angry even when we know it isn’t rational because it seems to us that the other person gets added value from what they have. We want what they have because we believe having it would make us feel better about ourselves, and since we can’t have it, we secretly long to take it away from them as well…
Jealousy also has a second meaning, which involves the kind of possessiveness in a romantic relationship. Merriam-Webster says, in this case, jealous means “possessively suspicious, as in ’a jealous husband’” or, of course, a jealous wife, partner, or even sibling, friend, or parent.
Because these feelings can make us mad at people we genuinely care about, we think of them as ugly, undesirable, and, in some cultures, sinful. So naturally, we don’t like having them. We want to be pleased for our friends, not jealous of them, so we try to hide our feelings, even from ourselves.
Are These Feelings Always Bad?
But almost everyone feels jealous at some point or another, and if we can find a way to work with these feelings, they can be problematic but not fatal to a friendship. In fact, they can even enhance a relationship.
I asked Julia what made her think that Maya might be jealous of her.
“Well,” she said, “she’s behaving the way I do when I’m feeling jealous of her—which is a lot of the time. She makes so much more money than I do. Don’t get me wrong. She works hard and deserves her salary, and I really wouldn’t want her job. But she has a beautiful apartment and can afford to furnish it with really nice stuff. I will never make enough money to have such nice things. And sometimes I feel resentful, but I know it’s not fair. I made a career choice that will never pay me what she gets, and although we all know that teachers are underpaid, it’s the choice I would make again if I had to.”
“So,” she said after a brief silence, “I start to pull away from her when I’m feeling too jealous. I don’t want to be around her for a while. And then I get a little too sweet, a little too enthusiastic about what she’s telling me when we do get together. I hadn’t really thought about any of this before, but I guess I started to be kind of fake with her. And that’s exactly what she’s doing with me.”
Being Fake
This feeling of being fake comes because, on some level, we know the jealous feelings are in us somewhere. It’s fine, even healthy at times, to present a version of yourself that isn’t completely true to the world. For instance, when you have to make a presentation that makes you nervous, it’s often more productive to act like you’re not nervous than to show everyone how anxious you actually are.
With friends, however, being false can lead to distance and disconnection, which was what Julia was feeling at the moment from Maya. Recognizing the behavior and connecting it to her own feelings of jealousy toward her friend was the first step in returning to a closer connection between them.
Being Honest
Julia’s self-knowledge was a reflection of how well she knew Maya, of her ability to use empathy, and what the psychoanalyst Peter Fonagy calls “mirroring” to understand what Maya might be feeling. Once she had put her own experience into words, Julia could think about how to address what she thought Maya might be feeling.
“If I were Maya,” she said, “I’d be horrified to have me tell her I understood that she was jealous. I think it would be better if I mention my own jealousy first and see how she reacts to that, and then see what happens from there.”
Maya was very responsive to Julia’s tentative overtures. “You’re jealous of me?” she said. “Oh, thank goodness! I’ve been so ashamed of how jealous I am about your award. I wish I was getting some recognition at my job, but it’s no excuse for resenting that you’re getting it at yours.”
To Julia’s delight, they went out for a celebratory drink and found themselves sharing many of their small and large jealousies of one another.
“And it’s really weird,” Julia told me, “but I think that we’re closer than ever before.”
*names and identifying info changed to protect privacy
