Why am I shocked that a friend’s happy news makes me feel envy?

By David McElroy · October 13, 2017

“Have you seen Julie?” Matt asked me. “She’s pregnant and she’s sitting back there.”

Julie is a casual friend who got married last year. I don’t know her that well and I rarely see her. I had just walked into a restaurant for dinner Friday evening and an employee told me the news.

My first reaction was to express happiness for Julie and her husband, but I suddenly realized I felt something unexpected. My inner emotional mask slipped slightly and I felt … what was this?

Envy.

Instead of pure happiness for Julie — who will be a great mother, by the way — I felt something ugly in my gut. My heart felt cold and hard. There was a powerful hint of anger — self-directed? — and then I realized it was hard to put labels on the things I was feeling.

Nothing I experienced was about Julie. It was all about me. And I hated the way I felt.

When I first encountered the Enneagram personality-typing system, I quickly identified myself as a Type 4. In so many ways — both the good ways and the bad ways — I saw parts of myself in the Type 4 patterns. (My “wings” are balanced between 3 and 5.) But I never could quite identify with the vice that’s said to be the core flaw of the type: Envy.

I intellectualize my envy. I’ve always told myself it’s not really envy. It’s just a realization that I wish I could do better for myself in some ways. It’s a desire for self-improvement. I don’t wish bad things on anyone. I don’t wish I were them. I don’t want to take good things from them.

But as I politely exchanged pleasantries a few minutes ago with Julie and her husband, there was nothing detached or intellectual about the feeling. It was burning envy. It was an angry and irrational frustration that someone else had what I so desperately want.

I try to be honest with myself about my many flaws, but I’m just as prone to self-deception as everyone else is. (You, too. Yes. You.) In fact, I know — at least in theory — that there’s no one in the world who I can deceive as easily as I can deceive myself.

In the middle of the burning envy that I feel right now, I realize I can’t lie to myself. This is envy. This is anger. This is a raging frustration that I don’t have the things I need and want the most. I don’t want other people to be unhappy or to not have the things they need. But there is an ugly part of me hidden inside that whispers, “Why does he have something I desperately want — when he doesn’t even deserve what he has?”

Caught in the grips of this envy, it’s easy for me to think there must be something unfair about other people having what I want, especially when so many of those people don’t seem any more “deserving” than I do. Why does he have the financial success that I used to want so much? Why don’t I have it? Why does he have a loving wife and adoring children? He doesn’t even appreciate her. Why don’t I have that adoring family? The ugly questions go on and they mock me.

The rational side of my brain has answers to all the questions. I know why I’ve made the decisions I’ve made. I regret some of them. I don’t regret others. But I understand why I made every decision I’ve made. I know the factors which created me in the past. And I know I’m responsible for what I currently have — and for what I don’t have.

I know that. I accept that. But as the envy and anger rise within me in a moment such as this, none of that cool intellectual certainty matters. I feel like a child who has been denied the love and care and attention which he needs.

Just barely underneath the calm and composed exterior — the one that allows me to gracefully congratulate Julie and her husband about their wonderful news — there is rage and boiling envy.

“I deserve better!” this envious and childish self screams in foolish self-righteousness.

I know why I’m where I am.

I know why I’m alone.

I know the decisions that have led me here. I really do.

But that doesn’t stop me from feeling pain and anger. It doesn’t stop me from resenting other people who have what I want — even if I normally lie to myself and say that what I feel isn’t resentment at all.

I’m glad I was able to say the right things to Julie and her husband. I’m glad that neither my words nor my face gave me away. I’m happy that I know how to be such a liar in a socially acceptable way.

It’s not appropriate for me to feel this way — not socially and not psychologically. It’s not healthy. I know that. But there are times when the mask slips enough that I have to see the ugly parts of myself that I prefer to hide from.

I know from studying the Enneagram why I feel the ways that I do. I know that it has to do with fears of being abandoned. I know it has to do with fears of not being good enough. I know that it comes from the deep dread of being flawed and incapable of being what everyone else can be. I know all that.

But that intellectual knowledge doesn’t help. For the moment, I’m just a scared and abandoned child who is terrified and in desperate need. I don’t look that way. I look like a well-dressed businessman sitting in a restaurant in dress clothes and a nice tie.

But there is a tremendous gap between the calm exterior and the raging envy which is screaming in my heart tonight. I don’t like it, but sometimes the truth is too obvious to deny, even to myself.

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We are ruled by the dumbest and most incompetent people among us — and we have a system which allows stupid and irresponsible people to force the costs of their idiocy onto smarter and wiser people. Can we get away with that? Yes, for quite some time. But we eventually reach a point at which the dumbest of the dumb — who are habitual liars and mentally ill fools — lead us to the disasters and destruction that some of us have seen coming for years. We are approaching that point. And yet most of the idiots around us still wave their rhetorical banners of support for the evil people who are leading us to ruin — and all of them point their fingers at someone else, never noticing that their own enthusiastic support of evil is to blame. When things finally fall apart, blame yourself for your blindness to the evil, not whoever happens to be in power when it happens.

I’ve been making some changes to the site lately and there are more changes coming in the days ahead, so don’t be surprised if you some small differences. This is not a wholesale redesign, but rather the addition of some features. Since they’re smarter than I am, I’ve put Oliver and Alex in charge of the technical work, which you can see in this action photo from the control room of our media complex. I recently added a series of landing pages for readers who randomly discover the site from an Internet search. I’ve also changed the YouTube link at the top of the page to go to the new YouTube channel for video essays that reflect things I’ve already published here. (Here’s a little bit about both of the YouTube channels I’m working on.) In addition, I’m trying to move away from using Instagram, so I’m experimenting with photo plug-ins that will eventually allow me to host the pictures — cats, dogs, sunsets, whatever — that I often take. So don’t be surprised to see more changes. Thanks for your patience. Let’s hope Alex and Oliver know what they’re doing.

I have no use for the theocratic and repressive government of Iran. The people who run the country are cruel at best and evil at worst. The Iranian people deserve freedom. But I have no personal quarrel with anybody in Iran. While I’m not thrilled about a future Iranian government having nuclear weapons, I’m just as concerned about nukes in the hands of politicians in Israel, Pakistan, India, China and Russia. I’m not even thrilled with the U.S., Britain and France having them, either, because I don’t trust any politicians to be responsible with such terrible weapons. All I can say with certainty is that American taxpayers have no business attacking Iran, especially since we’re being forced to pay for this attack in order to benefit the politicians of Israel — and nobody else. If Middle Eastern countries want to fight among themselves, that’s none of my business. It’s not the business of the U.S. government, either. I have no quarrel with anybody in Iran — and having the government which claims to represent me launch an unprovoked attack against a sovereign country will only make all Americans less safe in the near future. This attack is poorly conceived and morally unjustified. Remember that when the Iranians launch attacks that we will then condemn as “terrorism.” What the U.S. is doing right now looks like terrorism to me. And let’s not forget that the attack is the latest in a long line of unconstitutional wars by various U.S. presidents — who have no legal power to declare war on their own, according to the U.S. Constitution.

A child having a tantrum understands only one thing: Did I get my way or not? He doesn’t understand the issues involved. He doesn’t understand the reasons that went into a decision. He doesn’t understand any of the things that mature and reasonable adults have to understand in order to live healthy lives. By his reaction to the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling to strike down his disastrous tariff scheme, Donald Trump shows himself to be — once more — a screaming child having a tantrum. Outside the world of mob bosses who expect to get their way every time, normal adults don’t act this way, but Trump isn’t normal. He’s an angry and vengeful man who has narcissistic personality disorder. And we are in danger as a result. Trump doesn’t understand the legal issues involved in this ruling. He doesn’t understand economics. He doesn’t understand rule of law. He doesn’t understand that he can ever be wrong. All he understands is that he didn’t get his way. And he is now a narcissistic and raging little boy who also happens to hold life-and-death power over most humans on this planet. He’s dangerous — and the system which gives him that power is even more dangerous.

Is it an attempt to blur the gender line between men and women? Or is it some weird tribute to the traditional Scottish kilt? It’s hard to say, but fashion designers keep pushing for men to wear skirts in the last few years. Both men and women in modern fashion seem oddly androgynous, as though it would be offensive for a man to look manly or for a woman to look feminine. A CNN article about the latest fashions from Paris caught my attention Monday and left me wondering about the ugly clothes the designers are hawking. If a man wants to wear a skirt — or a kilt — that’s OK with me, but I’ll stick with a traditional dark suit with a white shirt and tie. (Well, when I’m not wearing t-shirts and sweats, of course.) I always wonder who actually buys the outlandish garb from fashion designers anyway. I would be humiliated to be seen in any of this stuff, but I obviously have no sense of high fashion.

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