Why did I really feel annoyed? They were happy; I was jealous

By David McElroy · July 15, 2020

It was just a few minutes after 11 p.m. when I put Lucy’s leash on her and we headed outside for our late-night walk.

Before I even got outside, I heard unexpected noise. It sounded like people laughing. They were loud. I felt annoyed.

When I opened the front door and stepped outside with Lucy, I realized that my young next-door neighbor had a group of people over. I don’t know how many. I saw at least six extra cars.

They were at the back of the house — possibly in the back yard right next to mine — and they were loud enough that I could hear them talking and laughing all the way to the street in front of our houses. I felt mildly angry.

“He shouldn’t be having this kind of loud party this late,” I thought, “especially on a weeknight.”

As I silently walked down the street with Lucy, I kept hearing their laughter. And then it hit me why I felt angry.

They were happy. I’m not. And I felt jealous of them.

It was a shock to realize that I felt that way, but I knew it was true. I didn’t want to be them. I don’t even like parties. The louder and more crowded a party is, the more I want to leave. So I didn’t want to go join them.

I just wanted to be happy. I was jealous that they were happy — experiencing the enjoyment of people they liked and cared about, or whatever made them feel happy — and I wasn’t.

How long has it been? How long has it been since I really felt happy, I mean?

I couldn’t remember at first. Even when I’ve spent time with friends in the last few years, I hadn’t been happy in more than a fleeting way. When I’ve tried to date women in the last few years, I was mostly miserable. Even when I forced one of those relationships to last for about four months — and it seemed longer — I was miserable.

Then I remembered when I had last felt happy. I realized that I could probably put a couple of dates on it.

I was because of a woman. That’s the way it always seems to be for me. When I’m happy, I’m in love. I feel loved, too. I feel as though I have an emotionally secure future.

It’s been almost six years since I felt that way. Not quite. Five and a half years since it ended? I’m not going to quibble over the timing. I went from being on top of the world — happy with love and what I saw as my future — to having it all crash and burn in that short time.

The whole thing took about six months from start to finish. I can pinpoint the night when it died. I could tell you the date if I looked at a calendar, but it was that Friday night in December when my hopes for happiness died.

A month before, everything had seemed perfect. I had felt loved and adored by someone who I loved and adored.

When I put myself back into that frame of mind — from the vantage point of tonight — I’m shocked at what it feels like. It was the happiest I had ever been.

A lot has happened since the late December night. I’ve put on a brave face and acted happy at times. I’ve tried to do things to make myself happy again. I’ve thrown myself into work at times. But all my efforts seemed ridiculous to me tonight.

After I got home, I went out into my darkened back yard. All the lights were on in the house next door. There were still loud voices. The grill on the back porch smelled like something good that had been cooked earlier.

The back door was open to the pleasant summer breeze. The party had been inside and out, it seemed. A happy dog went back and forth between the yard and the people who had moved inside. Everybody was happy. They were content.

I wasn’t angry with them anymore.

I don’t want to be them. I really don’t. Their way of having fun and being happy probably isn’t much like mine.

But I wanted to be with someone else. I wanted to be with someone who loved me. I wanted to be with someone who I loved. I wanted to feel as though I’m home again.

For now, I’m just jealous that someone else is happy. I’m jealous because I don’t know how to make my heart happy again.

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It was five years ago tonight when Lucy first rode in the car with me. She was on her way to her “forever home” with me that night, but she didn’t know it, so she was terrified. It was a much happier and braver girl who took a ride in the car tonight so we could go through a drive-through window and order a hamburger for her — to celebrate five years with me. She had a great time. If she could remember five years ago tonight, she would be proud of how far she’s come, too. If you’d like to know more about Lucy’s journey from scared dog to brave queen of the household, here’s something I wrote after her first year with me. I’m hoping this girl will have many more happy years with me.

I’ve never been attracted to skinny women. There’s nothing wrong with someone who’s naturally thin, but it’s never been my preference. What has shocked me, though, is the judgment I’ve heard from women all through my life — about themselves and others — about who’s “fat.” I concluded long ago that most women in our culture have been brainwashed to believe that skinny is attractive — and that anything other than skinny is ugly. I first assumed that I was the oddball — for preferring women with bigger and heavier bodies — but I’m coming to the conclusion that most men naturally feel this way to one extent or another. I just ran across new research by a couple of Northwestern University psychology professors that shows that women seriously overestimate how much a straight man will be attracted to a skinny woman. In a perfect world, we would all be at a healthy weight, but when it comes to attractiveness, too heavy is more attractive than skinny. At least to me — and to a lot of men, too.

Years ago, I heard a question that seemed very insightful at the time. You’ve probably heard it, too. What would you do if you knew you couldn’t fail? The question is intended to help you uncover things you really want to do, but which you’re afraid to try — for fear of failure. In an interview today, I heard the great marketing guru Seth Godin give a different point of view. He said the better question is to ask what you would do even if you knew it would fail. That struck me as far more insightful than the original version. We ought to be doing what we know is right, not what will maximize our success or praise from others. There are some battles that are worth fighting even if you believe you’re doomed to failure. Those battles are often for love or important ideas or our children. Some things are simply worth fighting for — and the truth is that you might win anyway. Do the right thing. Take the chance.

The more I understand about myself, about human nature and about the nature of reality, the more I realize I’m a radical by the standards of both Modernism and Postmodernism. Seeing the things which I’m stumbling toward makes me an enemy of many of the core ideas upon which contemporary culture is built. It exposes the culture as a monstrous lie — like a dangerous infection that’s slowly destroying what human were created to be. My “inner observer” has always known that truth was found in the ideas of the Enlightenment, but I’m slowly finding words to explain what has merely been instinct until now. The Enlightenment was humanity’s great leap forward, but shallow and arrogant thinkers for the next two centuries threw away the fruits of that achievement. We can’t go forward as a species until we go back to correct this intellectual and spiritual error — and part of that is acknowledging that our collective attempts to do away with our Creator will always fail.

I’ve come to believe that some of us — including me — aren’t very good at knowing how to be happy. I don’t mean that in the sense that happy talk and positive thinking should be able to make us happy regardless of the circumstances. I mean that some of us had so much experience with being unhappy when we were young that we were trained to be unhappy — and that being happy is an unconsciously uncomfortable thing. When I look at times in my past when I should have been happy, it rarely lasted. I believe now that I found reasons to be unhappy — and caused real problems for myself — because being comfortable and happy felt so foreign to my programming. If I’m right, this means that some of us have to do more than just change our circumstances. It means we have to learn how to accept the happiness that we unconsciously fear we don’t deserve.

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