Hey Jealousy!!

I have been thinking about jealousy, again, and the damaged people behind the emotion. Jealousy seems to be an unstoppable plague blighting humanity and no one can escape it!!!!

How Dare You

We all know that human friendships are complicated and fragile at the best of times, but when one person in the friendship suddenly moves away, gets that job they’ve always wanted, buys that nicer house or even a bigger TV, friendships seem to become ever more shaky.

It is funny how I find myself returning to the same question; why is it that people can’t seem to accept or in fact be happy for one another when something good happens? Why is it that something which might in fact be life changing for one person, is belittled and brushed off by those people who claim to be your friends.

I have come to believe that the positive and life changing things are topics of conversation that don’t correspond to what people want to hear, it doesn’t tally with what people want to know is happening to you. It seems we are tuned into thriving off the doom and gloom in other peoples lives, and not the good.

It seems to me that people block out of their minds that which they cannot fully grasp, and good news stories are these very concepts. Good news is just too alien for people to really deal with, they just ignore it, pretend it doesn’t exist. Its as though those good things that can happen in life create a conflict within people’s own sense of security, I.E, they are no longer the centre of their small universe. They realise there is something more going on outside of their trivia, and to be blunt, they don’t like it.

To be blunt there will come a time when that people who claimed to be a friend, won’t be your friend any longer. Why, well you are no longer ‘on their wave length’ or their perceived wave length, and all because something good has happened to you.

It is a universally well known fact that most ‘friends’ can’t hack it when your life has moved on, improved, gotten good and changed direction from the old trajectory that they continue to move upon. Why? Well, could it be that these people believe that some how you are leaving them behind, becoming too big for your proverbial boots?

For me it is almost as though these ‘friends’ are saying through clenched teeth; ‘How dare you get a better life’.

It might be upsetting, and it can leave you wondering if their reaction towards you is warranted; is it something you have actually done or said? You ask yourself over and over, have I changed? Is it your reaction, attitude, opinion and behaviour that has changed towards your friends, or is it in fact your friends who have changed?

I always think that a persons reaction towards you says more about them and their own insecurities, than it does in any way about you. It isn’t you that has changed at all, it is them. I know this might all sound harsh, even paranoid, but I have experienced this treatment at the hands of ‘friends’.

Since moving to Madrid I have realised just how difficult it is for people to accept that my life has changed. I’m not sure what offends them so much about this fact, whether they think I’ve suddenly become richer, happier, or that life has become somehow easier for me. Yet, obviously they don’t know anything about me or my life, even though they are supposed to friends.

People may ‘move on’ to seemingly better things, but that doesn’t mean they or their lives have become miraculously transformed into some sort of utopian perfection. Everyone has something to contend with. The grass isn’t automatically greener for anyone, just because they may have a change in their life for the better.

Regardless of anyone’s altered circumstances in life, it doesn’t mean that suddenly you are no longer essentially who you always were, their friend. For me, it doesn’t matter what happens in my life; if a friend is a friend, they will always remain so. I don’t change how I feel, it is they who change.

Perhaps as friends we should all just be a little more gracious, kind, loving and affable instead of ignorant, angry, jealous and spiteful. Friends after all are not enemies. Then maybe for once we would actually be able to happy for those we call friends and for their good fortune, and not disappointed that their lives aren’t collapsing around them.

Just a thought.

Jealousy Is The Biggest Compliment

I have been thinking recently about those people, I am sure we are all aquatinted with, who enjoy making little sly remarks, boasting about themselves, feel they have something more to say, enjoy gloating and generally revelling in making those around them feel bad about themselves.

They play a game, a very specific, but a harmful game. A game called jealousy.

Jealousy is destructive, obsessive, consuming and dangerous, but, it is also the biggest compliment anyone can pay you.

For someone to be jealous of you, they must deem you to be a threat, highly important and a person who makes them (the jealous people) feel inferior or appear inferior.

Is this your fault? No, this is their problem and not yours, but they want to aim their problem at you, to make you feel as badly about yourself and your life as they do about themselves and their lives.

If you play their game you will lose. To become embroiled in their inner turmoil you give them what they want, a reaction and ammunition to continue pulling your strings with. This game gives them and their lives some temporary meaning – harsh, but very true.

Many people feel intimidated by those who display jealousy, they often feel they cannot retaliate or they don’t even realise the person who is aggravating, upsetting and being nasty to them, are actually jealous of them.

Yet, 99% of the time, people who suffer bullying, nastiness, bitchiness, lies, back-stabbing and so on, are the victims of jealousy. Jealous causes most of the problems between people, jealousy drives people to do strange things to one another.

I have experienced people trying to hurt me because they have been jealous, and people can and will be jealous of anything! Of course I have also at times played the game of these jealous people, and sorely regretted it. Through this experience I see clearly what the outcome of such things will be, and I avoid those I see that jealousy resides within like the plague! It is difficult though, because sometimes regardless of how impartial, diplomatic, genuine or nice you are, you attract jealousy. Once these jealous people have you in their sights, they point blank refuse to let you go; well, not until they have attempted to wreak as much damage upon you as is possible.

I have experienced their damage too, and believe me, on some occasions the pure maliciousness of the jealousy aimed in my direction caused me great turmoil.

I am however a great believer in karma. What goes around does indeed come around. I have though been lucky enough to see the malignant and jealous individual fall, and was able to inform them I knew their game, jealousy.

Regardless of how much hate they muster, how much spite they spit, how much damage they claim to cause, these jealous people can never escape what they wish they could, themselves. They will always be stuck with them, long after you have been freed from their jealous radar, they will still be the vile creature they always have been. Again, this may seem harsh, but it is very, very true.

I have no qualms in feeling as I do about jealous people. I have no mercy for those who are jealous, because they have no mercy for anyone else. In fact, they take great delight in attempting to destroy people. They therefore deserve nothing more than pity, but not sympathy.

Jealousy I feel is useless though. It destroys, but not only the victim of the jealousy, but the perpetrator too. If only these people could understand that fact, and employ as much effort into changing what they feel bad about, instead of ploughing their energies into jealousy, things would be different.

When all is said and done though, it is only us who tolerate jealousy. In reality, jealousy needn’t have a place in our lives, just don’t tolerate it; call them out, name and shame, publicly humiliate them! Remember too that you are far better than those who seethe with jealousy, and also, karma is always a bitch!

I Am King or Queen of My Castle and I Refuse to Surrender.

A friend of mine has recently suspended her Facebook account; she has plenty on her plate at the moment, which has of course occurs as part and parcel of her fully developed and healthy adult life. However, one of the reasons she mentioned was how she was fed up with receiving persistent emails, and messages from people she had only known as a teenager.

Now, I have had similar issues with Facebook; as good as it is to locate family and those you value as friends, it allows others to try to invade your space. Some of the people who might try to re-establish contact could be past friends, some could even have be your worst nightmare; the enemy that despised you, and the bully that ridiculed you making your life a misery.

Can you trust these people to re-enter your adult life based on what you knew about them in the past? What are their motives to trying to gain re-entry into your life?

I wonder if everyone is familiar with these types of people; the ones who harp on about the past, those who desperately desire to re-new a friendship that was only founded on a specific place and moment, also those who wish to try and re-establish their sense of greatness (‘look what I have been doing, aren’t you all jealous’), and of course the bullies from the playground?

All these people you may have purposefully lost contact with (years ago), suddenly feel they have a right to wander back into your life, and act as though nothing transpired to make them, a friend from the past or just someone you had to suffer. Maybe you consigned them to the past for a damn good reason!

It seems people are just so eager to parachute back into our lives; to pry, because they are guilty for their past actions, maybe because they have nothing else to focus on or perhaps they want to re-exert their dominance? Have they so little in their own lives that they have to cling to what was? Maybe they haven’t made a new life for themselves? Maybe they are fixating on what was, and are stuck in the same mind set and situations they were when you knew them? Maybe they want to feel a part of something more once again?

If they haven’t moved on and experienced life, if they haven’t changed their ‘spots’, is it because they are too afraid to? How could they have managed to escape immersing themselves in life, maturing and developing into an adult? What I mean is, are they stuck, frozen in one moment forever; unable to escape that child or teenager perspective on the world?

I call this ‘I’m the King/Queen of my castle’ syndrome, it is not uncommon. To explain; people like to feel important and it doesn’t matter whether they are billionaires, popular people in their neighbourhoods or the school favourite. If they have been or are deemed to be ‘top dog’ somewhere, sometime, by someone; this alters their view of themselves. When this self belief (view of themselves) is challenged by those who they bullied or those they classed as friends, because now those people they knew have more or have achieved more than them; these ‘Kings and Queens’ self beliefs are then set at odds. Suddenly their world is no longer rosy.

People don’t like to think they haven’t achieved much by others standards, or that their enemies or playground victims have surpassed them. Yet, who is really judging them, and making them feel inferior; the child grown into an adult that they bullied, their old friend or themselves?

Maybe in the real world, in another setting which is remote from their own, these ‘Kings and Queens’ begin to feel inconsequential? Perhaps they cannot cope with having to re-build their status or gain something new and different, so they have retreated from immersing themselves in new experiences. Maybe something which is outside of their comfort zone is deemed a scary place to be? Is it that they have built a wall of protection around themselves to always feel secure in their choices? If that is their choice, and they are happy, surely it is fine with the world; as long as they then leave everyone else and their choices alone? However, in my experience that doesn’t happen.

If these ‘Kings and Queens’ do feel afraid of the new, of change and development, and they have made their choices to retreat to their castles freely; why then do they feel as though they have lost out, and become jealous of what they perceive to be a better life than theirs? Why is it people cannot just be happy and move on? What to they hope to gain from renewing a long dead connection or forgotten friendship?

I admit that I feel sceptical when presented with these ‘Kings and Queens’. As I have mentioned already I have experienced this, and not just on Facebook either. I have seen some pretty vicious and poisonous things occur through jealousy; from the friend of the past aimed at the person they feel has managed to move on and develop a healthy adult life, from those who were the bully, and also from those trying to re-exert their greatness. It is a frightening thought, as you can never truly know what ‘can of worms’ you will open buying into what is portrayed on the internet; especially with cases of internet bullying on the rise (not just children get bullied), not to forget those who have been stalked or even murdered. Seems dramatic, maybe not, not for those who have suffered as a result of what seemed to be an innocuous internet ‘friendship’.

I will now ask the questions again; can you trust these ‘Kings and Queens’ to re-enter your adult life based on what you knew about them in the past? What are their motives to trying to gain re-entry into your life?

Are they harmless individuals stuck in the past or an enemy, a danger lurking in wait?

Links about Adult and Child Cyber Bullying:

http://www.overcomebullying.org/cyberbullying.html
http://www.goodtherapy.org/blog/adult-bullies/

BBC One Panorama – http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b01c00y3
BBC Schools – http://www.bbc.co.uk/schools/parents/cyber_bullying/
Childline – http://www.childline.org.uk/Explore/Bullying/Pages/CyberBullying.aspx

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