In the Media – How To Deal With a Jealous Friend (HerCampus.com)
hercampus.com
Screenshot (HerCampus)
June 9, 2016
Who among us hasn’t had a jealous friend? Yet, it’s never easy to deal with the situation.
First, you might not be sure exactly what is going on when your friend makes back-stabbing remarks or disappoints you. Even if you realize that jealousy is the underlying problem, it might be difficult to find a way to handle or defuse the situation without making your friend more defensive.
Writing for the collegiate publication, HerCampus.com, writer Anna Borges writes:
When jealousy rears its head, it’s never pretty. When we start comparing ourselves to others, we can feel inadequate and insecure, and worse, it can put strain on our relationships because there often isn’t an easy way to talk about it.
We’ve all been jealous and we know it’s not easy to deal with, but what happens when things flip and you’re on the receiving end of jealousy from someone who has started tearing you down instead of building you up? HC talked to Irene S. Levine, Ph.D., a psychologist and creator of the popular advice blog The Friendship Blog, for some tips to navigate this common but difficult friendship road bump.
Anna also spoke to a number of college students to understand their first-hand experience with jealousy. She concludes that sometimes jealousy becomes so insidious that you need to break off the relationship entirely:
Sometimes jealousy is a sign of a bigger problem. If your successes, good qualities and happiness make your friend unhappy instead of proud and glad for you, that might be a sign that your friendship isn’t as strong as you thought it was in the first place.
“Friendships are voluntary relationships that are supposed to be mutually satisfying,” says Levine. “If you find that a friend is consistently demanding and draining and [you] have frequent misunderstandings with each other that can’t be resolved, you may need to create some distance between you and your friend.”
You can read Borges’ article in its entirety on HerCampus.
Category: IN THE MEDIA, RESOLVING PROBLEMS
In my 50s, I’ve learned that chronically jealous people don’t make good friends, even if they aren’t jealous of me, the level of negativity is toxic. If I find myself feeling jealous of a particular friend and can’t resolve those feelings, I know I need to step away from the relationship, because I can’t be a good friend.