Why feeling envy isn’t a tragedy

I recently heard a Podcast with Debbie Millman called “Design Matters.” She interviewed Glennon Doyle & Abby Wambach. Abby stated that our society doesn’t teach us how to deal with bad feelings like jealousy at one point in the conversation.

I started to remember how I felt when I was at the beginning of twenty, being in a relationship with somebody I deeply cared about but whose emotional ups and downs exhausted me. I remember looking at other people and couldn’t believe how they could enjoy life while I felt infinite miserable. First, because I had the feeling I couldn’t talk with anyone about it. Secondly, I thought of myself as a bad person because I envied other people’s happiness.

In general, I’m not a person who envies others. I thought about my feelings and realized that I was missing something in my life, even though I couldn’t lay a finger on it. I always believed that if you want something, get it instead of whining about it or blaming the world. But in this situation, I just felt trapped.

My boyfriend was very jealous and isolated me from my friends and family, so I became very lonely. As we were working together, our relationship quickly became very dull. I was in love with someone who wasn’t good for me. Narrowing the problem down helped me, and I probably wouldn’t have done it if I hadn’t felt envy.

It took me a while, but I decided to break up after two years. It took me even more time to find my confidence in my judgment about other people and gain the trust in someone else to start a new relationship. In the beginning, I thought I would never be happy again, and I remember even after several years, a guy flirting with me told me that I had a beautiful smile but looked always a bit sad in the end.

As you might have guessed, I fell in love again. After a couple of years, we thought three was better than two. I became pregnant. My parents were so happy, but a short time after the announcement, I had a miscarriage. Not many people knew about that, and I felt alone again — thinking about what might have been was devastating. I was 35. I knew there was still a chance to have a baby. But there was another voice: What if I wouldn’t be that lucky? How far would you go? Would you be able to find happiness without having a child?

I started to look at people with children and felt envy again. I hated that feeling. I didn’t want to feel that way. To avoid feeling like that, I tried to avoid pregnant women, newlyweds, or families with little children. But as I worked in the HR department of an NGO with dominantly female employees, I was constantly confronted with colleagues who stated that they were pregnant. There was no escape! I got pictures of cute babies on my mobile phone and via mail from friends and family. I saw pregnant women everywhere. To make it short- I had a rough time. I remember telling my mother: ”I wish everyone good luck, but I want to be happy first.”

Then about one year later: I got pregnant again. I couldn’t believe it. Furthermore, I was afraid to feel happy because I’ve learned happiness can be taken from you anytime. Sometimes I felt like people were more pleased with my luck than I was.

I guess rough time belongs to life like good times. Instead of thinking of envy and jealousy as bad feelings and, therefore, something I shouldn’t have, I started to think of it as a magnetic compass, which can lead you to the things that matter to you, like an inner voice that tells you what you need when you don’t know what’s missing. The most valuable lesson I’ve learned is: Feeling that way doesn’t define me as a person. It doesn’t mean I’m evil. It just means I have to take better care of myself and might think about the goals I pursue.