The Secrets of Successful Friendships by The School of Life

Author:The School of Life
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: The School of Life

6. Envy

Friendships that begin harmoniously when two people are at similar points in life are always vulnerable to the pressures of diverging fortunes: someone’s novel takes off; a business booms; a promotion is proffered. Or, conversely: a career flatlines; there’s a redundancy; a scandal breaks. The success of the one then becomes intensely resented by the other, who cannot look on their formerly equal friend’s new advantages without contortions of sickness. Far more than we’re usually prepared to admit, all friendships are at risk of envy.

In strongly individualistic and competitive societies, this can feel like a tragic truth. The highly successful and socially well-connected American essayist Gore Vidal once summarised the problem with legendary arch emphasis: ‘Whenever a friend of mine succeeds, a small part of me dies.’ The bleakness comes down to statistics: because the chances of one friend growing more successful over time than the other in some way must be close to 100%, all friendships are – in this disenchanted worldview – condemned gradually to wither.

The challenges are real, but they are not beyond thought or remedy. Firstly, we should never compound matters by assuming that envy might not exist, or wonder for too long whether we’re imagining that it might have arisen. Those silences, missing questions and distant looks mean exactly what we suspect they do. We shouldn’t presume that any bond might be without at least an important degree of this ubiquitous feeling.

And the reasons are self-evident. We tend to be friends with people who share our aspirations and values, and it is therefore highly likely that at some point along our journey together, either they will acquire something we very much want, or vice versa: it might be a partner, a profession, a qualification or a home. But it will be something for sure. We envy people for the same reason we are friends with them: because we like the same sorts of things.

We are unhelpfully inclined to be sentimental and therefore dishonest on this score: we deny that we could possibly harbour envy for someone we also like, which can lead us to unconvincing denials and cuts off opportunities for processing and growth. We need to learn to feel better about envy, in order not to have to twist our characters to avoid admitting to it.

We should, with reasonable good cheer, simply own up to our envy as we would to a sore knee or an ulcer. Children can be good guides in this area: an average 4-year-old is comedically open about their ravenous jealousy. They don’t contort themselves into knots in the name of politeness. They wail immediately when their friend gets a better fire truck – or try to hit them over the head or gouge out their eyes. Parents tend to be so shocked by this that they force the child into fruitless denials. They inspire them to hide their envy from two people: the person they’re envious of and, far worse, from themselves. They implicitly teach their offspring a

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