What To Do When It Hurts The Other To Be Happy
No one dares to acknowledge it out loud, but it happens very often : we do not rejoice that the other is happy . This other can be the spouse, a childhood friend and even a child. All human ties are capable of generating this kind of feeling.
We are supposed, when we truly love someone, that their sorrows and joys are ours. This is what the theory and the tacit agreement of political correctness says. But this is not always the case in practice. We would always like to have the greatness to rejoice that the other is happy. But sometimes the opposite happens.
Most of the time we are not able to admit it out loud. We are simply saying a few warm congratulations, as we feel something is writhing in us. We may even try to minimize its success by interposing a “but”, or a “beware it’s not what you think”. We know deep down that his triumph generates a certain frustration. What’s going on ? How can we handle this?
When it hurts that the other is happy
The fact that the other is happy is not always painful. However, sometimes we can experience tremendous happiness because of the success of another. It is a wonderful feeling that grows us up and improves the relationship. So why does the awkward shadow of envy sometimes appear?
Let’s say first that we are all human beings and therefore have to experience all kinds of feelings , good or bad. They are not the privilege of a few. We all feel them once, to a greater or lesser extent. So, while we are not to be proud of it, however, we should not blame ourselves for feeling envy for someone we love.
We find it painful that the other is happy because we are not well. Perhaps we have worked to achieve similar success. The other gets it and we don’t. We value its success, but we cannot help it remind us of our unfulfilled desire . We unwittingly compare his happiness with our sadness and decide that there is something unfair here. This is something we feel a lot, but think little about.
The other is not a mirror
All of this happens to us when we see the other as if it were a reflection of ourselves. In other words, when we perceive him as if everything about him is equal to ours. We leave aside the context in which its fulfillment occurred. We just focus on the result he got. A result that we would have also wanted for ourselves.
The secret is to broaden that perspective. Don’t just look at what this person got, but look at everything they had to do for it, and everything we lack to get there. It is a way of humanizing the situation and finding the elements that differentiate us.
We make a narcissistic projection about the other when we see them as if they are our reflection. This is when our ego gets hurt and it hurts us that the other is happy. On the contrary, we come to understand his merit when we decide to regard him as someone independent from us. And then we are happy for him.
Learn from the situation and mature
Feeling jealous of someone we love is normal. That doesn’t make us a bad or a bad person. What you should avoid, however, is allowing that feeling to grow and fuel it through suspicion or resentment . It doesn’t help at all. On the contrary. It creates a breach in the bond with the other person from whom we could learn a lot.
It’s time to grow up. There are things that we long for and never get. Things we want and only get after great effort. Others that we get much easier than we thought. The same happens to others. What does change, however, is that it sometimes happens at different times, or that it does not happen to the same extent.
The fact that it hurts us that the other is happy means that we are losing focus. We judge what we have on the basis of outside elements. This is a big mistake. The evolution of each person is completely unique and has nothing to do with that of others. They are different and exist in different circumstances. So that the results obtained are also dissimilar.
The urge can be removed by identifying and accepting it. In other words, by recognizing, generously, that the other deserves what he has obtained and love must prevail over these little meanings.
Our thoughts Envy nibbles at everyone and destroys all fertile ground. It kills what is alive and runs like a tsunami.
