Agony aunt
‘How do I stop myself feeling resentful of my friends’ big pensions?’
Our relationships expert Anna Richardson will help solve your problems
Q
I’m in my late 50s and have two friends who are always talking about their plans for retirement. They will both have hefty pensions because of the types of jobs they do. I won’t have a big pension, even though I have worked hard all my life too. I know that it will mean they will be able to travel and so on far more than I will when we all finish work. How do I stop myself feeling so resentful?
AI count myself lucky enough to be part of a group of friends who’ve known each other for over 40 years. We’ve been there for each other as we’ve grown up, had our hearts broken, started careers, married, divorced, had kids – or chosen a different path. But every now and then, among a few of us, the conversation turns to the same topic… the one or two friends in our gang who’ve done really well for themselves.
I’m talking people who have come from nothing and made millions. The folk who head international companies, run property portfolios, or have married into wealth. We scroll through Instagram and spy on their latest travel posts; the sunsets, boats, perfect tans. We admire, gossip, and then… pick fault. Because do you know what? We’re envious as hell. And that’s difficult to admit because these are people we actually like.
There’s an undercurrent of envy and resentment in us all, and it makes us feel ugly. But envy, if you think about it, is really a self-criticism; a measurement of where we place ourselves in our social group, our ‘status’ compared to others. We experience it because we feel ‘less than’ in some way, and we hate to admit it, as by doing so we subconsciously lower our social status even more.
Evolutionary psychologists have found that humans respond to envy with either submission, ambition or destruction. Submission is where we accept another’s dominance and just steer clear of them; ambition is when we climb the greasy pole of success and try to compete with others; and then there’s destruction… in other words, the gossip and denigration of others that we’re all guilty of in order to make ourselves feel better.
It’s normal to try and rationalise our feelings, just as you’re doing when you say ‘I won’t have a big pension, even though I have worked hard all my life too’, but envy isn’t rational, it’s emotional – and the bigger the emotion, the more impact it will have on your life. The thing that concerns me here is th
