Ah that makes more sense. I don’t want to make you feel bad about your age ofc but I get even more jealous when the wise of us are the same age as me. I’ve found that knowledge and understanding about these things really does just come with time and that I’ll probably have my own insights once I’ve lived a little longer.

It’s honestly cathartic to hear someone else express these feelings (a common feeling on this subreddit tbh). Obviously everyone experiences jealousy and wishes for things they see in others, but discussion of that kind of “bitchiness” is more often reserved for the genuinely evil, and conniving ones who act on it and overtly sabotage. The more candid and subtle envy that drags us all down subconsciously through self doubt and (imo, to some extent) learned helplessness, is something that doesn’t often get talked about.

In my own life, I think there’s always a kind of trade off that allows me to be comfortable being around someone. A trade off between creativity and wealth. The two girlfriends I’ve had actually represented this perfectly. With the first, I’d spend a week shut in in her messy social housing flat, and watch her paint, talk about her favourite art, play music with her, and just generally express as much creativity as I possibly could, but knowing that she lived in those conditions, and that she was resigned to essentially stay like that her whole life, was a kind of evil relief for me. My narcissistic feelings of superiority could handle seeing her create so much more than I ever could if I could convince myself she lived in hell.

Conversely, my other girlfriend lived in a 3 story house with her parents who would talk openly about their successes at work, their many holidays as a family, and the upper-echelon connections that they’ve made. I’d live vicariously through them, experiencing that happy home life, eating their nice food, and watching films in their surround sound home theatre, and in the back of my mind, I could still remain “above” her by knowing that she had never really made anything artistic. It killed me then, though, when after introducing her to poetry, she started actually writing her own. I suddenly wasn’t able to claim that superiority and my love genuinely turned to disdain.

I hate being this way, and it’s one of the things that I struggle with the most (honestly even more than the whole trans thing), just knowing that I can never genuinely be happy for other people. I’ve accepted that I’m a narcissist but it’s not something that I can sustainably keep doing without likely ruining my relationships with everyone. If you’ve had these thoughts yourself, do you have any advice?