To The Bitter Friend

After six years of hard work, I'm starting to have some success in my career. Disturbingly, my best friend seems envious. I'll tell her some exciting news, and she'll barely respond. I understand that she's trying to break through while working a menial job, but my other friends are really supportive and happy for me. She claims she is, too, but her behavior says otherwise. It really hurts my feelings.

--Disappointed

We often do crazy things simply to keep up with our peers who are doing those things -- not, say, because we were bored on a Saturday afternoon and had a little brainstorm: "I know! I'll pay some total stranger $55 to spread molten wax on my labia and rip out all my pubic hair!" We evolved to be creatures of "social comparison" -- judging how well we're doing personally and professionally by how we stack up to others. As I often explain, our emotions are not just for mental decoration; they're motivational tools. When we're lagging behind our peers, envy often rises up -- as it seems to be in your friend. Envy is mistakenly assumed to be ugly and shameful, but evolutionary social psychologist Bram Buunk and his colleagues explain that the feelbad we get from envy pushes us to get on the stick and narrow the "status gap" between ourselves and others. Understanding the underpinnings of envy can help you have compassion for your friend, which might help you avoid taking it personally when she fails to celebrate your achievements by pulling out confetti and a kazoo. Try to accept that she probably can't express the excitement you'd like her to because every success you rack up sneers, "Hey, loser! How come she's up there and you're down here?" If you do tell her about some win, consider pairing the news with mention of the years of grubby work and daily failures that went into it. This might help her view the success you've achieved as something attainable -- as opposed to some magical gift: "OMG, I was just sitting on my porch drinking a beer, when my boss called and said, 'You often cut work and smoke a lot of pot. Let's give you the VP job.'"