Envious of my daughter

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:This is a weird feeling to have. I adore my daughter, am on her side 100%, love her to death, etc. And I'm very, very proud of her. But it's so embarrassing and weird to admit that to an extent I also envy her.

My daughter is beautiful. Just out-and-out gorgeous. When we walk places, guys stare at her and she nonchalantly accepts these tributes to her beauty with the indifference of someone who has received them her whole life. She has guys fighting over her in high school.

I was the very definition of Plain Jane growing up. I didn't get asked out by anyone until I was 28 and by some weird miracle met DH when I was 33. I've always bought my own drinks, never had a man stare at me or compliment me, lol. None of it is a big deal and I certainly never wasted my energy thinking about it after a certain age, but seeing my DD's life makes me understand how comparatively lacking my own girlhood was. I do feel a certain sense of envy that this is something I could never experience.

I want to know I'm not the only parent who goes through this weird and guilt-inducing experience of envying their child?

Envy is about your emotional needs not being met. If it weren't about your daughter, it could be something else. But since it's your daughter, it will definitely make you feel guilt. I don't mean that in a bad way. I mean I totally get what you are feeling.

I agree with the other poster who mentioned some counseling. There are only two ways to get over envy. Tear the other person down or build yourself up. And I know you don't want to do the former. We don't get everything we want in life, and I can see how you feel wistful for missed experiences. Try to refocus on all you do have.

[Anonymous]

I can relate a little bit. I was a heavy kid-adolescent and pretty much always struggled with my weight. My dd has an effortlessly slim and athletic body. She's also good at a lot of things and I never was. She's growing up in a house with very happy parents and she will have more opportunities for classes and camps that I didn't have because we were poor and I had a single mom. So one hand I do feel a bit of envy for the ease her life will have that mine didn't.

But she will have her own struggles, and just because my childhood was harder in my eyes won't make her problems less important to her. I also worry about her growing into a too-pretty teen. I kind of like that DH and I were both geeks and didn't sleep around a lot as a result. I worry that popular attractive kids end up in the drinking/drug/promiscuous sex crowds like they did at my high school. Not that it's a hard and fast rule, but I hope that my kids grow into a self confident persona with a dash of geeky nerdom that will keep them in check.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I can relate a little bit. I was a heavy kid-adolescent and pretty much always struggled with my weight. My dd has an effortlessly slim and athletic body. She's also good at a lot of things and I never was. She's growing up in a house with very happy parents and she will have more opportunities for classes and camps that I didn't have because we were poor and I had a single mom. So one hand I do feel a bit of envy for the ease her life will have that mine didn't.

But she will have her own struggles, and just because my childhood was harder in my eyes won't make her problems less important to her. I also worry about her growing into a too-pretty teen. I kind of like that DH and I were both geeks and didn't sleep around a lot as a result. I worry that popular attractive kids end up in the drinking/drug/promiscuous sex crowds like they did at my high school. Not that it's a hard and fast rule, but I hope that my kids grow into a self confident persona with a dash of geeky nerdom that will keep them in check.

That's good that you can think that through like that PP. On that last bolded part, I'm sure you know this but just worth saying anyway: self confidence and good decision-making comes mostly from being in families with good communication. So do your thing, be the best parent you can be (which it sounds like you're doing), but if it's not in your nature to talk about sensitive, awkward things like sex and safety and relationship decisionmaking and peer pressure, you and your husband and everyone should educate yourselves about age-appropriate conversations about all of these. It's not just up to their personalities... it's also about equipping them with a thought process and foundation on which to make better decisions.

OP has presented a sensitive dynamic, and even though many have said they can't imagine feeling that way, and that's understandable too, but it's far far more common than so many of you may imagine. The best thing is naming it and trying to work through it. But don't let it sit, cuz it will fester, not go away.

[Anonymous]

Thank you all for your responses. I'm the OP and I agree with a lot of what you wrote here. I've been in therapy for a while so bringing these feelings up with my therapist was helpful and we are working through them.

Sometimes I wonder if eastern religions are right and we'll be reincarnated because I don't think I'd turn down a second chance at youth!

[Anonymous]

I love when my kids achieve success in anything...I am one proud mama!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:This thread makes me sad. I truly can't believe you women are so shallow to be envious of your kids.

I just can't imagine feeling anything but being proud and true love and happiness for them.

It's clear you have limited life experience (and limited imagination) that you think it's 'shallow' to have envy. I wonder why you felt compelled to post since you have nothing of value to offer.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:This thread makes me sad. I truly can't believe you women are so shallow to be envious of your kids.

I just can't imagine feeling anything but being proud and true love and happiness for them.

It's clear you have limited life experience (and limited imagination) that you think it's 'shallow' to have envy. I wonder why you felt compelled to post since you have nothing of value to offer.

Not the PP, but what the fuck are you talking about? She's not lived enough to feel envy? That's idiotic.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:This thread makes me sad. I truly can't believe you women are so shallow to be envious of your kids.

I just can't imagine feeling anything but being proud and true love and happiness for them.

It's clear you have limited life experience (and limited imagination) that you think it's 'shallow' to have envy. I wonder why you felt compelled to post since you have nothing of value to offer.

+500000

Some of the judgment in this thread makes me so glad that I don't have those PPs around me. They definitely have very limited lives, or else are in denial of their own feelings of insecurity and inadequacy and that's why they get disproportionately angry. OP's heartfelt post made me melt. This was my mother's attitude towards me growing up.

[Anonymous]

I love how gorgeous my daughter is and how accomplished. I know things are easier for her because of her looks and I am happy about that. At the same time I make sure that she does not depend on her beauty alone. My job as a mom is to make sure that she becomes a woman of substance.

I want my kids to do better than me in their life.

[Anonymous]

Op, just want to thank you for your post. It enlightened me. My mil has issues with envy and jealousy with my dd and also her own daughter, and I didn't understand it before, but now I do. I understand it comes from a place of childhood trauma, of unmet emotional needs, and insecurity. When dd was 2 months old, she constantly said things like, "must be sooo nice for her to have someone tend to her every need" and "she knows exactly how to manipulate her mommy into giving her exactly what she wants." At the time I couldn't fathom how one could think that way or feel jealous of a baby. But I get it now... She had a hellish childhood. She was speaking from a broken place.

[Anonymous]

I am that girl that gets stared at everywhere she goes and all I can tell you OP is that there are bad parts.

The crappiest being the weird jealousy thing that often seems to come out in female friendships. Even my relationship with my mom to some extent, and my siblings.

Not to mention no one really wants to be stared at when they're just trying to buy tampons from CVS, get some potato chips from the store cause they had a crappy day, whatever.

No one wants to feel vulnerable because they have male eyes on them everywhere they go. No one wants to constantly feel like they stick out like a sore thumb, like they dont fit in, even if they know the stares are for an ostensibly "good thing".

No one wants to get repeatedly hit on by friend's boyfriends, solicited for threesomes by those same boyfriends, and generally treated like some sexual receptacle first and foremost.

THere are advantages, of course. Like knowing if you really like a boy you can get his attention.

But truly, a ton of bad things come along with it. First and foremost being the constant sense that youre somehow "betraying" your female friends and family by just existing, that youre stealing attention from them that you have no desire to take.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I have a very tough time relating to this concept. I'm not accusing you of being a bad person or something, but I just can't ever imagine feeling that way. When something good happens to my children, something good has happened to me. I just don't think I could think about it any other way.

That's exactly how I feel

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I have a very tough time relating to this concept. I'm not accusing you of being a bad person or something, but I just can't ever imagine feeling that way. When something good happens to my children, something good has happened to me. I just don't think I could think about it any other way.

That's exactly how I feel

Same here.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I am that girl that gets stared at everywhere she goes and all I can tell you OP is that there are bad parts.

The crappiest being the weird jealousy thing that often seems to come out in female friendships. Even my relationship with my mom to some extent, and my siblings.

Not to mention no one really wants to be stared at when they're just trying to buy tampons from CVS, get some potato chips from the store cause they had a crappy day, whatever.

No one wants to feel vulnerable because they have male eyes on them everywhere they go. No one wants to constantly feel like they stick out like a sore thumb, like they dont fit in, even if they know the stares are for an ostensibly "good thing".

No one wants to get repeatedly hit on by friend's boyfriends, solicited for threesomes by those same boyfriends, and generally treated like some sexual receptacle first and foremost.

THere are advantages, of course. Like knowing if you really like a boy you can get his attention.

But truly, a ton of bad things come along with it. First and foremost being the constant sense that youre somehow "betraying" your female friends and family by just existing, that youre stealing attention from them that you have no desire to take.

Fantastic post. My BFF in high school was a stunner. Like, literally guys would stop in their tracks on the street and turn around and just stare. I obviously had many struggles with feeling ugly and invisible, but I was so lucky that my parents made me feel good about who I was (at least when I wasn't out socially with her and feeling invisible!) I always felt like she had it made, but her family allowed her to perceive her greatest asset to be her looks, and she ended up just feeling like she didn't need to finish school or do much else but look beautiful and the world would lay down at her feet. Aspects of the world did lay down at her feet, but she was (and still is) an incredibly smart, funny, creative person, and it's like she lost ALL of her confidence in those attributes and just depended on her looks. I think she could have done such fantastic things in her life, but I'd say she was unhappy until she was 40 and turned over a new leaf. I think she's very happy now, but who would have guessed the drop dead gorgeous girl in high school would spend most of her adult life (so far) unhappy and unfulfilled?

PP you're lucky you have perspective, and hopefully healthy friends and family who remind you what's great about you that is not abotu your looks.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Op, just want to thank you for your post. It enlightened me. My mil has issues with envy and jealousy with my dd and also her own daughter, and I didn't understand it before, but now I do. I understand it comes from a place of childhood trauma, of unmet emotional needs, and insecurity. When dd was 2 months old, she constantly said things like, "must be sooo nice for her to have someone tend to her every need" and "she knows exactly how to manipulate her mommy into giving her exactly what she wants." At the time I couldn't fathom how one could think that way or feel jealous of a baby. But I get it now... She had a hellish childhood. She was speaking from a broken place.

It's way way WAY too common a dynamic. It is very good that OP realizes it's not healthy but is brave enough to do something about it. Both OP and her DD will benefit from her willingness to name it and confront it.