Why you feel competitive with your friends (even when you love them)

In Snack Size Deep Dive 7, we talk about one of the most uncomfortable truths in adult friendships: loving your friends deeply while secretly feeling competitive, jealous, or resentful when they get things you want.

This short, snackable episode unpacks why these feelings are far more common than we admit and why they don’t mean you’re a bad friend or a bad person. Through psychology-backed insights on social comparison, self-esteem, scarcity mindset, and identity threat, you’ll learn why your friends’ success can feel like a personal failure, and how to turn that discomfort into self-awareness instead of shame.

In this episode, we cover:

• Why jealousy and love can coexist
• The psychology behind comparison in close friendships
• How low self-worth fuels competitiveness
• Why your friends’ wins trigger insecurity
• How to stop letting comparison damage meaningful relationships

Transcript

[00:00:00] If you have ever loved a friend, but still just secretly hoped that you were doing a little bit better than them, this episode is for you. 

Hello everyone. Welcome back to your regularly scheduled self-reflection. I am Tash, and this is things we say in therapy, snack size, deep dives. This is episode seven of the Snack Size Deep Dive series.

A little snackable deep dive

to help aid self-compassion and self-reflection for some uncomfortable truths.

Today we're talking about something that most people will never admit out loud,

feeling competitive with your friends. I love talking about things that people don't necessarily want to say out loud because I think it's so necessary to talk about these things. And [00:01:00] I recently saw this quote from a person I follow on Instagram. No one ever heals in silence, so let's talk about it.

Feeling competitive with your friends is very common. And there is a hidden meaning to this. It doesn't mean you're a bad person. It doesn't mean you don't love them,

but you're just a human, possibly, maybe insecure,

and comparing yourself to others is a psychological reflex. A couple of weeks ago, I did a snack size deep dive on the silent cost of comparison. I think this episode is very tied to that one, but just in the context of your close friendships,

Most people think that conflicting feelings can't authentically coexist at the same time,

but the reality is that most people do experience two truths at the same time.

In this context that we're talking about today, that would be loving a friend deeply and wanting the best for them

while simultaneously feeling a hit to the [00:02:00] ego.

And a sinking feeling whenever they get something that you want,

or possibly you feel like they're doing a bit better than you and it pisses you off instead of you being happy for them.

You don't want them to lose. You just don't wanna feel like you are behind. This feeling, or these coexisting feelings are rarely about a personal vendetta against them or secretly hating them, although that does happen.

This episode is about

your self concept and your internal benchmarks.

And it's about you needing to feel better than other people in order to feel secure about yourself. I used to think that I was a bad person for feeling this way, and that triggered a lot of self hate and wondering why I was like this,

but these things are normal.

You cannot grow into someone who truly loves and supports others. Without acknowledging that this is a common reality

and without acknowledging that you exhibit these behaviors.

It's okay to feel that mix [00:03:00] of happiness and discomfort,

but it's all in what you do about it.

It is all about what you do when you feel that split second shame or automatic reaction of

disappointment or

resentment towards somebody that you love that's doing well. That shame of why am I feeling like this?

I'd say this is one of the most common emotional contradictions in adult friendships because there's a lot of similarities between what people want, right? Happiness, money, success,

love, whatever it is. Every one of those things happens for different people at different times. Everyone's life path is different.

When people's timelines are mismatched, it can feel disappointing 'cause it can feel like someone's doing better than you simply because things happened in a different timeframe or it happened earlier on for them than it did you. So here are some psychological concepts of why we feel this way, why we have this automatic reaction. The first is social comparison [00:04:00] theory. Humans naturally track their status of how well they're doing by their comparison to other people.

The brain uses other people, especially those closest to you as a benchmark for how well you're doing.

For a deeper dive into comparison, like I said, you can go back and listen to snack size, deep dive number five, where I talk about comparison, specifically.

I talk about the silent cost of it, how it can affect your mental health and wellbeing without you even realizing it.

the reason that we do this the most with the people closest to us is because

friends feel like the closest mirror to what we should be.

This is why you tend to

mirror the behaviors of the people that you spend the most time with. Obviously, you know the most about them. You're a similar age. Most of the time

you're at a similar stage in life. Because of that, you may have similar goals.

It is easier and there's more to compare to because it's actually comparable because of the similar life stages.

Another psychological insight into this is that it can feel like [00:05:00] an identity threat.

When a friend or a loved one achieves something that you are insecure about or that you fear you will never have, it exposes a perceived deficit within your own life.

Which again is two contradicting truths, like I mentioned before. You love them and you want the best for them, but then it stabs at you because of your own feelings about yourself. Again, it's not about how you feel about them, although it can feel that way. It's actually about how you feel about yourself.

You think things like, if they can do it, why can't I? If they have it, why don't I?

Your nervous system treats it like a threat. Like if they have it, there's no way that you can, like there's not enough resources for both of you to have that, even though it's not like that.

It can also fuel this thing called confirmation bias. Which means that if you already think that you're not capable of having those things, of having love, of having success,

and you perceive someone as more successful than you because of [00:06:00] having those things,

it will confirm in your mind that you are not capable because you don't have them, when in fact, that's not true.

It is just when you scan the environment, your thoughts naturally gravitate to the things that you already think are true.

Therefore, if you think that you are not lovable, if you think that you'll never have love, and you see the people around you who you love and respect being in happy relationships. And you don't have that thing that will falsely confirm in your mind that you are not lovable and that you won't ever have that thing because you're naturally comparing yourself to others.

Having this confirmation bias, it helps us lose confidence and motivation in ourselves,

and that then fuels the confirmation bias more. Because when we lose confidence and motivation, we try less and we don't engage, we avoid, and so that further falsely confirms in your mind that you will never have that thing.

Another one is having a scarcity mindset.

Like I briefly mentioned just a second ago,

[00:07:00] there can be a subconscious belief that you have that

someone else gets something that you want before you, there's less left for you.

This feeling can be especially strong if you grew up in environments where approval and love resources felt scarce.

It is important to be wary that this emotional scarcity, it can follow you into your adult life even if you have a relatively stable life.

So it's really important that you try and catch these feelings because it's not true. The universe has endless resources for most things.

There will be room for you to make the life you want even if someone else has it first.

What you need to focus on is not whether you'll get it, but how you're gonna get there.

Something else I wanted to discuss is the connection between attachments and self-esteem. If your levels of self-worth are inconsistent, I or chronically low, you rely more heavily on external validation. And [00:08:00] comparisons in life in order to get you through.

We tend to use downward comparisons in order to make ourselves feel better, for example.

Comparing yourself to people who you deem less attractive than you in order to feel more attractive.

A downward comparison is when you compare yourself purposefully to people who you deem lesser than you in whatever area that you're insecure about in order to bring yourself up.

However, this tends to backfire a lot

Because then you also instinctually compare yourself to everyone.

Including those who you perceive as being better than you.

This then eradicates any kind of false confidence that you get from using downward comparisons.

The moral of the story here is to never, ever use comparison or external validation in order to fuel your confidence and self-esteem.

When you have high self-esteem, your friend success will feel inspiring or just like a neutral, neutral information. When you have low [00:09:00] self-esteem or a fragile self-identity, your friend's successes will feel like a personal failure, or you'll feel resentment towards them.

Again, this doesn't mean you don't love them. It's all to do with how you feel about yourself.

So I'm gonna hit you with some hard hitting, brutal truths. Now this is not to do with you disliking your friends. This is to do with your low self-esteem.

You feel terrible about yourself because you think that you should be where they are.

Competitiveness in friendships, and with loved ones.

It reveals your own neglected goals, your own unmade decisions,

or areas of your life where you've been avoiding taking action.

It reveals to you where you want to make a change, but you haven't and someone else has.

If you need your friends to stay behind you, or you need to perceive your friends as doing worse than you in order to have a friendship with them.

That's not a friendship problem. That's a self-worth problem.

Your friends wins, [00:10:00] your friend's success it doesn't highlight anything inadequate about you.

It highlights your insecurities. Those are different things.

feeling competitive with your friends is not the absence of love.

It is the presence of vulnerability.

If you perceive your friend as better than you, that doesn't mean that you are worse than them.

That just means you have a cool friend,

which by association makes you cool. A cool person isn't gonna be friends with uncool people. Don't let insecurities get in the way of that. Let it inspire you, instead.

Your friends are your closest mirrors. They reflect back to you what you want, what you feel, and where you feel inadequate.

Insecurity doesn't cancel your love for them, but your love for them also doesn't cancel your insecurities. Don't let insecurities damage a valuable friendship.

So how do we work through this? Step one is to stop moralizing your emotions. Feeling competitive doesn't make you a bad friend, and it doesn't make you a bad person either.

But be wary that you're not acting on your internal competitiveness [00:11:00] because your competitiveness is not with them, is with yourself.

Be self-aware and question those thoughts.

people who let jealousy and insecurity and resentment take over, they turn into complete dicks.

They turn into people who will put you down in order to make themselves feel better. People acting in malice or trying to sabotage you.

Acknowledge the feelings that you have, the competitiveness, the insecurity that you have privately,

and work on not taking action on them. It maybe talk to a professional or a safe person that you don't feel these feelings towards. I mean, I guess you could talk to the person who you are having these feelings towards if you think it's appropriate. But

a lot of the time it's best not to,

but only you can decide that.

Secondly, you need to identify your triggers behind the comparison. What is making you feel competitive with your friends?

You need to ask yourself things like,

why does their success hit a sore spot for me?

What does their achievement make me think about myself? What do I want that I'm afraid I won't [00:12:00] get? Use this information that you find out about yourself as information, as data to work on yourself, not as a tool to shame yourself for being human

competitive feelings and insecurities. They point directly towards areas for growth. It's gonna be uncomfortable, but it's necessary.

The discomfort is a good sign. Learn to sit with it.

These things that you're insecure about, they're not character flaws, they're things that you've been taught. There's a reason you feel that way. It's not your fault that you feel that way, but it is your responsibility to deal with them.

You need to focus on your own path more than you're focusing on other people's, because paths are not comparable. If you listen to snack size, deep dive five, I talk on how everyone's path is so different. Everyone has different experiences, different childhoods. They're treated differently by people. And so people's internal worlds are so different that the paths are just not comparable.

You have different [00:13:00] setbacks, different privileges.

You can't compare your path to anyone else's focus on your own.

Finally, you need to practice supporting people using softness and purposefully being there for people. It really reduces your defensiveness and being there for other people can feel really good if you're in the right mindset.

Friendships thrive when wins are shared and celebrated.

So just to summarize, competitiveness in friendship, it doesn't mean that you don't love that person.

It also doesn't necessarily mean that it's a bad friendship. It's just information about you.

Friendships become stronger and change for the better when you turn comparison into self-awareness.

Ask yourself where you're holding yourself back because you're spending too much time comparing yourself to others instead of focusing on your own path. Thank you so much for listening to Snack Size Deep Dive seven. Please share this with somebody who might be struggling with feeling competitive with people or [00:14:00] insecure about their own abilities.

Please follow and subscribe on whatever platform you are streaming this on. I'd love for more people to find this channel. Or comment if you resonated with anything in this episode, I'd love to hear from you. If this felt uncomfortable, that means something clicked. Sit with it. I'll see you again. Bye.