Friend acting like she’s better than me

[sapphirerose]

I have a good friend I’ve been close to for 11 years now (we’re both female and in our early twenties). We went to secondary school together. She has now finished university and currently works full-time as a teacher. I’m actually still in university, because I started it later after taking two gap years to work out what I wanted to do. I’ve now found my passion and love what I study, and will be finished next year.

 

Anyway, when my friend and I catch up these days (especially in a group), she kind of tries to act like she’s better or smarter than me, just because she has a ‘real adult job’, and I’m still studying. Mind you, I do work part-time in retail right now. It’s just this vibe I get from her through the way she talks to me and how much she talks. She CONSTANTLY talks about her teaching - it’s basically the only thing she talks about - sometimes in quite an arrogant way.

 

Even if we discuss other topics, I’ve noticed she often tries to subtly ‘prove’ me wrong whenever I make a factual statement or something. Even if I’m talking about my area of study, she will always try to show or prove she already knows what I do about it all. She tries to make it seem like she knows more than me about everything in general, and it’s very off-putting. I don’t know why she acts like this now.

 

This could be unrelated, but the only reason I can come up with as to why she’s feeling competitive is perhaps because she’s unhappy in some way about the fact that I’ve had several relationships and she’s never been on a single date with anyone. What are your thoughts? I believe nobody is better than anyone else - we’re all on different journeys. While we still have laughs and good chats, her behaviour has begun to annoy me. I don’t know how to approach this, as she has always been a loyal friend to me and we’ve been through a lot together. Any advice?

[d0nnivain]

Gently call her out on it. When she does this, softly say to her, "Why do you do this, make me feel wrong / sad / bad? It hurts my feelings & I wish you would stop."

[Shindig]

People who are economically more advantaged tend to confuse who they are with what they do. Telling people your profession is a form of status signaling as long as you’re a doctor or a lawyer or something like that and not a toilet salesman.

 

I think she’s feeling insecure for some reason and is taking it out on you, but I think you’ll get more fulfillment from asking yourself what your limit is. I do think it’s appropriate to gently call her out on it and you’ll learn a lot about who she is by how she responds. Love is a kind of stored up good will in these scenarios and it sounds like she’s blowing through it at an alarming rate.

 

I had a similar experience when I admonished a good friend for using the term “PTSD” to describe her anxiety. I approached it with empathy and said, “Hey, I didn’t realize you’d been diagnosed with PTSD. I can recommend some good group therapy that helped me a lot with mine. Are they medicating you?” She immediately walked it back and explained that she was “exaggerating”. In the following weeks, she apologized “that my feelings were hurt” instead of Making a genuine apology that would connect the fact that she was diminishing the diagnosis of PTSD by using it in the context of hyperbole, the fact that I was at one point diagnosed with PTSD and she was inadvertently diminishing me and what she was really sorry for was hurting my feelings, not just that for some mysterious reason, unrelated to her, “my feelings were hurt”.

 

She started down that path when she started graduate school to get her masters in journalism. Ironically I had already finished my PhD and was working full time as an editor for various scientific journals. I wonder if I made her feel self conscious and it was just time for us to grow apart.

 

It hurt. I mourn the loss. I console myself by chanting that only have time for people who enrich me. I hope you find yourself in that luxurious position too and I hope she finds herself in the camp of people who enrich you.