Ask Sam letter

Hello,

Thank you for writing to me about the jealous feelings you’re having towards your friend. When someone else starts dating the person you like that can feel really hard.
It can be difficult to see other peoples' happiness or involvement in a relationship when it’s something you long for yourself. Feeling jealous doesn’t make you a bad or selfish person. It’s a feeling that most people experience at one time or another. I think it’s really positive that you’ve named the feeling and recognised it for what it is. The hard part is knowing what to do with jealous feelings.

Seeing your friend and this boy together is likely to be tricky at first. You might decide it will be easier to stay away from them for a while but that might be difficult if this is a good friend. Perhaps you could think about talking to your friend in private about how you feel? What do you think they would say? If you don’t want your friend to know that you like this boy too, you could put your feelings into a letter, and then tear it up. Sometimes just letting our feelings out can help them to feel more manageable. It might be that there is another friend who is outside the situation that you could share your feelings with. It could be good to have someone else who could support you while you get used to their relationship.

Jealousy can make you see things in an unrealistic and unhelpful way. It would be easy to imagine that being with this boy will make your friend incredibly happy and that they will always have a great time together. Actually, there will be good things and bad things about their relationship, just like any other couple. Feeling jealous might also make you start to compare yourself with your friend. That’s not a helpful way to think either. You and your friend will both have different qualities, and you will both be good at different things, and have different interests. Your friend is the one who is in a relationship at the moment, but that may well change in time!

Writing to me has given you a chance to start talking about something that feels very hard and emotional for you. Do you think you could take the next step and either phone or have a 1-2-1 chat with one of the counsellors? It would be a way to talk about how you feel and how it might affect your relationship with your friend and your life in general. Also, it might help you feel you have some options you can think about. Finally, if you haven’t already seen it, there is information in Explore about friendships as well the friends message boards that you might find helpful.

Take care,

Sam