You would think that the people in your life would be supportive of your success rather than envious, right? That’s often a case of wishful thinking, as many of those who are closest to us end up being jealous of our achievements instead. Sure, some of them may try to hide it with outpourings of congratulations and celebratory fruit baskets, but others might start to act very strangely around you instead.
Watch out for the behaviors listed below, as they’re telltale signs that those around you actually envy your success.
1. They find something negative to say about you in public.
When and if you gain success or prestige in a particular endeavor, this person will try to find a way to cut you down in other people’s eyes. This can occur in person or online and has the potential to be extremely damaging to your self-esteem. Insecure people with low self-esteem seem to thrive on belittling those whom they see as happier or more successful in life. As Neuro Launch tells us, by making others feel small, they can feel dominant and powerful in comparison.
This can have devastating effects on people who may be quite fragile despite the success they have achieved. A perfect example of this is Mikayla Raines: a successful YouTube and Instagram wildlife rehabber who gained fame through her work rescuing foxes and other fur-bearing animals. She was harassed and bullied online, even by other rescuers, which her husband reports was a big contributor to her taking her own life.
2. They try to taint or sabotage your success.
According to Psychology Today, those who secretly envy your success will often try to sabotage it so they won’t feel as bad about their own shortcomings. How this type of sabotage may manifest will depend entirely on the situation, but here’s an example: Many years ago, a “friend” and I spent several months making jewelry to sell at the festivals we would be attending over the summer. I had experience in metalsmithing and did some really cool things with silver and semiprecious gemstones, while he mostly worked with hemp cord and wooden beads.
When it came time to sell these pieces, we took turns at the booth so we could each have a chance to watch bands play, get food, etc. Well, it turned out that when he was manning the sales, he sold my items for far less than his own and gave some away as freebies. As a result, I ended up making significantly less money than he did, even though my pieces had cost more to create and were of higher quality than his own.
3. They inevitably find the flaws in your success.
When you achieve something amazing, they’ll find the flaw in it and keep bringing your attention back to it. For instance, you might have won the gold medal in Olympic archery, but they’ll point out that your elbow was too high when you drew the bow.
Similarly, that award-winning novel you wrote was great and all, but there was a typo on page 332 that really should have been caught either by you or a more competent editor. No matter what it is you’ve achieved, they’ll hone in on the one detail that wasn’t absolutely perfect and hold it against you.
4. They gloss over it and bring attention back to themselves.
People like this are so secretly envious about your success that they’ll try to gloss over it entirely to bring attention back to themselves and their own perceived achievements. They’ll pretend to be happy for you and will congratulate you briefly, but then place much more emphasis on what’s going on in their own world.
A good example of this is a person who might offer you a congratulatory hug for buying your first house, and then giddily share the news that they’re getting married! That obviously outshines the silly little dwelling you bought, and they’ll need your help picking an outfit, choosing colors, catering, and so on.
5. They remind you of who/how you were in the past.
Situations like this often occur when you start to outshine those close to you who used to feel that they were in a position of authority over you. On the most basic level, they’re trying to put you back in the mindset you were in when you were in a lesser place, i.e., when you were younger, physically smaller, or dependent, and they felt superior to you. They want you to be submissive, with low self-confidence, in order to feel better and stronger in themselves. Essentially, the smaller you feel, the bigger they do.
Envious parents will often do this with their adult children instead of being supportive. You might call them to tell them how excited you are that you got a promotion at work, and they’ll respond by reminding you about the tantrum you had at a restaurant on your fifth birthday, so it’s a good thing your boss doesn’t know what you’re really like.
6. They accuse you of privilege or imply that they’re more deserving than you are.
You might have worked hard for years to attain the success you’ve achieved, and someone will imply that you had success handed to you because of X life factors that you have zero control over. Furthermore, they may insist that they should have achieved this success instead of you because they need or deserve it more, even if this success was based entirely on individual hard work and merit.
Their envy and resentment shine through a lens of entitlement and victimhood, so try not to take it personally. If people like this can’t be happy for you and acknowledge how much effort you put into succeeding, you’ll never be able to break them from that mindset with logic or reason.
7. They live vicariously through your achievement.
Parents, siblings, and family friends often do this. Basically, they treat your success as if it were their own, and play up everything they did to help you achieve your goal. For example, if you’ve achieved athletic success, it was because they fed you well and insisted that you take classes on weekends, even though you didn’t want to. Similarly, if you succeeded academically, it’s due to their genetic intelligence that you obviously inherited, and their unfailing support of your studious endeavors.
In reality, they might have prevented you from eating or sleeping enough, forced you to do chores instead of allowing you to focus on your studies, and told you countless times that you were a useless failure. It’s only after you gained success (and potentially wealth) that they insist that they were always your greatest fans and supporters.
8. They do something outlandish to draw attention back to themselves.
This type of behavior is extraordinarily childish and is often done by jealous siblings or other family members who can’t handle you being more successful or garnering more attention than they do. If something important happens in your life to mark a great moment of success, they have to make a scene or have a crisis so everyone realizes that they’re much more important than you are.
For instance, they might have a health crisis on your graduation day, so your family members have to rally around them instead of you, or show up drunk at an event that honors you so that everyone pays attention to (and remembers) them instead.
9. They ignore you.
A telltale sign that someone envies your success is that they mysteriously disappear from your life. You might have been close friends for years, and suddenly they’ve ghosted you for no reason you can discern, or they only respond to your texts with thumbs-up or smile emojis, if at all.
When this happens, it’s usually because they can’t handle the success you’ve achieved and distance themselves from you for their own well-being. It might hurt them too much to see you succeed when they feel like a complete failure, or it might actually be altruistic on a self-pitying level: in their mind, they may feel like such a loser in comparison that they don’t want to drag you down by association.
Final thoughts…
If people in your life are behaving in any of the ways mentioned here, that says a great deal about who they are and how they truly feel about you. While it may be disheartening to realize that the people you thought were your fans and advocates are actually hoping that you’ll fail, keep in mind that it’s because of issues they’re dealing with, and it has nothing to do with you.
As the author Zig Ziglar once said, “Remember, the only taste of success some people have is when they take a bite out of you.”
