How can you be happy for someone if you're also very jealous?

I’ve been there

Put yourself in your own shoes. Now, what would you do if tomorrow you found out you were pregnant? How would you want others to react to your news?

BTW—As long as your desire to have a baby is this strong, it’s unlikely you’ll be able to put your jealous thoughts behind you, IMHO & experience

I think what you are feeling is completely normal.
Can I ask why you guys don’t have a child? Do you have fertility issues? I understand those issus are very hard to cope with. And it’s okay to be jealous when someone else is pregnant.
You are not self centered, not in a bad way anyways. You recognize that you don’t want to offend her, and that’s a good sign.
I would do sort of what @SpatzieLover suggests, put yourself in her shoes. When you do get pregnant, you’re going to want to shout it from the rooftops. Let her have her happy moments. Yours will come.

If she’s your co worker and maybe also a friend then she knows how you’re feeling. I don’t think very many people would judge you harshly, more would understand.

Can you just tell her that? How would she react if you said, “I’m so happy for you but I have to admit I’m also so jealous”?

@casheroo: We can’t have a child yet because we’re long distance until he graduates.

@nikipedia: She’s the type that would understand… and she already knows how I feel about wanting to have a baby because I talked to her about it long before this. I just can’t get past sounding like or coming off as a total asshole.

It sounds too simple, but don’t be jealous. Think of the good things in your life. Think about what it will be like when you get pregnant. Go out and do something that a pregnant person cannot do.

Her having a baby has nothing to do with you having a baby.

You are deciding to wait. If a baby was totally paramount in your lives, you would quite and move to where he is going to school and get pregnant. Now, I am not saying that is the right thing to do, I am just saying it could be done.

So, someone else’s happiness has nothing to do with your unhappiness.

If you can’t speak to her without showing your green, buy a card and leave it on her desk.

your heart has to be in the right place.

1. if you just can’t stand to see what someone else has accomplished, you are the so-called “jealous type.”

2. if you can celebrate what somebody has that you don’t, eventually, in the long run, you’ll reap the same, but it doesn’t matter to you.

footnote: when i say “it doesn’t matter to you,” i mean: you need to be a positive element with high self-esteem and that “i can do that too,” attitude. your achievements have inspired and empowered me. i can do this. i know i can. i celebrate you. shake my hand. kiss my cheek. let that mojo rub off on me. i have what you have because i believe!

Sometimes being self-centered is appropriate.

I understand where you are coming from. Myself and my husband had two losses. One of them very dramatic. So after our losses when people would announce their pregnancy it would be so emotion filled for me and I would be horribly jealous. It is such a difficult personal thing to deal with.

What I did was try and just accept that it is absolutely okay to be jealous and feel emotional. That is your human right. Other than that I would go get a card that says how happy I am for them. But other than that I wouldn’t engage in any baby talk. If I was close to the person I might apologize for being emotional but otherwise I figured they could just deal with it.

Also if this happens in the workplace and it is entirely too frustrating then you do have recourse. I just went to a training and they were discussing how inappropriate it can be to discuss your ‘new baby or pregnancy’ in the workplace. It was a talk through the Employee Assistance Program on appropriate workplace boundaries. You could always recommend that to your employer.

I would also like to add that I find some of the responses on here insensitive. I know they are not intended to be that way but people who have never experienced infertility or loss sometimes just ‘don’t get it’. It is absolutely not as simple as ‘don’t be jealous’. And when someone says ‘how would you want them to react to your good news’ my reaction is always, i would completely understand if they were jealous and personally I would try to hold back as much as possible talking about my good news anyhow.

Oh, how I remember those times… both feeling jealous of ALL my friends (who were having babies left and right while we were waiting), and being on the receiving end of the jealousy when I finally was pregnant. In both those types of instances, the jealousy and assholeishness passed… it was just the initial reaction. Hopefully, it will be the same for you. Good friends understand, and will forgive you. Try very hard to hold your tongue in the meantime. I know that’s easier said than done. :(

It sounds like you’re really more jealous that your life isn’t more settled. Just out of curiosity, why not move to where your boyfriend is in grad school, get married and start a family? When my husband was in grad school, most of our friends were married and had babies. And lived in apartments. And had one car. And ate peanut butter. And wouldn’t have had it any other way.

You can if you choose that path. Bitterness is defeatist. Celebrate happiness and you will be a winner.

I CAN HELP YOU >: )

@windex: I’m sorry, but you have no tact whatsoever.

@poofandmook I’d go with @tinyfaery‘s suggestion. If I could, I’d be out eating a huge sushi dinner, and have a huge alcoholic drink. I’d also take Advil for whatever the heck I wanted, and get dental work done. Ahh. Having a child is beautiful, but pregnancy itself does suck a lot. ;)

@Pandora: because he’s not in grad school. If it was grad school, I would.

I’m sorry, please forgive me. Just trying to cheer her up.