The 4 most important types of envy

These are the main types of envy that we can experience in contact with others.

They say that envy is very bad and, in part, they are right. At a glance we can say that there is an envy we feel towards someone who is simply better than us and we would like to be like them and then we have a more toxic envy, motivated by jealousy and even the desire not to wish well to the person we are envious of.

Depending on the person towards whom we feel this emotion, we can say that there are several types of envy. Next we will see what they are.

The 4 main types of envy and their effects.

Envy is a universal feeling. We may not like to admit it, but we all feel envious at some point in our lives. It is considered a negative feeling, which keeps us away from happiness..

This bad reputation of envy can be seen worldwide, since most of the world's religions consider this experience as a vice, an unworthy and immoral behavior. It is not strange to find in the codes of conduct of most faiths to consider envy as a capital sin, as is the case in Christianity.

We should not consider even the slightest feeling of envy as something intrinsically evil.. In fact, feeling a little envy is natural. For example, a study conducted in 2015 found that nearly three-quarters of its participants admitted to being envious of someone in the past year, whether the person they envied was close to them or an acquaintance with whom they had little relationship.

For this reason, first of all, it is important to highlight the idea that we can really talk about two types of envy: one innocent and the other harmful.

The innocent one would be the one we feel when someone we know seems to have better luck than us and we would like to be like him or her, such as seeing that he or she has a better salary, a beautiful body or has mastered several skills.We would like to be like him or her, such as seeing that he or she has a better salary, a beautiful body or is fluent in several languages.

On the other hand, the harmful one is the one that corrodes us, that obsesses us with other people's achievements.It makes us think so much about that person that it prevents us from going on with our lives. It is a toxic envy, harmful to our health and, if it gets out of hand, it may even be harmful to the person of whom we are envious.

You cannot be happy if you feel a corrosive envy for the achievements of others or for how others are. If the success of others corrodes us, we will never be able to feel satisfied with how we are.. Whether we are envious people or not, the first thing we have to do to recognize that we are envious is to differentiate between the types of envy that exist. Naturally, envy is not something easy to correct, but if you know what type you are feeling, perhaps you can do something about it.

1. Envy towards one's partner

Envy towards a partner is paradoxical, since it may at first at first glance, it may seem rare.How can you feel such a bad emotion towards the person you love and care about? How can the success of the person you wish the best for eat away at you?

It is normal to feel a little envy towards one's partner, as long as it is innocent and in the sense that "I wish I was as good as he/she is". However, the envy we want to talk about at this point is the bad kind, the toxic and not at all innocent, the kind that can feed the so dangerous jealousy.

Unfortunately, there are cases in which people may feel so envious of their lover's achievements that they may even wish something bad to happen to him or her, something that will harm him or her. A point of toxicity is acquired that can damage the relationship a lot.This is because wanting bad things to happen to your lover is not really love.

As a general rule, if someone feels this kind of envy towards his or her partner, that person will be toxic in other areas of his or her life. In fact, the only way a person can feel envy in their relationship is because they probably conceive of it in terms of a power relationship, that one is better than the other or that they have to constantly prove to each other who is achieving more success.

If the other person achieves more successes it is that she is the one who wears the "pants" in the relationship. Power is being questioned and that is when envy arises. Without entering into debates or controversies, it is common for this type of envy to occur more in men than in women, especially in heterosexual relationships.

2. Envy towards friends

Envy towards friends is common, occurring something similar to what happens with envy towards a partner. Ideally, it should not happen, because we are supposed to wish our friends the best and be happy for their achievements, but the truth is that we all feel envy towards our friends.But the truth is that we all feel that we deserve more than our loved ones or would like to be as lucky as they are.

We all have a friend whose life seems to be smiling on him every day. He has the best body, earns a lot of money, works at what he wants, has an attractive partner, travels... whatever he has is something that we, for the simple fact of not having it, gnaws at us inside and makes us envious.

Depending on the degree to which envy is given and manifested, it can be quite damaging among friends.. It is one thing to feel a certain envy because a friend has achieved something he or she wanted and another to feel that we are a shadow in our group of friends, that he or she is even the main protagonist of our life.

Rarely does envy towards a friend exceed the threshold of dangerous and obsessive, especially because there are always other friends who cheer us up a bit by smoothing out the rough edges. It is also thanks to those same friends that, seeing how they are, can make us feel better because we see that they do not have something that we do, which can raise our self-esteem a little and understand that we all have our strengths and weaknesses.

3. Envy towards peers

Envy towards colleagues, whether at work or in class, is much more common than the other two.. This is more easily produced because it does not necessarily imply a relationship of closeness, love or friendship. Feeling envy towards someone with whom we have little relationship makes us feel less guilty, and we do not consider it harmful to our relationship with her because, directly, there is none.

If well managed, envy towards colleagues can be something motivating, an incentive to try to stand out in what we are studying or in our job.. If we feel envy towards someone who is better than us, we may be motivated to try to give the best of ourselves with the clear intention of surpassing them, of becoming the ones people are envious of.

However, if we do not know how to manage this envy properly, it can make us bring out the worst in ourselves, earning the enmity not only of the person we envy but also of the rest of our colleagues. Our obsession with the person we believe is better than us, far from making us improve, harms our performance, even making us look bad.

4. Envy towards successful people

Finally, we have the envy towards successful people, which in fact overlap with the other forms of envy we have seen above.. If it is made towards a complete stranger this envy may be the least harmful to the person envied, such as a celebrity, but it can be very hard for the person who feels it.

The explanation for why it is especially painful for the one who feels it is simple. A successful person will very rarely be upset because there is someone who is envious of him and tries to hurt him. The envious person can do little towards a famous person who lives miles away from him.Besides, the envied person is used to arouse envy wherever he goes, so it is his daily bread. He does not suffer much for it.

On the other hand, the person who feels envy can suffer a lot because, no matter what he does, he will never be able to catch up with the successful person whose exploits and good fortune make him feel so much.

If he does not learn how to manage his envy, the envious person will gradually feel hatred and resentment, emotions that far from motivating him to progress in his personal life and try to be happy will cause him to become obsessed in the life of the person he envies, failing in the only life that should matter to him: his own.