:: the sabotage ::

How often do you find yourself squirming in your seat, your face feigned interest when a friend start telling you about how great her love life is?
How frequent do you find yourself wallowing in self-pity, thinking about how pathetic you are when you heard stories of the near-perfect life your friends apparently have been blessed with?
If the answer is very often and frequent for both, I'd say you have to stop this paranoia as studies have shown that people who falls into this envy trap may easily eat up their self-esteem, in turn sabotaging not only themselves but the relationship with others.

Apply that into my relationship 'context', I'd admit had I decide to let other people's happy love life affected me, I will be right on my way to a disastrous end.
For simple reasons.
The fact that the man and I only engaged in telephone conversations only when there is an urgency (conversations lasting less than five minutes), the I-Love-You that only comes once in every five months (if I'm lucky two), the weekly hour lunch meet-ups & the occasional dates, the need for personal space, will probably be seen as abnormal to most.
Yet this same man, with whom I exchange more curses than sweet nothings with, is the same person who nags until I get what I set to do accomplished, who offers the honest critique (means if its not good, its not good), who praises when its deserving, who plans for 'us', who in his words - I want this long term and that means doing what I need to do so we can enjoy our efforts in the future (though I liked to turn the tables around and asked instead, what if we don't get to see tomorrow).

The point is, we have one way or another, subconsciously dramatize our state of euphoria.
We tell the world how happy we are yet we prefer to hide our sadness.
We describe in lengthy narration of our perfect date yet chucked our problems in a place only we know.
We paint a beautiful picture of our partner and present it to everyone, excusing the flaws that may be obvious to others but not ourselves.
And with an array of adjectives to choose from, we project an image of a perfect 'the one'.
It's a human syndrome no one can run away from.
It may appear innocent enough until one decides to use another friend's life as a yardstick to measure her own happiness.
I've seen this quite often enough & I too had once be the girl who likes to compare.
Why can't I have what she has?
It gets ugly inside.

Every relationship works differently and so thus our life.
We can't oversimplify happiness judging from other people's stories.
What works for them may not necessarily work for us.
So the next time someone gushes out an account of her great love life, listen to it carefully and spare yourself from the envy trap.

For she/he, like you, leads a life that's been promised its ups and downs.
And who knows, he/she is simply telling all the details so as to feel better about him/herself.
Oh come on, we need some validation at times.

That said.
Seek your own happiness and you'll be amaze that its been there within you all this while.
If only... you had looked closer enough.