Love Through The Lens

Is everyone else’s relationship better than yours?

- Sarah Garden

It’s my birthday. I wake up early and do the same thing I do every morning – reach for my phone. Someone’s at the beach. Someone’s having a baby. Someone’s husband left them a bunch of flowers before heading to work, “just because”. Cute.

I get up and walk through to the living room where my husband is making me a cup of tea. “Happy birthday, babe!” he says, throwing his arms around me. I look over his shoulder and scan the room. There’s no gift in sight. No card. No flowers.

I think of my newsfeed and the stunning bouquet of white roses on my old school friend’s kitchen table. My rational mind tells me that my husband probably has something planned for tonight and that I shouldn’t get upset. But it’s too late. A knot is already forming in the pit of my stomach. I don’t even get flowers on my birthday, let alone “just because”.

The need for comparison

We all know Theodore Roosevelt’s famous quote: “Comparison is the thief of joy.” Yet, as as human beings we’re hardwired to measure ourselves against others. “Our motivation for social comparison is often to improve ourselves or bolster our self-esteem,” says Tara Wyne, clinical psychologist at The LightHouse Arabia. “We engage in comparisons with others on our intelligence, wealth, appearance and success.”

With the average person spending two hours per day on social media, we’re constantly fed images of other people’s lives to measure ourselves against – and not just close friends. Acquaintances, work colleagues, someone you met in Greece in 2009… people who you never actually speak to anymore. But is the Clarendon-filtered version of a relationship a realistic image for comparison?

Relationship insecurity