The Relationship Room Presents:

Someone posted that they just bought a house. In the comments you see things like: how dare you be happy. That's where this episode starts, a real online story about a woman who admits she got jealous of her own friend, and cut her off. Ada and Mo! use it to crack open the one thing nobody wants to admit out loud: Envy.

Mo! doesn't buy the excuse. If jealousy is reason enough to cut someone off, she says, you'd eventually be alone on an island, because there's always somebody doing better than you.

Then Ada makes a confession of her own: she’s not jealous of people’s looks, or their money. What catches her attention is their joy, the visual of it, the persona of a person who just seems happy no matter what.

Social media, Mo! says, didn't invent envy. It just multiplied it. Before, comparison meant keeping up with one neighbor. Now it means measuring yourself against thousands of strangers online, most of whom wouldn't say to your face what they'll type in a comment. Then Mo! goes even further back, to childhood, to parents comparing your report cards and IQ scores to those of other kids, to women raised to compete for one seat at the table. Comparison isn't a social media problem at its core. It's a self-worth problem, and social media just gave it more room to grow.

By the end, Mo! offers the only comparison she says is actually fair: not to the woman next to you, but to who you used to be.

Listen now to hear how it all connects.

• Read Blog here: https://mosibyl.medium.com/the-room-conversations-envy-comparison-and-self-worth-a658b87f06ed