I don’t even like my friends’ house that much. So why do I feel so envious of them?

A little while ago, a feeling I’ve tried hard to erase from my life reared its ugly head: envy. Seething, roiling envy. It appeared after I saw a couple I’m friends with announce they’d bought a house. A big, flashy, five-bedroom house complete with manicured gardens and pool. A “dream house”.

I was shocked that my first reaction – even before happiness for them – was envy. I know that envy comes from wanting what someone else has and, while their house is beautiful, I love the house that my husband and I have. We knew the second we attended the inspection that it was our forever home. And it’s brought us nothing but joy, peace and security since we bought it. So why, then, was the green-eyed monster waking up inside me?

My instinctive reaction rattled me. I’ve long been of the belief that the grass is greener where you water it, and if you concentrate on keeping your own grass watered and fertilised, you won’t notice, or care, when your friends are growing a jungle. Pardon the extended metaphor.

Because it’s true that truly happy people rarely feel threatened by others’ success. And why would they? They’re content and fulfilled, so they want others to feel the same.

In the past, I’ve often utilised the advice a friend gave me: to use my feelings of envy as a signpost for where I’m not fully content in my own life. For example, feeling envious of a friend’s new job announcement could mean that I’m not feeling satisfied in my own career. Instead of seeing my envy as a negative, turn it into a tool to help improve my life.

But in this situation, that wouldn’t work. I don’t envy their house; I don’t prefer it to my own.

So then, what was going on? I dug deeper, and there I found the small voice within me that was whispering: “Are they doing better than you? Are they happier than you? More successful? Are you falling behind?”

There’s always a little voice within us – a fear – that others are doing better than us. Even if we’re pretty happy with how our life is going.

I know that we, as humans, naturally compare ourselves to others to judge how well we’re doing in life. There’s a lot of internal bartering that we do: he’s got a better job than me, but I get more flexibility to spend time with my kids … They live in a better area, but we’ve got a bigger house.

This comparison culture has always been around, but since the advent of social media, the ability to witness others’ success is literally at our fingertips. It’s hard not to get sucked in by the highlight reels that we’re fed across social media: the announcements of job promotions, new houses, pregnancies, glamorous holidays – or even just the constant parade of meals out, grinning selfies with groups of friends or the stats of today’s run time.

It’s easy to start to believe everyone is living a richer, more exciting, better life than you. It’s the myth that other people “have it all”. Even when you know, intellectually, that that can’t be possible, part of you thinks, “But what if their life really is that perfect?”

When people only post the good things happening in their lives – something I’m also guilty of doing, because who wants to share the bad stuff in our lives online, rather than talking directly to a few trusted people? – it’s easy to believe that only good things are happening in those people’s lives. The mindset is insidious.

Envy and comparison are things I was hoping to have left behind by this stage of my life. But it’s not that easy. And, like most things, it only gets more thorny and fraught the older we get.

What’s helped me – aside from limiting my social media time – is exploring the messy, complicated, shameful feelings that these emotions can bring up in my latest book, The Couples Retreat. A group of old friends go on a holiday together to beautiful Kangaroo Island, off South Australia’s coast, and find that their past jealousies, rivalries and insecurities are still simmering just under the surface. And while my envy issues with my friends won’t end quite as explosively as my characters’, it’s a good reminder that these emotions, while not comfortable or often desirable, are very human.

A few weeks ago, my husband and I were invited to visit my friends’ new house. As I walked up to their towering front door, house-warming gift in hand, I braced myself for waves of envy to hit me. But, to my surprise, they didn’t. I waited for them to roll over me as my friends took us on the grand tour through the sprawling, meticulously decorated house; as they served us dinner from their designer kitchen; as we swam in their gently glowing, crystal blue pool. But still, they didn’t come.

Instead, as I watched them share a secret, contented smile while they observed us sitting around their expansive dining room table, and move proudly through the beautiful home they worked so hard for, I realised that I didn’t feel envious, after all. All I felt for my friends was happiness.

The Couples Retreat (Penguin Random House) by Mercedes Mercier is out now.

Get the best of Sunday Life magazine delivered to your inbox every Sunday morning. Sign up here for our free newsletter.