Best friend’s surprise pregnancy triggers new dad’s lifelong rivalry. 'He always one-ups me.' AITA? + UPDATE
"My best friend is gonna be a dad in the same time than me and I hate it."
I feel like a terrible person for feeling that way.
I hate everything about and it makes me a very bad friend.
Here is some context.
My friend and I always had the same interests in many things. He also always had a financial situation better than mine, and loves to have nice things.
This creates situations where whenever I have something, he has the better one. Like, for example : i just bought a good computer, a couple months later he shows up with a better one. A nice great camera with a nice lense? He'll get the newer more advanced one.
Anything I'll have he'll have it too but just better. I don't want to believe he does it on purpose, we just have the same interests and he has more money so it does just make sense.
Anyway, this became a running joke between my wife and I : for a long time, I was having a successful relationship with my her, and he was struggling to keep a girlfriend.
So when he finally found "The one", 10 months ago, we joked about it because she was a single mom with had a 5 years old daughter. So we joked that "Ok, he had to 1-up you on this as well: you're married to me so he had to find someone that would push him to the next step immediately".
And so that was the joke for everything, and it was just a joke. When we decided to try for a baby, we joked about it too : "You'll see that when I'll be pregnant he'll show up with twins".
Well you read the title. When I knew I was going to be a dad, I was very excited and I told him the news. I was feeling great about it, I was thinking this would be an amazing moment. Him and his girlfriend asked question, she gave us advices, they were great. And at some point : "well he or she is going to have a friend I guess".
And now I hate myself for the following : I was crushed inside. It was no longer a special announcement, it became another thing we'd have in common. I stayed polite and played along but I was not happy at all about it. They didn't plan to do it. They didn't do it just because we wanted one. It just happened.
And yet I have this feeling that it's exactly what happened : he went in his 30s with no stable relationship, met someone just to move in with her kid 3 months later, then have a kid with her NOT EVEN A YEAR into their relationship.
I hate every single word that I wrote in this post.
Since he announced the news to me, I don't want to speak about it at all with him, I barely want to talk to him, and I'm just focusing on my wife and my future kid. I put all my energy into her. Just I don't have anyone to share my joy with now, and it's my fault.
Now, he comes up to me telling me everything he plans, the shopping he's gonna do for the baby, the doctor's appointments and I don't want to tell what I'm doing or what we're planning because that's gonna be something he'll compare and comment about.
Just yesterday he told me that it looked like I didn't care about the first ultrasound appointment just because I said that I cared more about knowing that the baby is ok than seeing the pictures, because I don't think I'll be able to understand what I'll be seeing anyway.
I took it very wrong and blocked him.
This is my one and only time that I'm going to have a first kid and I'm totally ruining my experience with those thoughts.
Here is what readers had to say in response to the OP’s initial post:
"Comparison is the thief of joy."
Right? Someone else always has more of something or have something different that you don't have so yeah, you could always compare yourself to oblivion. Come one the grass might seem to be greener on the other side but you have your own lawn to take care of.
You and your wife need to stop this jokes even between yourselves because this lowkey just sounds as jealousy masked as “jokes”. I get that you guys have the feeling he is copying but you said it yourself after a LONG struggle he found a relationship with a woman that had a 5 years old.
If he were copying I doubt he would even go for a single mom, you guys are just projecting everything he does onto yourself.
The next day, the OP returned with an update.
Yesterday I made a post about how I was feeling like a terrible person for not being happy for my friend having a kid in the same time than me. I always had the (probably false) impression that he was trying to one-up me on everything, and even though I knew this was probably not the case here, something inside me screamed that this was the final straw.
Commenters helped me a lot to bring me back to reality. Judgements were made about me some were wrong but most of them were true. I already planned to take an appointment with my therapist before posting but I took it right after.
In the meantime, I couldn't speak to my friend about it because I feel too ashamed of my behaviour and maybe some things are better left unsaid. However I did apologise to him for my recent behaviour. Other events had occurred that made me cold towards him, and I explained myself. He appreciated a lot my apologies, me acknowledging that I wasn't a good friend.
I spoke to my wife about it, and she was very supportive. I told her basically what you guys told me, that I was going to have a kid, that I didn't have a do-over on this one and that I didn't want to completely miss the moment just because my mind was not in the good place.
I told her that I booked an appointment to the therapist in order to refocus on our kid, and she appreciated this. Even though she wasn't as brutal as you, she agreed with all of your advices (she didn't see the post, I just told her the lessons I learnt from it).
Also, yesterday something very important happened. The first ultrasound appointment. This was incredible. Beforehand, I was not especially excited about it because I had a misconception of what it would be.
I thought I was just going to see a few still pictures of the embryo that I wouldn't be able to understand because I thought it'd be 3 blurry pixels in front of a noisy background.
However, this was much more than this, this was a live video of those 3 blurry pixels, where the doctor could explore in 3 all dimensions, I saw it alive, I saw his heart beating, we measured it, and we heard his heart!
What can I say ? Nothing else matters now. I don't care about my friend's actions. My baby is in good shape, my wife is healthy and that's all that matters. He's the only thing in my mind now, after the echography.
I'll still go to my therapist, but the heartbeat I saw and heard yesterday already accomplished so many things. Thanks for you honestly, thanks for those many quotes that I'll remember. Sometimes we are not the good person in the room, but we can try to be better.
Here is what readers had to say in response to the OP’s update:
Enjoy being a dad. Focus on what matters.
I get it. Envy is absolutely soul crushing.
Im glad the OP was able to recognize that they needed help.
Call me paranoid but I really have a feeling that OP buying something/achieving some goal made his "friend" do it too, on a bigger scale. I wouldn't say to spite him, just because friend thought it's neat.
No matter what, I'm glad OP is working on bettering himself. Hopefully the friendship will turn out for the better. My toxic self could never, I'd probably ghost the friend.