When Love Feels Like Envy

“Are you trying to outdo me?” It’s not a joke. It’s never a joke. He says it with a chuckle, but you know that tone-the one that lands with weight, even when it comes wrapped in laughter. “You’ve got the same house as me now. Four-bed, same brickwork. Kitchen looks familiar too.” There’s a smirk. That look, familiar and smug, like he’s caught you copying him, like your success is something suspicious. Then comes the line: “What’s next, going for a BMW? You always wanted to be me, didn’t you?” And you laugh, because that’s the script. You shrug it off. You pretend not to feel the sting. But you do. You always do. And then it lands, the quieter hit. “That’s nice… how much did that cost?” Or, “I paid mine off early, you know. Just grafted. No handouts.” It sounds like conversation, like interest. But if you grew up inside this pattern, you know better. It’s not curiosity, it’s competition. A scoreboard. A warning that your story is getting too big, that your success is only acceptable if it stays smaller than theirs.

This is what it feels like to grow up with a narcissistic parent. Not always with shouting or slamming doors. Sometimes it’s much quieter. It’s a slight dig. Praise with a hook in it. Dismissive questions dressed as banter. It looks like love, but it feels like a warning. And that’s how it begins, with the small things. The way they ask what something costs, but not how proud you are. The way they praise your achievements, but only if they can remind you they did it younger, faster, or better. It’s not pride. It’s a measurement. And if you’re not paying attention, you’ll start shrinking yourself to ensure they still feel significant.

From our earliest moments, even before we can speak, we learn whether the world is safe and whether we are enough by how we are held, soothed, and seen. Early childhood isn’t just where we store memories; it’s where we build blueprints. In the UK, public health researchers have long stressed how formative this stage is, how emotional soil matters. Some homes feel like safety. Others feel like survival. And we don’t talk about that enough, how the emotional ground we grow in shapes us in ways we might not see until years later. Sometimes it only becomes apparent in therapy, reflection, or how we parent our children. And that’s when we start asking, wait… that wasn’t normal, was it?

There’s this image I come back to again and again: the family tree of psychology. Every family is a tree. The soil comprises the beliefs, behaviours, and patterns passed down from those who came before. The roots reach deep into that soil, carrying inherited stories, pain, pride, and protection mechanisms. The branches are us, the new generation, stretching upwards, searching for light. But a tree can only grow so tall if the branches below won’t hold the weight. And sometimes, those older branches resent that you’re growing taller than they ever could. Sometimes they don’t just withhold support, they actively strip your leaves. They criticise your growth, question your decisions, and devalue your beauty. That’s what narcissism in parenting feels like. It’s not always loud. Often, it’s subtle. Conditional. Undermining. You’re growing in soil that tells you to be grateful for sunlight, while quietly blocking the light from reaching you.

Before you can break that cycle, you have to see it. And that’s the hard part. Because when you’ve lived inside dysfunction, it doesn’t look like dysfunction. It seems like love with conditions. It feels like respect because you were never taught what safety feels like. It sounds like, “We don’t talk about those things in this family.” But here’s the truth: if you had to shapeshift to keep the peace, if your achievements were only celebrated when they didn’t threaten someone else, if your joy made someone uncomfortable, you were caught in something generational. Something much bigger than a few snide comments or mood swings. You were living inside someone else’s unfinished emotional work.

That emotional work becomes inherited, passed down like an heirloom. And the patterns are familiar, if not always easy to name. You might have been expected to regulate your parents’ emotions instead of vice versa. You may only have felt loved when you were obedient, helpful, or impressive. You might have been the emotional adult in the room, calming them down, protecting them, and deferring to their needs. Maybe you learned to dim your light to avoid becoming a threat. Perhaps you were guilt-tripped, gaslit, or punished for having boundaries. These aren’t just dysfunctional dynamics, they’re emotional legacies. And they’re more common than you might think. In the UK, one in four children grows up with a parent facing mental health challenges like depression or anxiety. For many of us, survival mode wasn’t temporary. It was home.

Sometimes, the people who were meant to love us the most didn’t have the tools to do it properly. They weren’t evil, but they weren’t emotionally grown either. So their fear became control. Their insecurity became criticism. Their envy became your burden. They handed you a heavy coat, and you wear it, even on the warmest days. It might look like people-pleasing. Or guilt when you set a boundary. Or shame when you feel proud of yourself. That’s how deep this stuff goes. Children raised under narcissism often carry two invisible burdens into adulthood: the pressure to shine, but only in acceptable, non-threatening ways, and the guilt of ever outgrowing the role they were given. But here’s the truth: you don’t have to carry that coat forever.

This is the moment that changes everything. The moment you realise it was never yours to carry. And now, you can choose to set it down. Breaking the cycle doesn’t always mean confrontation or cutting people off. Sometimes it’s quieter than that. Sometimes it’s just choosing to live differently. It starts with awareness, seeing the pattern. Then comes the unlearning. You permit yourself to need more. You let yourself be proud. You stop apologising for being whole. And with that, you begin to grow again. Even traits that took root in childhood, such as anxiety, self-doubt, and perfectionism, can shift. Research shows that personality isn’t set in stone. It’s a lifelong conversation between nature and nurture. New growth is always possible with enough love, reflection, and support.

If you’re lucky or brave, you learn to parent in a new way. Not just your children, but yourself. You stop measuring your worth by someone else’s pride. You stop waiting for praise from people who never learned to give it. You build a home that feels different from the one you came from — not perfect, but safe. You become the branch that holds the next one up.

You can change the shape, because the family tree doesn’t have to stay the same. You can heal the soil. You can let new leaves grow, ones no one takes from you. And when the time comes, and someone says, “Are you trying to outdo me?” you’ll know the answer.

No. I’m just finally becoming me.