Seeking psychological help: Tricks to deal with being really envious?

[Gary_T2018]

I'll post a hastily pieced together text here and may update it later as I go. Mod please don't move or delete this, it's not a serious psychological subject and I'm very, serious about my stressful situation and a potential depression episode so I'm not joking.Basically, I keep running into living examples of well, individuals with less than tiptop social standings, pardon my expression, bagging babes that are completely out of their league. Now that I've established the theme of this post, I'd like to provide a bit more context. I'm from a 3rd world Asian country (no not India or Thailand), there are girls from America who completely lowballed themselves and went for for example delivery boys here. And here's the kicker, quite often these guys are the ones that got picked up (ye know, Asians being shy and everything). Basically, it's absolutely fair to say that those guys got lucky by being at the right place and the right time.And that's not the worst part that got on my nerve. The worst part is that, some American girls apparently did not have the best experience growing up in the States, so they deliberately seek out guys with questionable social status, once again I beg your pardon for my obnoxious elitism, to either get back at their daddy or whatever they want to take revenge on. I know what you are going to say: So she's self-destructive. Well watch her life go down in flames then! Except no - once they started a serious relationship, some got children out of wedlock, they shape up, so they actually end up living a fairly fulfilling life with their undeserving (sorry for the impolite wording here) husbands.I'm a professional, I have a career, my income is solid in the top 1% in my country, so first world wages, I have a great, not just decent, a great sense of humor, I have a personality, I rarely take offense, I have a strong sense of justice, I go to social occasions and I chat girls (expatriates of course) up. I am nowhere near ugly. I have a strong sense of responsibility.Yet I had no luck. Of course I'm a flawed individual, just like most human beings are, and I'm able to realize my flaws. I'm currently mad with envy, that's a glaring flaw. But if being flawed is my reason for having no luck in the dating scene, what makes some guy that doesn't work a stable job, make peanuts, insular, one-dimensional, barely average looking, too timid to pick up girls, can't even speak fluent English?And I have this mounting fear that girls do not go for "great guys". That your being an upstanding member of your society, that your stable job and great income is a solid turn-off for not all, but perhaps most girls. "What do you do?" "I'm an engineer" "Oh." Girls I ran into not only don't find that appealing, they exhibit this antagonizing, somewhat vindictive mood. I used to think "girls fall for bad boys" are exclusive to sophomore age groups and it's a really misogynist, disrespectful stereotype but increasingly I'm thinking maybe there's a lot of truth to it?Thank you for putting up with me so far and please bear with me a bit longer. Now, like most members here, I have a hard background in science. So, the rational part of me successfully and correctly analyzed the situation: these are sporadic, discreet, uncorrelated and trivial cases, it's statistically unsound, therefore cannot be used as support or evidence for anything, and you must look at the overall trend, that most American/Foreign girls in your country tend to go for successful guys.You may find this analysis fairly reasonable, but! Like a normal human being, I also have this emotional part. Does that conclusion soothe my emotional part? Not really. Not at all. My envy is beginning to have negative impact on my emotional well-being and my work performance. I can't concentrate. You are free to mock me and ridicule me, like I said I'm not the kind of person that takes offense easily, I'll probably laugh at it and with you. I'm posting this thread to ask for tricks (and advice) that you folks may have employed in the past to deal with a situation like this. There are a lot of things that used to upset me in the past that I matured out of, envy unfortunately, isn't one of them, I think there's evolutionary significance to it? Because it fuels competition and competition is part and parcel of evolution.

Some get what I cannot with years of effort by being at the right time and the right place. Yea I know it's a cliche but life is so cruel and unfair it hit me a bit too hard. I'm beginning to buckle under the intense irony alone.P.S. I think I owe everyone an explanation why I'm trying to date American girls. It's a long story, and you need to give me the benefit of the doubt and just take my words for it. To make it as succinct as possible: I was impressed by how nice Americans can be, I simply knew a ridiculous amount about America and it's too late for me to start learning about other places, and in my culture marriage is considered a business interaction, marrying for love is frowned upon, this would sound to Americans patently abusrd but actually is pretty common in Asia, if you are fimiliar with the culture here. Needless to say, that leads to... problems, bad ones.

Sorry for my vent, I just don't feel so well. Any help would be greatly appreciated. Believe me I struggled pretty hard before posting this, it's not a sudden impulse. I have swallowed a lot of pride to do what I just did.

 

[berkeman]

We will not be able to help you with all of these issues here, sorry. After a Mentor discussion, we would like to recommend this book: Coping with Envy by Windy Dryden. (He's a famous psychologist.) https://www.amazon.com/dp/1847091024/?tag=pfamazon01-20

Perhaps it can be helpful. Please also consider talking to your family doctor about these feelings -- they may be able to refer you to further resources that can help. Take care.