We’d all like to think that our partners will be supportive of us. Unfortunately, that’s not always the case.

I know that I’ve been in a relationship or two where my partner has been jealous of my success, as well as the amount of time I spent pursuing my writing career when I could be spending it with them.

In an ideal world, we’d all have supportive partners who’d do everything they can to help us to be successful. But that’s not always the case.

Let’s take a look at a few of the behaviors that might suggest that our partner is jealous of our success.

1) They make passive-aggressive comments

Passive aggression is what happens when people dodge outright aggression by instead hiding that aggression behind passivity.

For example, a passive-aggressive partner might make a comment like, “You don’t look as bad as you did yesterday.” When it comes to your success, it might be something like, “You’ve done pretty well, all things considered.”

These kinds of passive-aggressive comments are unhelpful at best and harmful at worst. If your partner never lets up with that passive aggression, you’ll start to believe them and it will affect your performance.

2) They downplay your successes

This one isn’t just something that partners do, because I’ve had friends who’ve done the same thing.

Whenever someone downplays your success, there’s a good chance that they’re jealous of it. The only real exception I’ve seen is when they don’t understand what that success means in the first place.

Either way, you’ll find that if your partner is jealous of your success, they’re going to make it seem as though your success isn’t all that. You could be the first person to land on Mars and they’ll turn around and say, “Eh, it’s no big deal.”

3) They try to one-up you

An alternative to your partner downplaying your success is for them to try to one-up you.

If you run a mile in four minutes, they’ll try to do it in 3 minutes and 59 seconds. As well as them getting the credit for their own achievement, they’ll also be able to tell you that it wasn’t too difficult.

Of course, if your partner does try to one-up you, it does at least show that they understand the success you’ve experienced.

In fact, it shows that they’re so jealous that they want some of that success for themselves.

4) They belittle you

If your partner belittles you, they’re going above and beyond being jealous of your success. They’re actively trying to sabotage you.

Honestly, if it gets to this point, you’re left with two options: either your partner needs to up their game and start being nice to you or you need to get out of that relationship pronto.

When people belittle you, they’re trying to tear you down with their words, and that’s not something that a loving partner should do.

In the case of a partner, they’re doing it because they’re jealous of your success. It’s that simple.

5) They ignore your good news

When you get a piece of good news, it’s only natural that you’ll want to share it.

The problem is that if your partner is jealous of your success, they’re not going to want to hear it. They’ll either ignore you completely or they’ll go back to that second point and try to downplay your success.

Let’s say that you’ve been given a promotion at work. A supportive partner would say something like, “That’s fantastic! Let’s go out to dinner to celebrate.”

A partner who’s jealous of your success will say “cool” and then change the subject.

6) They’re sarcastic about your achievements

This is another way of belittling you and downplaying your successes, but it’s worth a mention of its own because of how common it is.

The good news is that you’ll be able to tell when they’re being sarcastic because they want you to know. It’s not going to be a subtle kind of sarcasm. It’ll be a deliberate kind of sarcasm that’s designed to provoke a response to you.

If you let them get to you, you’ll start to doubt yourself and to wonder whether your success is as important as you thought it was.

Don’t let that happen, because that’s exactly what they want.

7) They compete with you instead of supporting you

This is a little like the third point in that the idea here is that instead of helping you out, they’ll try to be more successful than you are.

The thing to bear in mind is that a little friendly competition isn’t always a bad thing. For example, if your success is that you were able to run a 5k in a decent time, if your partner starts running too, it might push you to run a little faster.

But this isn’t always the case, and you’ll often find that if your partner is competing with you instead of supporting you, it’ll just make you want to move on to something else.

That would be a shame, considering that you’ve just experienced some success.

8) They criticize your choices

When your partner is jealous of your success, they’ll be a Debbie Downer about almost everything.

In particular, they’ll watch you like a hawk and criticize every single choice you make, especially those that are linked to the area in which you’re experiencing success.

If that happens, you’ll find that your successes are becoming few and far between, because you’ll start to second guess yourself and you won’t be as effective as you were before.

This can also lead to an unhealthy situation in which they criticize your choices and so you criticize theirs. It becomes a never-ending cycle of criticism and unhappiness.

9) They point out your failures

As if criticizing your choices wasn’t bad enough, jealous partners will also point out your failures.

The thing to remember is that everyone fails; in fact, success isn’t possible without failure in the same way that light isn’t possible without darkness.

If you’re successful at something then you’ll have experienced failure along the way, and that’s just fine. It’s to be expected.

But while we know that failure is inevitable, we don’t need someone to point those failures out to us. That’s not going to help anyone.

Conclusion

We all deserve a partner who’s excited for us and who helps us to celebrate our successes, but we’re not all lucky enough for that to happen.

Still, by looking out for the nine behaviors that we’ve covered today, you’ll be able to spot whether your partner is jealous of your success or not.

If they are jealous, you need to have a conversation with them about why that is and to see if you can redirect that jealousy into support for you.

If you can’t… well, that’s for you to decide.