My younger sister is married with two children and has lived in a very wealthy home for the past 7-8 years and she and her husband are now building a new monster home with all of the bells and whistles. I, meanwhile, have moved from place to place and job to job in all of that time earning less that $55k a year despite my university degree - I just can't land better jobs due to my quiet personality.

She doesn't have to work, doesn't help on her husband's farm and her house is usually quite messy. Meanwhile I drive a vehicle a quarter of the price of hers, live with a housemate with all my things in storage, weigh 30 kilos more and have been virtually single my whole adult life.

Every time we catch up what little self confidence I have found is squashed. She's extroverted, a beautiful dresser and perhaps most discouragingly to me, shares almost all of the same interests I do. No matter where I have tried to be different in the past, she has dabbled in the same area. I found out last year she was writing a book. I have tried to write one for years. I've paid money to do courses, attended workshops but never quite completed anything. I was absolutely crushed when I found this out because I just feel like I can't compete. Everything she attempts she seems to do better than I do.

I of course realise my feelings are unfair to her. I should be proud of her and gracious but I just feel so awful about myself during visits and she just takes up so much of a room with her presence and chatter that I just feel like it's pointless to compete and so I stay silent and get accused of being grouchy by my Mum. I also of course realise it's not a competition and I don't need to be the centre of attention as an introvert but it just seems impossible to me to be in her presence when it's so painful to me. I feel like she is the sun and I just get burned.

I've tried to move past it but nothing I have tried seems to have helped. It doesn't help that extroverts and beautiful people just seem to do better in life. I'm not saying they don't have difficulties but in lots of areas, it is just so much easier for them.

Thanks for sharing your story. It's nice to know I am not the only one struggling with these feelings I don't want with a sibling that I should be proud of but instead, I just sometimes wish had never been born.