Letters to the Editor
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I forgot to add
Most of the time when we're highly critical of people's choices, it's cuz we're secretly jealous of their freedom to do what they want.
How many people hate the town slut cuz they were jealous of her sexual freedom?
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LW's reaction is not necessarily problematic.
People who make stupid choices and then proceed to whine about their lives and act as if there's no connection between their choices and the situation they're bemoaning are annoying. If LW knows a lot of people who do this, really, her response is the most polite one. Non-descript, non-specific clucking sounds are fine. They're probably not asking her for advice, so there's nothing else for her to do.
Now, if she spends a lot of time wandering around her house speaking incredulously about all the fuck-ups she knows she's wasting energy on these thoughts, and needs to figure out why other people's failures bother her so much.
Other people's failures *can* affect you, so maybe LW is (rightfully) apprehensive of the possibility of someone (like her husband) making stupid choices and screwing up their lives. Especially since her husband seems to be making noises about her being judgmental; he seems to find something about her kind of disconcerting, or maybe thinks her reactions to these people are embarrassing. It could also be that he himself does not feel as flawless as LW does, so when she reacts poorly to other people's failures, it reminds him that he must hide his failures from her, lest he experience her palpable disapproval. And honestly, a guy like that...he's a threat to act out his feelings of failure by screwing around. And the person he screws around with will be one of those fucked-up people LW can't stand, because he'll feel superior to those people, while he feels inferior to LW.
Really, though, LW, if none of these people are asking you for money, it's fine to just nod and maybe change the subject. And you certainly have no responsibility to pretend to feel sorry for someone who's choosing to date a married guy. I mean, what if you know his wife, too? Why would you want to share those secrets? You could say, in that instance, "Wow, you know, I don't really feel comfortable discussing stuff like this - just don't want to be involved." And then change the subject to something pleasant.
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further: it's hard to beleive
It's hard to beleive LW's life has gone SO perfectly. It seems like she's deluding herself if she really thinks so, repressing any type of experience or emotion in order to maintian that facade of perfection.
Ask your husband, cuz it doesn't sound like his thinks you're perfect... maybe there IS imperfection in your life, you just refuse to acknowledge it. Sounds like you're causing stress to your husband (who probably is on the end of that judgement a lot).
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Luck, Strategy, Straight and Narrow
LW really only needs to put one thing in perspective:
Doing things on time, by the books, according to the rules, is really its own form of fucking up. It leaves a person unprepared for certain eventualities (and these eventualities are absolutely unavoidable) and when these things come home to roost, you might find someone else cluck-clucking at your own specialized form of weakness. Someone less invested in the rightness and wrongness of their choices may well handle the bad stuff with more grace and humility than you can muster.
I'm stupidly fond of poker analogies, so I guess the point I'm trying to make is this: you can make the right moves and still not have it pay off. Playing the straight and narrow is a strategy, and an accepted one. But it's not a form of morality. You'd be amazed at how often people manage to play the game 'badly' and still end up doing very well.
And on the day when you lose to someone like that, you're going to have to be philosophical. The universe does not hand out what people deserve. There's a gap between good strategies and good outcomes. Some large portion of what LW has gotten in her life is just good luck. That doesn't mean she hasn't played a savvy game. But no one's strategy is fool proof and we are all destined for a few unimaginably bad days.
God, I'm depressing before I have coffee!
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What personality type are you?
Per, recent, previous Cary Tennis advice re: personality types, "My close friend has clammed up" Maybe LW could glean some perspective from the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator as well. I took the test after reading Cary's previous advice and found out that judgment IS part of my personality type and some interesting reasons behind it.
Thanks Cary and good luck LW.
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Whining
I would assume that the person who is talking to the LW about being in over their head in credit card debt is not talking about how s/he has just come back from credit counseling. Or the person who is having an affair with a married man is not talking about how wonderful it is. I suspect what the LW is hearing is whining about the hard time s/he is having in meeting the monthly payments or how the husband won't leave his wife.
In other words the people who the LW is being judgemental about are not the victims of unfair random life events. They are people who somehow think that it is unfair that the results of their bad choices aren't turning out to be beneficial.
If you smoke 2 packs a day can you complain if you get lung cancer? Do you deserve symapthy? Compassion?
Perhaps the LW made all the right decisions or perhaps she was just lucky.
But it seems to me that in today's victim culture we are conflating victims of unfortunate circumstances and victims of their own bad judgements.
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Only As Good ...
There's a saying that seems to have first come out of rock climbing, though one hears it among pilots, mountaineers, and others whose pursuits require nerve, care, and attention to detail in the face of danger:
"You're only as good as your last fuck-up."
This is more than (just) a platitude, something quite other than a way of feeling better about one's mistakes. It's about you, and others, knowing how reliable you are, because you've taken a risk and had it go bad and know something crucial about how things go wrong and what to do about them.
Someone who has never fucked up isn't necessarily a fool, but if you're a rock climber, say, they're definitely someone you won't rely on (unless you're a fool yourself) until the time when they've acquired their fair share.
And life is like rock climbing.