If you’re secretly keeping score against your best friend, one of you is already losing the friendship.

Scorekeeping turns a friendship into a competition only one person knows about. You start tracking who got the starting spot, whose parents came to more games, who is further ahead, and each comparison quietly moves them from teammate to rival. Usually it is not about them at all. It is about a place where you feel behind, and the resentment lands on them anyway.

When a friend’s good news stings, sit with the sting instead of hiding it. Ask what it is pointing at in your own life and work on that part. Then go be glad out loud, because saying it is how the feeling starts to change.