Dear Moneyist,

I love my sister. She is a great person and has always been supportive of me in my life. But I am not looking forward to spending our family’s annual Christmas dinner together.

We were very close growing up and often socialized together. She got married in her early 30s and had three children, and married a man who works on Wall Street. She spends her time lunching with friends, taking vacations to St. Bart’s in the winter and the Hamptons in the summer, and cataloguing her life like it was a magazine spread in Country Life one day and Harper’s Bazaar the next. Of course, their Christmas tree looks like something you would see in Rockefeller Plaza!

Don’t miss: This is one person you should never unfriend on Facebook

“ I don’t like her very much these days. She spends her time cataloguing her life like it was a magazine spread in Country Life one day and Harper’s Bazaar the next. ” — ‘Sister’ in D.C.

I love her. We are family, after all. But I don’t like her very much these days. She is rich (not her fault) and entitled (has no idea how the other half live.) I am happy for her and I enjoy my job (I’m a teacher) but I am nearly 40 and single, and find myself groaning and shaking my head when I see her photos. Then look around my one-bedroom apartment and wonder, ‘Where did I go wrong?’ My sister appears to have no sensitivity about other people’s real lives.

I feel like a voyeur in her life rather than a participant. How do I get through Christmas?

Sister in D.C.

Dear Sister,

It’s interesting that you can read Harper’s Bazaar or Country Life and feel not a pang of jealousy or self-pity, but you look at your sister frolicking all over Instagram and Facebook FB, +0.20% and — bam! — the Green Eyed Monster hits you right where it hurts. Often times, we can feel in competition with one person, and yet can lose ourselves in the excessive consumption of someone else. You might buy Lady Gaga’s new perfume or read about The Kardashians on TMZ, but the smell of your sister’s perfume reminds you of everything you don’t have and, perhaps, the glamorous life you would like to lead.

“ Pick up the phone and see her. You may get a peek behind the online fiction and discover that she has some real problems. ”

In his book, “Status Anxiety,” the philosopher Alain De Botton asks why some successes bother us, while others don’t: “Given the vast inequalities we are daily confronted with, the most notable feature of envy may be that we manage not to envy everyone. There are people whose enormous blessings leave us wholly untroubled, even as others’ negligible advantages become a source of relentless torment for us. We envy only those who we feel ourselves to be like — we envy only members of our reference group.” That’s why we can delight in someone becoming a bitcoin millionaire, yet leave our school reunion nursing a “violent sense of misfortune.”

Read also:This academic study of people who post selfies confirms everything you suspect

The Moneyist: What to do about your finances during a divorce

Then there’s the medium through which you’re viewing your sister’s seemingly charmed life. Plenty of research suggests that consuming photo after photo on social media can make us feel deeply resentful about other people’s lives. Those who used Facebook longer than others agreed more with the notion that other people were happier and led better lives, and agreed less that life is fair, according to one study of 425 Facebook users — “They Are Happier and Having Better Lives than I Am: The Impact of Using Facebook on Perceptions of Others’ Lives” — by researchers at Utah Valley University.

Also see:When death meets Facebook: Social networkers upstage the deceased

More than one-third of respondents reported predominantly negative feelings, such as frustration, with their online activities, one German study of 600 Facebook users found. “Access to copious positive news and the profiles of seemingly successful ‘friends’ fosters social comparison that can readily provoke envy,” the study — “Envy on Facebook: A Hidden Threat to Users’ Life Satisfaction” — concluded. Social networks give unprecedented access to other people’s lives, much more than is available offline. This, it said, can lead to more photos and competition, which can lead to an “envy spiral.”

Read:Lonely people share too much on Facebook

How does this help you? Hide your sister’s news feed on Facebook, unfollow her on Instagram (if she has a lot of followers, she may not notice) and pick up the phone and see her. You may get a peek behind the online fiction and discover that she has some real problems that are troubling her right now. Or you might see that she is blissfully free of any worries and, perhaps, even find yourself relieved that your beloved sister is healthy and happy, and has the luxury to blithely go about her life.

You may count her blessings, rather than her money, to paraphrase Dolly Parton, and realize that you are among her blessings, too.

Do you have questions about inheritance, tipping, weddings, family feuds, friends or any tricky issues relating to manners and money? Send them to MarketWatch’s Moneyist and please include the state where you live (no full names will be used).

Would you like to sign up to an email alert when a new Moneyist column has been published? If so, click on this link.