I’ve taken an unfortunate scapegoat approach to pinpointing romantic shortfalls. Common sense indicates that I am single because I’m the one in control. It’s much easier, though, to blame everyone else, and I do that to an astonishing degree. Facebook indicates you have a new flame? You’re holding hands on the street? You’re walking slightly abreast of someone of the opposite sex? Then you are the cause of everything that makes me miserable, and I will secretly want to take an axe to your face in lieu of leaving my apartment and meeting people. Count on it. Good lord, I’m a cranky 70 year-old 45 years too early.
Unlike schadenfreude—’taking pleasure in the misery of others,’ literally ‘pain pleasure’ in German—there is no word to describe this sensation. Jealousy or envy doesn’t quite cover it, as there is no sense of misery and too much sense of covetousness. The nameless phenomenon is an odd absence in English.
I propose, then, what is essentially (schadenfreude)-1: freudenschade, ‘finding misery in the pleasure of others.’ ((This probably means the body of English words is not an abelian group: commutivity of multiplication is violated.)) I know you feel it; why not speak it now, too?