My husband is so socially competitive he’s turning into Hyacinth Bucket

From friends’ holiday plans to our neighbours’ home extensions, he’s fixated on what everyone else has and I find it unattractive

I think I blinked, and my husband turned into Hyacinth Bucket. So far, there’s no candlelit suppers but he is obsessed with remaining in contention with friends, neighbours, our siblings and even random parents at the school gates.
Whether that’s the football team our son plays for being of a good enough calibre, to the cars we drive or the holidays we book, I’m very happy to stay in my lane and let everyone else carry on but my husband has a bee in his bonnet. 
He has views on the trainers our children wear and where we buy their winter coats: nevermind the fact the children currently couldn’t give a fig. I’m sure there will be many years ahead when they are desperate for a certain style or label but, for now, my criteria for new coats for the kids is: they keep the children warm and dry and don’t get lost. 
Every weekend my husband returns from football training with our son looking frantic and wringing his hands that another child has apparently been “scouted” or “signed” by a different team. I’m no FA official, but it’s very clear our son won’t be troubling the Premier League, so if he’s happy playing on a distinctly average kids’ team and enjoying the game, I have no interest in him being upgraded.  
Over the summer, my husband was very invested in everyone else’s holiday plans, concerned ours wouldn’t be up to scratch. Once we had booked our break, he happily dropped details of our villa into conversations with other people who, I am sure, couldn’t have cared less. After all, there is little less interesting than hearing about a holiday you will not be going on. He was especially keen to supersede my sister’s holiday plans (she travels a lot but doesn’t boast about it) however, he made a beeline for her to announce our Mediterranean break. Frustratingly, I think for him, she was genuinely interested in the trip and even gave us some recommendations of things to do. 
My husband’s latest crusade, and most ambitious to date, is wanting to move house. Nevermind the fact that now is not an ideal time to start playing around with mortgages, he is obsessed with finding a detached property.
Our current home has done the trick for raising three children. Yes, we have coats and shoes cluttering up the hallway, and three growing kids do take up a lot of sofa space, but I’d rather that than banishing us all to separate floors.
Every time he waves RightMove under my nose, it’s a bland box of red bricks. He seems to want shiny floors and hot tubs – and the bragging rights they bring – when I’m content with what we have. He gets pretty wound up when people we know move or take on debt to extend their homes. Instead of enjoying our pals’ fancy kitchens, he is itching to make a manoeuvre to outdo them. 
If we do move, and that’s a big if, I know cars will be next. He’s envious of all the shiny SUV-types parked all over the pavement. I keep pointing out that, by and large, they are going to be leased rather than owned, but he waves away my comments then starts mumbling about Teslas. 
This attitude is something I find less than attractive, and I especially don’t want our kids growing up with such a fixation on what everyone else has. I’m hoping he’ll come to his senses soon – before I develop the same eyeroll and sigh as Hyacinth’s beleaguered husband Richard. 
Read last week’s Marriage Diaries