I used to say that I would rather be embarrassed than disappointed. It says a lot about how much I was impacted by the experience that I would rather experience shame and cringe-worthy embarrassment than feel the sharp ache of being disappointed again. Most people would likely choose the former rather than the latter — but not me.
If I’m honest with myself, I spent years perpetually disappointed — with myself, with life, with other people. I tried to make the best of things, but I was so tired of feeling let down. I became steadily more cynical because it was easier to expect the worst and get it than to hope for the best and risk the pain. Any risks I took were calculated. How much could I afford to lose? What was worth the price of pain?
Then, I came face to face with my fears. I finally let myself open up and love someone with my whole heart, and it ended. The disappointment was crushing — perhaps worse than all the others that came before. I had miscalculated somewhere along the line. I had decided that the love was worth the risk because I didn’t see all the foreshadowing that it would end. I let myself hope, and hope shouldn’t be just another 4-letter word.
A New Development
But something changed — or rather, someone did. After years of feeling like my meager expectations only ever ended in disappointment, I had a shift in perspective. I needed to manage my expectations — but not in the way that I had before. I decided to take a novel approach to both expectation and disappointment.
Making Room
I’ve been creating room for flexibility in my life. I’ve started small. I make plans, but I allow myself breathing room for changes. If I don’t get to do everything I wanted, it’s still okay. I open up to the unexpected and allow myself to be delighted by it rather than disappointed that it wasn’t what I had planned for myself. It sounds so easy, but it’s been a major shift for me.
I’ve always been a person who needed the plan — and needed it all to work perfectly. It was hard to change my mind once I had set it. But that kind of attitude doesn’t really account for life. I stopped canceling the plans and any hopes that came with them, and I started making room for change and novelty. Once change of any kind was anticipated, it was no longer devastating.
Changing Expectations
I’ve decided to change my expectations of others. I didn’t lower my standards, but I did start taking people at face value. If they weren’t able to meet the standards that I’d set for myself, I recognize and accept it. I don’t keep expecting the perpetually late friend to show up on time. I don’t expect the casual lover to ever be anything serious. I’ve let people be who they are, and then I make my decisions accordingly.
I’ve stopped feeling let down all the time. Because I let people be who they are, I don’t feel disappointed when they show up with the traits that I already knew existed. I allow some grace in my relationships, and I’m also able to set better boundaries. It makes my expectations more realistic but more compassionate, too.
It’s even changed how I date. I’ve stopped trying to make people fit into my expectations and started observing their actions and words. I don’t overly invest in people before getting to know them. It helps adjust my expectations so that I can take them at face value and make decisions based on what is, not on what I hope for or want. I’ve stopped taking people personally, and it’s alleviated the disappointment I might once have felt.
Taking Power Back
I’ve stopped letting disappointment ruin my experiences. If something doesn’t work out the way I hoped it would, I’m now able to accept and even embrace it. When friends don’t want to go to a movie I’d been looking forward to, I have options. I can go alone, or I can choose another time to see the movie with friends and make new plans for the day. Nothing is black and white, life or death. I’ve taken my power back and decided that even a day that involves disappointment can still turn out to be a good day.
I don’t deny disappointment. Sometimes, I still feel it. But it doesn’t wreck me the way I once allowed it to do. My once-inflexible thought process has changed over the years. The “worst” could happen, and I’ve survived it. It’s helped me to believe that I have the power to make my life better no matter what.
Developing Stronger Coping Skills
The flexibility I’m cultivating also allows me to develop stronger coping skills for when things go sideways. I’m always going to be a person who gets ideas in my head about how things should go — or how I want them to go. I can’t change who I am, but I can learn to deal with life’s curveballs in healthier ways.
Rather than descending into a state of anxiety, I’m learning to take a step back. It helps that I’m also modeling this and teaching it to my children who have a similar relationship with expectation and disappointment. I’ve been trying to show them that one thing can go wrong and still not ruin everything. It’s been a reminder for me as well. I’m learning to be more resilient and to find ways to self-soothe when things go wrong. My coping skills are only getting stronger as I practice changing my relationship with expectations and disappointments.
On Expectation and Disappointment
I often think that my relationship with change and disappointment started in early childhood. Painful life experiences can lead to coping strategies that might not serve us later in life. I had developed a need to control my environment and my schedule. It made me feel safe, and a change in plans made me feel unsafe.
But it didn’t just revolve around plans. I had emotional needs that sometimes went unmet. Some of life’s biggest disappointments for me were in asking for help, reassurance, affection, or love and being rebuffed. The sense of rejection was overwhelming, and it was tied so tightly to my experience of disappointment that it was difficult to separate the two. My rejection sensitivity was deeply ingrained, and I learned not to hope rather than to get my hopes up.
But living that way was painful. I didn’t just stop having emotional needs, however. I just stopped expecting people who were incapable of meeting them to show up for me. I started investing in relationships with people who were capable of being consistent, affectionate, and supportive. I stopped being attracted to the emotionally unavailable man and started finding things like openness and vulnerability attractive instead.
It’s not that I don’t have any expectations; I do. I just make sure that any expectations I have are rooted in reality with a little room for flexibility. This way, my hopes aren’t up so high that it’s inevitable that they’ll come crashing down. I used to squash any attempt at hope — terribly afraid that hoping would lead to disappointment. But now, I see that hope is a beautiful thing that can coexist in the world with disappointment. I can hope for good things and cultivate them in my life, and if I am disappointed at times, it doesn’t mean that the hope wasn’t positive and worthwhile.
Disappointment still happens, and the world doesn’t end. It doesn’t feel excruciating the way it once did. It’s manageable because I’m shifting my perspective. I let people be who they are. I am who I am. I operate with more compassion and acceptance, and it’s strangely helped strengthen my boundaries. When things don’t go according to plan, I am capable of making a new one.
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This post was previously published on medium.com.
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From The Good Men Project on Medium
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