I hated that book.

@op: If you don't have any expectations, you can't be disappointed!

This exactly.

I think it's silly to think people you don't know on some kind of personal level expect anything out of you other than basic competence and the ability breath and form sentences. In my "experience" expectations do more harm than good in most situations. I think the only people I've truly let down are my parents, and that's because they were in a place to actually have high expectations for me.

I have this friend:

He used to go around always saying "ah, great expectations:"

To this day I have no idea what he meant.


Am I disappointed by people? Rarely. Humans are fascinatingly,weird, unique, and delightful. I was thinking recently how if a textbook on human relations would look like to an alien race. Imagine the sex chapter drawing, Imagine the description (When a male really likes a female they get into a interlocking position where one part of a man fits inside another part of the female and he thrusts until both ejaculate a white colored liquid, then his part becomes inactive and they assume an entirely new position that means an entirely different thing). Also skin if pretty crazy.

Anyhow I am the most not disappointed by humans ever.

Yeah I'm with crash here. But I think I do it subconsciously so that people don't have high expectations of me. I'm always putting myself down etc so that people do have low expectations, so that they can't get frustrated or expect more of me. It works pretty well, I guess.

i think i disappoint people much more than they disappoint me,....i tend to spend a normal amount of time evaluating if people are real or not,...and i dont mean that as are they really humans are just figments of my imagination,...but if they matter or dont matter in my life (non scientific matter)

i also take into account my own place at the time

i find that i have a bad habit of desertion, but not with a sense of malice, but just with a lackadaisical attitude,....i tend to believe that would people leave my life it is because they, or i have served our purpose and shaped our directional path,....sometimes people resurface, sometimes they dont,...but either way the greater good was reached and i take it all in stride, where as many people just see me as flaky when i(or them) really just have ceased to need

savannah had you take the Myer briggs? You sound super ENFP to me if that means anything.

I have had similar experience when dealing with people. I don't know if it's the fact that I get tired of people, or maybe it's that they don't meet my expectations, but I find myself cutting people out of my life for long periods of time sometimes. I guess I guage how important they really are to me by how much I miss them. I know that's not a healthy way to approach interpersonal relations, but it's a flaw of mine.

I don't think that's a flaw and I actually really like the way savannah put it. I find myself doing this all the time and I used to have a lot of anxiety when I thought about it. Now I just accept that that is the way I am. I never quite put it the way savannah did, so thanks for that...I really feel like that just cleared up a lot for myself.

I get overwhelmed by people quite often. I maintain a group of around 3 or 4 people that I will hang out with all the time. That doesn't mean I only know 4 people at any given time, though...I keep a pretty big network of casual friends. Just clearning that up. Any more than that in the main group, though, and I start to get anxious because I do feel obligated to hang out with everyone I consider to be that close and leaving someone out makes me feel incredibly guilty. For that reason, I let people flow naturally in and out of my life.

I feel like these days I make friends that understand that and might actually feel the same way. Sometimes we show up in each others' lives again, sometimes we don't. I can't help but get a sense that the close friends I've had were "meant to be" at certain times, especially since I grew up halfway around the world and people I used to know still show up from time to time.

This got longer than I wanted it.

well,...you are welcome,....

and i'm pretty much the same way you are, and it used to cause me alot of distress,...like there was something wrong with me

i too have become at peace with thats just the way i am,... now i that i understand it, i embrace it, and rather enjoy it,....