Great Expectations
 

Do you MBers feel as though many to most people do not meet your expectations of them? I feel as though I've met way too many people who expect so much of me that ends up bothering them immensely when I don't deliver. I suppose my expectations are high of people also, perhaps this is a way of protecting ourselves? What do you peeps think?

I think it's inevitable when we don't actually love people, but love the way they can make us feel. There is nothing out there that will make you feel happy all the time, the happiness has to come from within.

I have a habit of promising people things I can't or won't deliver. So yes.
It usually stems from me being drunk and wanting to do 101 things for everyone I see and when I sober up I realize I've bitten off more than I can chew, so naturally people get let down... although it's never anything major.

I think my biggest one was promising this girl I'd go see her and she lives 5 too many states away, and she got all excited then the next day I had to tell her I was just drunk and there was no way I could do it... not that I didn't want to... the girl is smokin' hot and cool to boot..
She hated me for a while, but I guess I didn't lose much anyway. Still, I hate being a disappointment in any way so I've been having to learn how to maintain a realistic perspective when I'm on the sauce. And that's pretty damn hard.

And I remember I was so excited, too!

;)

Vanilla, I find that the only person I ever really disappoint is myself. When that happens, I try to change my behaviors that I don't like, but I don't expect perfection in myself...or in others.

In friendships I guess I have faith that friends will do the best they can, given who they are, just like I do the best I can, given who I am and my limitations. If people can't be the people I want them to be, that is not their fault at all. I'd rather get to know who they really are, anyway, than expect them to be something they are not.

Like Cardboard Adolescent said, I feel happiness comes from within. If I find myself relying on someone else for happiness, this tells me I am probably trying to avoid something in my own life that I haven't changed but want to.

When someone does go above and beyond what I might expect, though, it does feel really nice! Like an unexpected present.

I actually think having few expectations of people is a way to protect oneself or to just be realistic. The main people in my life don't fall short of my expectations or hopes in many ways...and some of them go far beyond my expectations. My main expectation for friends is that they will try to be honest and won't go out of their way to hurt me. They mean well and know I do, too.

I don't expect much of anything from anyone. When they do end up coming through for me it's a bonus. People don't expect much from me for one reason or another. I couldn't tell you why. I think it may just be that a lot of people I socialize with tend to be self reliant so they very rarely ask for anything except maybe to hang out. That's about it. When they do need me I'm there.. but for some reason it seems they like to reach out to a-holes that they know won't deliver so they can complain and post a Facebook status about their disappointment.

I've never felt that I had to reach any standards except maybe in my design class. Everyone kept complementing me that I was way ahead for having never taken any courses on it. So every time there was a project I felt pressure and then I always had to come up with something amazing. But.. nothing I couldn't handle.

I've found it's better to temper my expectations of anything in life. I'm either spot on, or occasionally pleasantly surprised... both of which are better than being pretty consistently disappointed.

All I ask is that people don't block my driveway. But they still let me down, the lazy bastards.

I like to lay low and keep expectations low, then spring out like a cheetah and surprise the **** out of people. It's much more effective than selling yourself high and performing at a low level I think.

This.... precisely this.

Cardboard, have you been hitting up the ashrams lately?

i should be... :\

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,....

:yikes: This is my life (socially) to a T

Perhaps the truest thing said on the internet. Expectations, more than anything, prevent one from accepting and enjoying reality. Expectations are nowt but conditions, conditions we foolishly expect the universe and everything in it to fulfill. We really are a silly species.

Yay necrobumping

You and I should have bum sex. It's clear we have the hots for eachother. What says you, sailor?

It's a choice. So I choose not to expect anything from the human beings. Vice versa.