2024-11-23

Disappointment is unavoidable; necessary; I'd say, vital. I'm not the first to write about this, but I hope to add something of value.

We all have expectations of the world and of other people. Without those expectations, life would be practically unmanageable. Expectations about the way the world works; the way our society works; the way other people mostly behave. Life would fall apart if we couldn't rely on a whole raft of basic assumptions. Some of those expectations are based on universal regularities – the sun will rise tomorrow, gravity will continue to work as it has … – but other expectations are less sure, when it comes to unreliable matters like the weather or people. So, inevitably, some of our expectations will be disappointed.

Contrast what we normally experience with what would need to happen for us not to be disappointed with other people. As I see it, we would need to be living in a society where everyone's role was clear; where everyone accepted their role, and played their allotted part; where it was clear from people's appearance and behaviour what their role was, so anyone could predict how anyone else would behave. Would you like to live in that kind of society? Others being fully predictable might be fine for young children, but teenage rebellion would not be permitted. Adults would perhaps be able to make a few choices at given times, but then stick with it. No messing around; no rocking the boat. Does that sound just a little bit too familiar?

If we accept that people are not going to be predictable in that way, I see two opposite reactions when other people don't meet our expectations, whether they fail to do what we unconsciously expect, or don't give us what we consciously hoped for.

1. On the one hand, if we are on the upper side of power, privilege, or just the majority view, we cling on to our expectation or hope as justified, and we judge the other person for not doing things in the “right” way. In IFS terms, there may be a protector part of us at work there, locking us in to needing to see ourselves as right and the other person wrong. And this fits in with the picture of a society with strong norms.
2. On the other hand, we feel our hopes are dashed; our dreams broken¹⁾, our expectations foolish, duped, mistaken, wrong. Maybe, again in IFS terms, we are in touch with an “exile” part feeling pain from previous trauma. Rather than society feeling strongly ordered, it feels chaotic. Maybe we reluctantly give in, and sign up for a retraining course in how to behave properly. Our private, secret hopes – our visions for how things could be different – have to be denied and buried. If our hopes are too strong, we risk feeling (and acting) “mad”, insane, and if we have no support we may feel there is no place for us in this society. At worst, that life is not worth living.

These extremes both paint bleak, cold, stark pictures. There must be a better way, and that is what I want to explore.

But before I get into that, I'd like to point out the connections to what is now a common custom of embracing uncomfortable things: uncertainty, grief, loss, conflict, and now “collapse”. ²⁾ How can we do that for disappointment? A little more web search, and I find others actually writing about embracing disappointment. Here's one from Psychology Today. And here's someone else on How to Embrace Disappointment and Learn From it, another by the same writer: It’s Okay to Disappoint People. Here's someone else chiming in with Accepting Disappointment.³⁾ There's a lot here about being oneself, being OK with disappointing others, etc. And that's all fine. We all agree that disappointment is inevitable, and it's the way you handle it that we have some control over. And I want to take this forward, beyond the norms of “you're not in the right relationship” and “believe in yourself — what you want is out there somewhere, so keep looking”.

What about embracing the disappointment of the other with you, not just your own disappointment with others? Most people are writing, in the self-help tradition, about your own disappointment. But when someone else is disappointed in you, it's a bit like the reaction number 2 above: “what's wrong with me?” — self-criticism, self-blame. Perhaps the other person is reacting like case 1 above. But in reality it's likely not about you, more about their expectations and disappointments.

So, where am I going here? As so often, it's towards dialogue.⁴⁾ Let's take the cases one at a time.

First, say it's me that is disappointed. If I was consciously hoping for something, I could then express my hopes, but without incriminating the other. Something like, “I know we haven't spoken about this, so this is about me, not about blaming you, but I was hoping that …” and maybe following up with something like “Would you be willing to say how you feel, knowing that I was hoping that?”⁵⁾ Dialogue can follow, now that the unspoken matter is on the table. The other person can weigh up for themselves whether to change to go along with the hope, or to explain why that isn't easily possible. Both people can speak meanings, and be heard, which wasn't possible before the hope was voiced, and would be highly unlikely if the hope was spoken as blame.

On the other side, say they are disappointed. Perhaps the first step here is to notice the signs of disappointment, and ask if they were hoping or expecting something different. The other person may voice a conscious hope, or they may be prompted to consider what it was that they were unconsciously expecting. Now, clearly this isn't going to go well if the other person simply steps into blaming — “You should have done this, not that!”, but if you don't go straight down the appeasing, people-pleasing route of saying “what did I do wrong?” the door is potentially open to dialogue, as in the other case, now that the other person's hope or expectation is on the table.

In either case, (and this is the point,) when I say embracing, I mean not reacting to disappointment by jumping into judgement either of yourself or of the other, but rather approaching with care and curiosity. Then, in my most hopeful imagination, this can be a time of discovery, revelation, vulnerability and potentially healing. Both sides can surface their expectations, and put them in perspective. New doors can be opened; new understandings arrived at — so, it can be restorative, regenerative of relationship. We can become more aware of our conditioning: the things we do unconsciously, either because that's how we were brought up, or because they protect us against the emotional consequences of trauma. And we can, potentially, shift what it is that we (and/or they) hope for, what we expect. This is why I started by saying that disappointment can be “vital” — in its 14th Century sense, that is, of life.

To end, I want to underline two things. First, that I see a great deal more potential if this is done between at least two people, rather than by one alone; and second, to facilitate doing this collectively needs a basis of good communication, reciprocity, and laying aside power relations. And very lastly, everything I've written here runs the risk of setting up hopes, and possibly more disappointment when it doesn't go according to my dream plan.

Lather, rinse, repeat, as they say — we're never going to be completely clean…

• relationships
• dialogue