All the time in relationships & friendships. Due to misunderstandings, unmet expectations, misplaced accusations, incriminations, people making a judgment about something you might have said or done - or not!
Sometimes your closest friends fail to understand you. Sometimes they are quick to form conclusions. Sometimes they are so blinded by expectations, they can’t bring themselves to respect the way you are and accept you for it. You try and explain it to them a few times, make it up to them, take the (misplaced) blame even, just so you can preserve a friendship that means something to you. But you do reach a point when the only thing you can do is let go. For how long can you keep acting the way people expect you to act?
I don’t understand why people expect you to act a particular way in the first place, and get offended & upset when you don’t! Is that fair? Agreed, there has to be some level of expectations in relationships & close friendships, but the beauty of a friendship over a relationship is that you’re not supposed to prosecute a friend over unmet expectations. Friendships lose their meaning the moment they become binding.
Especially for free-spirited people like me. I dislike being tied down just as I detest tying others down. You will not find me holding grudges against friends who forget to call back or do not call back for whatever reason. If I want to talk to them badly enough, I call them back. I don't sulk when a friend cancels. It's okay...things can come up. The world isn't about to end, and neither is our friendship. I do not expect people to act one way or the other, I do not hold them to what I think they should do! I give them their space when I feel they need it, they do not need to spell it out.
Similarly, I need my friends to not expect me to act in a certain way & get upset when I don't. If you can't understand this bit about me even though you claim to know me so well, our friendship had a chance in hell to begin with!
Unfortunately, as I have learnt the hard way many times over, not acting the way your friends expect you to act can often be misconstrued as not caring enough, not being committed enough to the friendship or not valuing it enough. Apparently, bonding over brownies & cheesecakes & shopping for shoes isn't enough to seal friendships. Is anything?
Friendships thrive when there is a willingness to accept the other person the way they are.
They are meant to be fun zones, not an element of life that stresses you out & ties you down. That’s what relationships are for! Sometimes, your closest friends fail to realize this, and you wake up to this realization only after things have fallen apart. Completely.
P.S.: Title of the post borrowed from Chinua Achebe. Feeling expressed - heartfelt.
4 comments:
Expectations build up automatically without even gibing it any thought... its difficult to not expect from a person close to you...it just happens even though you might decide not to have any expectations!!
But one thing i totally agree with - you could call them up after 1 yr.. it would be still be like you spoke to them yesterday.. no blame.. no whys.. now theres a friend!!!!
@Moonshine - I didn't mean have no expectations at all from people who are closest to you. You do expect them to be around when you need them, when you're going through a tough time, when you need some help etc. But you can't expect people to act the way you want them to, all the time. Having said that, I do believe that at the end of the day we are all on our own. So more than we bank on anyone else, we should be able to bank on ourselves first.
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