Last update: June 27, 2022
Disappointing your partner's expectations of us can be very easy when the relationship is conceived in a precise way that does not allow for variations.
As the flowers adapt to the cracks in the rocks without being able to take root, the partner who cannot be himself will never grow to the maximum of his ability.
Relationship experts remember most of us it has a kind of "ideal script" about what love should be. So much so that even Arthur C. Clarke, inventor and famous author of science fiction novels, argued that most people fall in love with partners who do not exist. They are just screens on which they project dreams, ambitions and above all their own needs.
I have not changed, I have grown. I am not the person you expected, because you tried to adapt to the lines of your selfishness. You say I've changed, but I've never really been as docile as you imagined.
Relationships based on inequality and on false attributions often depend on the projectsone psychological. "I make you believe that you are weak so that I can control you and not deal with my low self-esteem and my inability to form respectful relationships as equals."
Disappointing your partner's expectations
Erich Fromm used to say that mature love is a union that preserves the integrity and individuality of each member. Like it or not, this idea doesn't always get realized.
It is curious to note that although many people want to have a partner, do so without first knowing each other thoroughly. Without having discovered their emotional boundaries, without having bypassed their fears and overcome the fear of loneliness.
Perhaps for this reason, at times, al place of "cohabitants" wish to have "prisoners", partners who are the rose of their thorns, the comfort of their emptiness and the breath of their pain. There where it does not matter what the loved one feels or thinks, because a tyrannical balance prevails.
No bond can be lasting on the basis of such an inequality and attempt at alignment. The projections of others undoubtedly respond to their shortcomings and their model of what perfect love should be.
Yet no love is perfect, the true love is that which lets be and lives, which does not seek to change. It respects our person in everything and is based on that authentic complicity where the two scores together form the sweetest of melodies.
Broken heart and true "travel companions"
Love must not change us, it must always allow us to grow to reach another vital stage of great personal balance. Let's not worry about disappointing the expectations of the partner who does not know how to love.
To the classic question whether one can change at a given moment, the answer is yes, and even more so in these emotional contexts with traumatic components.
Factors such as physical or emotional abuse, blackmail, manipulation or even disappointment or lack of love can extinguish many dreams, values ​​that we took for granted collapse and the strengths of our personality fail.
The partner who has precise expectations forces us to leave behind the vital territory in which we had flourished for years.
This is not the right thing. We must always fight for our identity, for our values ​​and self-esteem which is the home of our essence and our strengths.
Love is "being" and "letting be", respecting individualities as Fromm said, and therefore it is necessary to choose wisely the travel companions, taking into account these fundamental dimensions:
- Emotional affinity. We know that thelove most of the time comes unexpectedly. So let's pay attention to the language of emotions and find out if we share the same reciprocity and empathy.
- Intellectual compatibility. It has above all to do with complicity and friendship, the sharing of spaces and interests. Long conversations in which everything flows and the eyes smile and delight.
- Physical compatibility. That purer and more instinctive area based on desire, sexuality and the magic that happens under the sheets.
- Spiritual compatibility is linked to values, dreams, aspirations and that unique and exceptional way of interpreting the world. It is a more intimate dimension, where we discover another person who understands us and who, in turn, fits into our vital projects to become the best travel companion. A friend of the heart.
