I don’t know about you, but when I meet someone new, my mind creates a story about our possible relationship. No matter what type of relationship it is – business or intimate. I’ve caught myself doing it – I imagine what could come out of this acquaintance. And often I don’t have any vision of a relationship with a person. The reason seems to be my own negative expectations for the development of our relationship.

Yes, I know that expectations are a surefire way to disappointment – I’ve said it myself many times here. But it’s in our nature to have expectations, and denying them can only make the situation worse – if I push them out of my consciousness, where will they go? Well, yes – into the subconscious. In the shadow – that part of me that I refuse to accept.

The problem with unconscious expectations is that they still deeply affect me. And then the process seems to be like this: I meet someone, and then I just don’t want to continue communicating with them. Why? Because this person or their behavior triggers something familiar in me, depending on which my attitude towards them is immediately formed. Unconsciously.

Okay, tell me you don’t have projections on others. Because I do, and honestly, if you don’t… I just don’t believe you. Sorry!

But then… if you’re like me, which is more likely, you do the same when you meet me – you create an idea of ​​me and our possible relationship. Am I obligated to respond to your projection on me? No? I’m glad you understand that…

The concept is well explained in one of my favorite books, which I have already quoted here, but I will do it again. It is about “Love is a Story” and if you are interested in more you can just read what Robert Sternberg wrote in that book. But what I am going to talk about now is the concept of the author, who says that when we meet someone, we create an idea of ​​them, as well as an idea of ​​our relationship with them and add them to our already existing idea of ​​ourselves. So in fact, in a relationship between two people we have 4 ideas about people – ours about ourselves and the other plus his about us and him, as well as two ideas about the relationship – ours and theirs. And the coolest thing I would add here is that we compare the behavior of our new acquaintance with our idea of ​​him and our relationship with him, without even thinking of explaining these ideas to him. But we can be very resentful of his behavior if it does not correspond to our idea. That’s how scandals happen – out of nothing 🙂

And if you think you’re not that kind of person, tell me how many times, when you met someone new, did you talk to them about how you perceive them and how you see your possible relationship with them directly, face to face? Yes, close to zero, right – because right now we don’t like direct speech too much. As an acquaintance of mine recently said: people now use words not to inform about reality, but to avoid the pain.

I recently researched some of the so-called dating apps and specialized groups for this on some social media. If you’re interested in the topic, you probably know that this is a space extremely saturated with people who only have their photo as theirs, but part or all of their “identity” is invented. So this doesn’t change much of the above, because the idea of ​​yourself, of the other and of the relationship itself is, as I said, exactly that – an idea. It’s just that in these specialized places there is active social engineering – an attempt to convince you that they are someone they are not and usually there is an ulterior material motive. However, some places really surprised me. At first, I couldn’t understand why they existed and why there were so many people in these groups.

And I realized that the problem was actually in my expectation. Since I am primarily a results-oriented person, a problem solver, when I hear “dating app”, I expect it to be a method that helps people achieve the desired result – to create a relationship. I mean a real relationship – the kind they declared they wanted – long-term, casual, friendship, marriage… And I decided to ask in one such group: I wonder how you people imagine it is ? Someone likes you based on a photo, you chat a little bit about this or that and then what happens ? She comes to visit you or you go to see her ? I’m really curious about logistics, because even if you live in the same town usually it takes time and a lot of meetings to feel somebody and even more to decide to live together.

I call these logistical questions. They are important for me to understand the process by which the problem is solved. Well, guess what – they didn’t answer me, of course. Although I did collect likes and found some people had a lot of fun with my question. But I realized that the problem was my perception of what problem this group solves and why it even exists. I was simply misled by the idea that almost every second person there says that they want a serious relationship or even marriage. Which of course would open up a whole new range of questions, like does personality of the other matters then…

So… I found out two things: first, it seems that many people don’t make much of a difference between marriage and a relationship, and of course there is one. Marriage is a goal, a desired state, and if you focus on it, the personality of the partner in itself may turn out to be not so important, hence a whole bunch of subsequent problems. While the relationship on the other hand is an ongoing process.

But the second problem surprised me more. It seems that most people out there don’t expect a real relationship or marriage to happen through this channel at all. It’s just a place to validate, to show off, to flirt, to test or confirm your own pain that no one likes you or doesn’t want you. Which means that expectations exist in regard to the environment where people interact.

So ultimately, these tools and places exist because they do offer value, it’s just a different value than what I expected. And the problem of course was… my own expectations that when people say something, they do. But it seems that for many people, saying one thing and doing another is not a problem at all. Because the whole environment accepts it as normal. But I was’t part of that environment when I started my investigation and attempted to evaluate it via my different framework.

Why am I telling all this? Because I just realized another truth about myself. As a child, I believed what people said, and I was often disappointed. Naivety, you would say, and you’re right. Later, I started watching what they did instead of listening to what they said, and it became much better for me. But now I seem to be discovering another layer related to my expectations: our own organizations don’t actually do what they claim to do. And in all the business and marketing textbooks we talk about clearly communicating the value and benefit to the customer. Well, yes, but no. Because environment matters. The culture of the organization matters a lot more in regard to understanding people’s behavior and even the way they speak.

So lately I’ve been thinking that if I feel cheated by someone or an organization in some way, it’s actually because of my own expectations, valid for my usual environment, that have led me to believe something about the person or organization without evidence. Which means that I’m essentially the one who’s been deceiving myself, not the other party with their marketing hype or manipulative behavior. Cool, huh?