You Can’t Be True to Yourself without Someone Getting Disappointed

Originally, I was going to title this post, “You Can’t Be True to Yourself without Disappointing Someone.”  Then I thought about something that I tell people when they worry that making a tough personal choice will hurt or disappoint someone: “You are not disappointing that person, their expectations of you are disappointing them.” This is an important distinction.  Our personal choices are ones that we make in order to be true to ourselves.  There will always be somebody who has an expectation of what those choices should be.  There is no way to cater to everyone’s idea of who we should be and what we should do.  Sometimes, we have to make choices that don’t live up to those expectations.

Perhaps you have been dating someone for a while.  That person has decided that you are “The One,” but you have never really been sure that this relationship is one you want to commit that deeply to.  There may be real problems in the relationship that your lover is ignoring, due to this overriding illusion that you are theirs for life, the answer to their problems.  You can see just how much pain this person will be in when you break up with them, so it is very difficult to do so.  Still, you have a deep and insistent feeling that staying would be harmful to you in the long run.

You might think that you are about to make a choice that will damage this person somehow. In reality, your lover’s expectation of you as “The One” is the weapon that is already causing the pain for both of you.  If it isn’t based on the truth, then catering to it will only cause more damage.  In the short run, it will be difficult to speak your truth. In the long run, that same truth will set you free from trying to fit into something false. The truth will also set your lover free from clinging to something that isn’t really there.