Latest / Friendship IRL: Real Talk About Friendship, Community, and What It Actually Takes / Disappointment is the Cost of Friendship

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Disappointment is the Cost of Friendship · Friendship IRL: Real Talk About Friendship, Community, and What It Actually Takes

• 0:02
  Podcast Intro/Outro: All right, gang. Here's to nights that turn into mornings and friends that turn into family. Cheers. Hello, hello, and welcome to the Friendship IRL podcast. I'm your host, Alex Alexander. Each week we talk about what is working(and what is not) in our friendships, community and connections. Have you ever wished you could sit down and have a conversation about what is really going on in your friendships? Well, you found your people. Join us as we dive into real life stories and explore new ways to approach these connections. Together, we're reimagining the rules of friendship
• 0:57
  Alex Alexander: I have to start out this episode by giving credit where credit is due. Last week I released an Episode 191 with Molly, and in the middle of that episode, just so casually, Molly dropped a line on me that I have not been able to stop thinking about. I immediately knew I needed to create an episode about it, and I'm probably never going to stop thinking about it. I'm going to be using this line forever and crediting Molly for the rest of time. When we were recording, Molly just casually said, "I think the cost of community is disappointment," and it truly was a mic drop moment for me because I think she's so right.
• 1:37
  Alex Alexander: You know, there's lots of talk out there right now on social media. Maybe it's just my algorithm because it's so trained to provide this content to me.
• 1:49
  Alex Alexander: There's lots of talk out there about how the price of community is inconvenience, and I don't love it at all. In fact, I quite dislike that phrase. I've made a bunch of content about it. I record an entire podcast episode. It is Episode 146, moving past inconvenience and leaning into the joy of helping our friends. You can go listen to that if you want to hear my feelings on the phrase "the price of community is inconvenience." However, when Molly said, "The price of community is disappointment." I think she's spot on, and I don't even think it's like community.
• 2:27
  Alex Alexander: I think it's the price of friendship, the price of connection, the price of community. Disappointment is what so many people are up against. If I look back at all the themes of so many podcast episodes, where I'm talking about lowering expectations, resetting expectations, trying to listen to somebody else's side of the story, like so much of my content is quite frankly about managing disappointment. I just don't really name it that way. It's not really a word I've ever thought about because disappointment isn't something I would think of with my friends, right?
• 3:06
  Alex Alexander: That's not what I want. I want to feel joy and happiness and fun and spontaneity. And quite frankly, now that I'm thinking about it, I probably feel a decent amount of disappointment in there. I'm going to talk about how I think I've managed that a little later in the episode, but I know that I'm not alone. Quite frankly, I think this is maybe one of the most universal feelings we're all having in friendship. There are so many ways that we feel disappointment, and I don't think I could ever list them all in an episode, but I did list a few. I'm gonna share them with you because I want to see how many you think you identify with and how many maybe you just like push past. I think a pretty universal one is when a friend didn't show up when we needed them.
• 3:58
  Alex Alexander: Maybe you're having a really hard time, and you told your friend that, and then they just kind of said, "Oh, okay, I'm so sorry, and never checked in,""never did anything to help you," "never spent time listening to your feelings." You get to the end of this life-altering moment, or maybe it's just a small moment in your life. You didn't get the speaking opportunity you wanted.
• 4:20
  Alex Alexander: You didn't make the team that you wanted. It's something you'll move past, but in the moment you wish they had given you a little more care, a little more time, and they had showed up for you. Maybe it's a big thing. You lost someone you loved. You are going through a death or a diagnosis, and now you look back and you're like,"Wow, they didn't show up for me at all." I think it's pretty universal to feel disappointment in those situations.
• 4:52
  Alex Alexander: If you're somebody who just went through a life-altering diagnosis, you spent like the past few years of your life trying to deal with your health.
• 4:58
  Alex Alexander: And you're looking back and realizing, wow, the people I thought were going to show up for me, some of my closest friends really didn't. You probably identify that that's disappointment. Another disappointment would be the friend who can't make it, the canceled plans, the last-minute bailing, the person who mentioned something and then never brought it up again. This one makes me think of social media posts I see, especially around weddings. So, this would be somebody who maybe you have a bridesmaid who can't afford the elaborate party, you know, the bachelorette where you're flying somewhere and everybody's got to chip in, and we're doing all these activities. The bride might feel some disappointment when somebody their bridesmaid messages them and says, "Hey, I can't make it to that. I just I can't afford to go on that trip." Now, on the flip side, there might be some disappointment from that bridesmaid who's like, wow! I'm like disappointed that you just expect all of us to pay this much money, take this much time off. This is the kind of story I see on social media all the time. Again, my algorithm's pretty intense. There's also the friend who couldn't make it maybe too. Well, I mean, here's an example. I was supposed to go to a baby shower this weekend that I actually really, really, really wanted to go to to celebrate these friends, and I couldn't go because I was sick.
• 6:31
  Alex Alexander: So there's disappointment on both sides. I'm disappointed I couldn't go celebrate with my friends, and my friends are disappointed that I was not there. Another one would be the friend who did show up, but it wasn't what you needed, and I don't think we're talking about this one maybe quite enough because they were there, and yet it still feels like a miss. So this is the friend who, let's just use a diagnosis again because I talked about that one earlier. Maybe they checked in every day, but maybe they also live really close to you, and you could have used them actually showing up at your house. You could have used the offer of a ride every once in a while. Maybe you asked for a ride; they were like, "Oh, sorry, I just really can't juggle that and make it work, and you're still a little disappointed they didn't try to show up in the ways that you needed it." I definitely think there can be disappointment there, even if you look back and you think like, "Wow, they texted me every day, and yet maybe you're disappointed because you still feel like there was something else they could have done that you needed them to do that you wanted them to do." There's also slow burn disappointments, so it's not one big moment, but kind of a quiet accumulation. One that comes to mind here would be, I mean, one I've experienced personally, and that is in dealing with all my health stuff for a while there.
• 7:58
  Alex Alexander: I was definitely the friend who kind of kept canceling, and I'm sure that my friends were disappointed when I kept backing out of things. Quite frankly, like an hour or two before, because I'd eaten something that day that had totally put me on the couch. I had gotten a migraine. I thought I could push through it all morning because I really wanted to go, and then I couldn't go because something hit, and I was just like down for the count. And those friends maybe kept forgiving me, and then there's the disappointment where maybe one day they realize like, wow, they've just like stopped expecting me to ever show up to anything. That's not really what happened, but that could have been how this played out, and although it wasn't one singular moment or a single conversation, it really maybe rewrote our friendship in certain ways after it happened slowly, repeatedly over enough period of time. Another disappointment could be the time you felt left out. I talk to my friends about this one all the time. I've shared in other episodes about how I encourage my friends to hang out with each other without me, because I think it is just as important that they have a close relationship.
• 9:16
  Alex Alexander: If there are not close individual relationships in our group of friends, it will fall apart. So sometimes I have to send them out and be like,"Nope, I don't need to come with you. You two go do that." Sometimes though, I'm a little disappointed. I'm a little sad that I didn't get to join along for that fun activity, or that they didn't invite me on that one, and they decided that was a solo hangout. I'm also genuinely happy that they're getting closer, and both things exist at once. There's a disappointment of your own expectations.
• 9:48
  Alex Alexander: Birthdays come to mind for this one. Sometimes the friend shows up exactly as they always have.
• 9:53
  Alex Alexander: Right? You've been doing a birthday dinner for eight years.
• 10:00
  Alex Alexander: And they planned the same birthday dinner. They know your favorite restaurant. They get your favorite cake. They kind of like follow the same formula that has worked. And the disappointment is that you feel like this is a milestone birthday. You are a different person now, and you wanted a different type of celebration.
• 10:14
  Alex Alexander: So even though you go because you're like, wow, they threw me a party. While you're there in your mind, you're just like,"Wow, I think I'm past this. I think I don't want this anymore.
• 10:25
  Alex Alexander: And you're kind of disappointed that this is how you spent your birthday." Another one we don't really talk about enough is the disappointment that you caused.
• 10:36
  Alex Alexander: The times that you were the one who didn't show up the way someone needed, whether you chose that or not, right? For example, I kind of mentioned this. I was supposed to go to this baby shower. I was sick. I could not go.
• 10:47
  Alex Alexander: Now I'm disappointed that I've disappointed my friends. Like I'm sad, and this is just a few reasons. I am sure there are dozens of other reasons I didn't even come up with. And then within those categories, I mean, there are thousands of examples.
• 11:06
  Alex Alexander: This is all to say, disappointment is around us all day, every day, in probably a lot of our friendships. Micro disappointments. I mean, everything from like you're disappointed that your friend, I don't know, sat under the air conditioner because you're really cold and you didn't bring a sweater, and they didn't consider that you would be really cold to disappointment over big milestones or disappointment over you know maybe years of your life and how somebody showed up for you. So as I've thought about disappointment this week, I think a lot of us are like we don't want to experience disappointment because we think the opposite of disappointment is joy, happiness, better friendship, feeling closer, feeling more connected, right?
• 11:54
  Alex Alexander: So that's what we want. We want to feel good. But the more I've thought about this week, I actually think that the opposite of disappointment is apathy, and apathy means that you don't care. Think about it. We all have relationships where someone has disappointed us, and it's kind of been a shoulder shrug, and we walk away because we didn't care. Maybe it was a coworker who you kind of know you've met a few times. You're disappointed by the fact that they didn't stand up for you as people were hanging around in the kitchen talking. And when you go to think about it, you're just kind of like, "Well, I don't. We're not really that close. So I guess whatever, right?" Brush it off, move on. On the flip side, if this was your closest work friend, and they weren't standing up for you in the kitchen when everybody was talking about you, that would be disappointment. Disappointment then is actually proof that we care, that the relationship matters to us, that we are invested enough to want something. Disappointment is the cost of actually caring, and I think when we flip it that way, it changes how we sit with it.
• 13:09
  Alex Alexander: Because if disappointment is around us everywhere, all the time, what do we do with it when it shows up? Now, I really tried to think about my own process here. What do I do when I experience disappointment?
• 13:24
  Alex Alexander: Because there's plenty of it all the time. I go to host something, people don't show up.
• 13:28
  Alex Alexander: I offer someone help, they don't want it. I had a vision for what my day would look like, and it didn't plan out that way, right?
• 13:41
  Alex Alexander: There's disappointment all the time. It stings, and I let it sting. I sit with it. I reflect.
• 13:45
  Alex Alexander: I get clear on what I actually wanted and why. Sometimes I talk to the friend, and sometimes I don't. And normally, it has to do with the fact of like, did I communicate that I was expecting my birthday to be different this year? If not, then I'm disappointed. But I also didn't tell them that the thing we've done for eight years is no longer what I want, and so therefore, this isn't really me telling them that I'm disappointed. The conversation is probably me telling them,"Hey, I think things are changing. I think things are different for me now. I feel like I'm kind of in limbo, and I try to appreciate that I care.
• 14:31
  Alex Alexander: "Like yes, I feel disappointed.
• 14:31
  Alex Alexander: That sucks, but I guess I'm also kind of grateful that I'm disappointed because it means that this relationship matters to me, and if I just walked around all the time not caring, then I wouldn't be building the relationships that I want. It's almost a sign that I have what I want, which is this vibrant set of relationships around me.
• 15:00
  Alex Alexander: Because caring is the point. The other thing about disappointment is that, as I've mentioned in so many episodes, it's not normally the only emotion. So I used that example earlier of feeling left out when two friends are hanging out without me. I might be disappointed I didn't get invited along, and genuinely happy that they are getting closer, and that's not me trying to like shut down my disappointment. It's me spending some time reflecting and thinking about this whole situation of like, okay, why didn't I get invited? And quite frankly, it probably had nothing to do with me. It's just the fact that they wanted some time together, so therefore I can be happy that they got that, and also disappointed that I wasn't there to experience this hangout with them. It's not me like performing some toxic positivity or like enlightened version of friendship. I really genuinely am happy for my friends, that they are getting closer, and I'm also a little sad that I wasn't there. Both things are true, and you're allowed to feel both things. The disappointment is just a signal, because maybe I wouldn't be disappointed if they went off and did another activity that I don't enjoy. If they went hiking, have fun. I love that for them. Go do that.
• 16:21
  Alex Alexander: But if they went paddle boarding without me, I might be a little sad because I love to paddle board, and it would be something we could all do together. So then the reflection there isn't so much that I'm upset they're hanging out without me. The reflection is I want to go do more fun things that I enjoy with my friends, and maybe I should communicate that with them. Talk about that. Figure out a way for us to find more time doing the things that we all love together. So then, what we got to talk about next is what happens when this isn't just like oh, some little disappointments here and there that we're trying to manage.
• 17:02
  Alex Alexander: What happens when the disappointments have gotten big?
• 17:06
  Alex Alexander: They've gotten consistent. This is now a pattern, and I would say that I have had some pretty significant disappointments in my life with some people that I, quite frankly, cared about the most. And that's the thing, right? I think it's the people I cared about the most that can leave us the most disappointed.
• 17:26
  Alex Alexander: Right, the more we care, the more disappointment there is to have. And I'm not gonna breeze past it. Like it sucks. It is truly one of the worst feelings when the people you're closest to disappoint you the most. And if it's a repeated disappointment again and again, or if this is just a certain type of disappointment that like you'll never be able to move past, that's genuinely hard, and it's okay to walk away from a friendship at that point. Like I just I want to be clear. I've talked a lot about how to reflect and move past. If you've tried, but this seems to be a pattern, and you're always reflecting. Or this is just a boundary that has been crossed that you cannot go back from. At a certain point, enough is enough.
• 18:11
  Alex Alexander: It's okay to walk away. I don't ever want to tell you to like stay forever for every reason.
• 18:14
  Alex Alexander: I'm just saying those small disappointments, like let's give reflection a little bit of a try there. That's my point. So now, where does this leave us?
• 18:27
  Alex Alexander: Disappointment is not a sign that something is wrong with your friendships, which, as I say that out loud, feels a little shocking, because I think that the mainstream message is that like if you're disappointed, that's a sign that something is wrong, but now that I've talked this all through and we've chatted about it all, I think that generally, other than those really big repetitive, like you know what I'm talking about, I'm not going to keep giving a caveat here, right?
• 18:54
  Alex Alexander: Those little disappointments, they are not a sign that something is wrong with your friendship. It's actually proof that you care about the friendship, or the connection, or the community, or maybe it's just in general like you care about the fact that you are building yourself that web. So it could be actually you could be like, why am I disappointed by this random acquaintance so much? It may not be the person; it might be the goal you have to build this community around you-you can't be disappointed by someone or something that web or village that you don't care about. If that wasn't a goal in your life, if it didn't matter to you, you would just move right along. So the next time a friend cancels or doesn't show up the way you hoped, or you feel that familiar sting of wanting something and not getting it. I want you to let yourself sit with that feeling, sit with it, reflect on it, appreciate it, take some action because of it, have a conversation because that feeling-that is what caring looks like. And that is what friendship actually costs. In a world where a lot of us don't want to look like we care, I think that's very trendy out there.
• 20:11
  Alex Alexander: Caring causes you some disappointment, and if you are someone who is sitting in a lot of disappointment right now, I hope that this episode makes you maybe feel seen, and it reminds you that you are working towards something to keep going, to keep caring, to put in the work, to have the conversations, and to try new things, and to put yourself out there, to make the invite, even if nobody shows up, because the alternative, where you shrug your shoulders, you don't care at all, just that feeling of general apathy-that is so much lonelier than the disappointment will ever be. So I want to thank Molly for her mic drop moment that led to this episode today. This is going to be one that I am continuing to think about for quite some time.
• 20:58
  Alex Alexander: So expect it to probably show up in some other episodes. With that, I'll see you next week.
• 21:06
  Podcast Intro/Outro: Thank you for listening to this episode of Friendship IRL. I am so honored to have these conversations with you. But don't let the chat die here. Send me a voice message. I created a special website just to chat with you. You can find it at alexalex.chat. You can also find me on Instagram. My handle, @itsalexalexander. Or go ahead and leave a review wherever you prefer to listen to podcasts. Now if you want to take this conversation a step further, send this episode to a friend. Tell them you found it interesting. And use what we just talked about as a conversation starter the next time you and your friend hang out. No need for a teary goodbye. I'll be back with a new episode next week.