Great Expectations

In my last post in this series, I wrote about the differences between friends and acquaintances. True friendships take time and effort, but acquaintance-level relationships survive on infrequent catch-ups, usually in group situations and centred around some sort of fun activity.
This post is about what happens when there are differing expectations in friendships.

Jane is considering asking Susan to be a bridesmaid at her upcoming wedding. Susan is sure to be shocked when she finds out since she considers Jane to just be a casual acquaintance.

Ivy realises that she is the one who puts all the effort into her friendship with Penny – calling her, initiating catch ups etc. Sure Penny is very happy to accept Ivy’s invitations (if she’s not busy with one of her other 800 friends), but not once does she ever bother to call Ivy. Ivy has come to the conclusion that Penny is so ‘in demand’ that she never has to make an effort with her friendships – people seem to be gravitated to her and want her as a friend. Ivy realises if it were a true friendship then Penny would share the effort in keeping it alive.

Terry and Noeline invite their friends Joe and Samantha to dinner. Joe and Samantha accept the invitation but fail to show up on the night. Terry and Noeline sit and wait until the food gets cold, then finally call Samantha’s mobile only to get no answer. When Noeline bumps into Samantha days later, Samantha tells her they forgot all about the dinner invitation. Noeline is annoyed at Samantha’s lack of consideration. She and Terry had been worried that Joe and Samantha had been involved in a car accident or something terrible. Not only did Samantha fail to return Noeline’s phone call, she waited until they randomly bumped into each other instead of taking the initiative and calling to apologise.

Karen found out through the grapevine that her friend, Laura, who lives three hours away, had been in town on the weekend and didn’t call her. Laura explains to an annoyed Karen that her visit was fleeting, she didn’t have time to visit everyone in one weekend, and that she has other friends besides Karen.

Do any of these scenarios sound familiar? We expect people to act a certain way – the way we would act in that same situation. When they fail us, we get disappointed and consider scaling back or even ending the friendship. Meanwhile the friend who fails us is completely oblivious, or maybe they do know how inconsiderate/lazy/selfish they are being but they just don’t care. After all, they have plenty of other friends who will never call them to account.

Two of my friends went to some kind of relationships course a couple of years ago and came away with the idea that we shouldn’t expect people to behave the way we would. In other words, we need to not expect anything of anyone. I told them I disagreed emphatically. So, we need to have really, really low expectations of each other and be pleasantly surprised when someone acts like a decent human being? This sounds like pessimism dressed up slightly differently. I don’t want to expect my friends to act like jerks and then throw a huge party because one of them decided to be considerate and a good friend. They’re my friends because I saw in them the capacity to be kind, loving, unselfish people.

But the reality is that people, even our dearest of friends, will fail us and disappoint us. Somehow we need to find a way to deal with that without having zero expectations. Having no expectations is impossible anyway – they are so ingrained into us by our upbringing, our culture, our experiences…often we only realise what our expectations are when they haven’t been met.

For example, I will share some of my inbuilt expectations:

• I expect my friends to call if I have invited them somewhere (with the understanding that it’s a set time and not a ‘rock up anytime after 7pm’ kind of event) if they are going to be majorly late or can no longer come. That way I’m not worrying that some harm has come to them, and if someone has gone to the trouble of preparing you a meal, it’s polite to let them know if you can no longer be there.

• If a friend says they are going to catch up with me at a certain time and place, I expect them to be there and not cancel because a better offer has come along. Sickness and family or work emergencies are legitimate excuses.

• If I’m catching up with a friend or a small group of friends at a café or a restaurant, I expect it to be just them and myself – not randoms they decide to bring along without telling me. I hate it when I’ve been looking forward to catching up with someone and they go and bring some other person who’s boring, doesn’t talk, and my friend spends all their time trying to make their other guest feel comfortable rather than talking to me. When I’ve been staying with a friend, I don’t want to gatecrash their social events which they planned well before my arrival. I’m happy to just sit at their house and watch DVDs.

• I expect friends to say thank you and let me know a gift I sent them in the post has arrived.

• I expect good/close friends to be there for me when I’m upset or struggling in some way.

• I expect friends to return emails, SMS, Facebook messages etc providing they are able to. I get mighty annoyed when I have sent someone a private message on Facebook and have not received a reply, yet I can see by my news feed that they seem to have oodles of time to muck around and play games. That tells me (a) they have a computer and internet access and (b) they have spare time.

That’s just a start. I have realised that I have these expectations when they have not been met and I think a lot of them have to do with my upbringing because some of these dot points were what my mum emphasised to my brother and myself when we were growing up. The problem is that I am now encountering adults who were not raised with these values, or they were, but don’t think they are important.

So what do we do when we realise a friend has greatly differing expectations of the friendship to our own? These are a few guidelines I’ve been thinking of following:

• Realise our expectations may be wildly unrealistic and they we are putting too much pressure on our friend. In my case, I have a friend who used to get very annoyed if I did not visit her EVERY time I went to Perth. When I explained that Duncan and I have a lot of friends and relatives to see, that didn’t cut it with her – she wanted me to at least call her to let her know I was in the city. I asked her what the point of that was if I didn’t have time to see her and told her I wouldn’t be allowing her to guilt-trip me this way.

• Realise that friends show love in different ways. While I strive to stay in touch with many people, I am not a phone person. But one of my friends is so I try to make concessions for this and call her because that’s how she likes to communicate when face-to-face is not possible. However this person wanted us to speak on the phone no less than once a fortnight. I told her I don’t think we need to speak that often to keep the friendship alive. It’s not like I’m her only friend. But I do try and call her because I know it’s important to her.

• Confront a lazy, inconsiderate or apathetic friend and if they don’t think they’ve done anything wrong, have less to do with them in the future. Sometimes friends may be showing love in a different love language. Sometimes they are just slackers who don’t care about me as a person, rather just as entertainment value.

• Examine ourselves to see if we have been taking our friends for granted. In the case of Joe and Samantha forgetting to come for dinner at Terry and Noeline’s place, it was just lazy on their behalf to not call when they realised they had forgotten. Forgetting was not the crime (although some people would do well to realise that being more organised can lead to being more loving), but they allowed Terry and Noeline to sit and worry (and let food go to waste) rather than call later and set their minds at ease.

Maybe the answer to differing expectations in friendships is to love God and love our neighbour. How much better would all of our relationships be if we loved others more than ourselves and put their needs before our own?

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