Whenever I do something nice to my friends and they do not respond to it the way I would have reacted or the way I expected, I feel disappointed. Thing is, when I help them, when I give them a gift or do a gesture to lift them up, I really do not think at the moment about how they will react to it in the future. I genuinely only want to demonstrate my love to them, but after I do it, my mind starts to explode with thoughts about how what I did was awesome and I would love it if someone did the same things for me so my expectations start to get really high. Today I gave a gift to my best friend (22F) because recently she got into a breakup and I just wanted to lift her up, but after she said thanks and that she liked it a lot the gesture, I felt disappointed because I expected her to at least call me. The same thing happened in February with another of my best friends (22M) where I gave him a gift to congratulate him for finishing university and he reacted by thanking me, although again I expected a huge text or to call me.
I know I’m in the wrong here because I can’t control how people react to gestures and I can’t expect them to react the same way I would, but at the same time, I find it so difficult to lower my expectations because for me this is how I would react to it and also because at the moment that I’m doing these things I really do not care about what they will say, the expectations just pop up after the moment.
Is there some strategy to lower these expectations?
Thank you
TL;DR: I expect too much from my friends after I do something nice and do not know how to lower it because this is the way I would have reacted to such gestures.
1 comment
Where do you think this particular narcissistic trait of yours came from?