“But I would have returned the call right away and he or she waited four hours before they called back!” or “I care about him/her, so I e-mailed back immediately. If he/she cared about me they would not have waited to e-mail me back!” “But if I’ve started dating someone I like, I want to be with them 5 nights a week. He/she doesn’t, so he/she doesn’t love me!”

These sentences illustrate one of the most challenging life lessons for us to learn when our emotions are involved. We do tend to forget how wonderfully, intricate individual people are and become disappointed when they do not react, return communications, or otherwise behave exactly as we would. Individual reactions and/or behaviors are not always reliable indicators of the level of affection another person has for us. When our emotions are involved, we tend to forget to “celebrate the differences” in our partner or potential partner. Those differences can be gently discovered as we get to know someone, appreciated and celebrated as part of the unique make-up of our partner and used, along with our own unique differences, to strengthen our relationships.

When we expect someone to act just exactly as we do, often we are reacting from fear and insecurity rather than from a place of confidence in our own worth. Unfortunately, too often someone will decide to end a burgeoning relationship prematurely because the other person does not do “what I would have done”. At that point, it’s important to examine ourselves closely to see if, subconsciously, we may be using other’s failures to do what we would have done or react as we would have to actually distance ourselves from the possibility of getting close to anyone.