When Reality is a Bummer: Dealing with Disappointment

Are you feeling disappointed about anything in your relationship or sex life?

Disappointment in relationships and sex is super normal. Some disappointment is because the situation is really not working for us and we need to take some sort of action (like leave, have some tough conversations, or get help). Other disappointments are simply because it's not possible for another person to give us 100% of what we want all the time. 

Today we're taking a look under the hood at this second kind of disappointment. The kind that happens when our partner can't give us everything we want. Everyone runs into this at some point. When we stop resisting our disappointment and start accepting and even laughing at it, we get a lot of our power and energy back. We're better able to stay connected and make good decisions about what realistically needs to change. 

This episode will help you understand and normalize feeling disappointed and frustrated about not getting everything you want. It will help take the burden out of it and give you some ideas about how to let yourself be disappointed without letting it poison your sexual and romantic connections. 

Get the free guide Find Your Secret Turn Ons to discover the roadmap to your best sex life at https://laurajurgens.com. You can also learn more about me and how to inquire about coaching availability.

Get a transcript of this episode by going to https://sexhelpforsmartpeople.buzzsprout.com/ Click on the episode, then choose the transcript tab.

PS: If you are offended by some swearing, this podcast is not for you.

Transcript

[00:00:28] Hey everyone, welcome to episode 22. We are talking today about how we deal with disappointing aspects of reality in sex and relationships and how the way we deal with disappointment can change our lives. everything about how our sex life and relationships feel to us. We're going to take this a bit silly today but also super real and I'm experimenting with like ditching that extra intro music so let me know if you're going to be super bummed about that but somehow I'm imagining maybe not so we're just going to dive right in.

[00:01:02] What have you been disappointed about today? I was disappointed that I didn't have a ton of energy this morning because I slept like shit. I was also disappointed that it is humid AF out there and my AC upstairs in my office doesn't seem to be able to kind of keep up. But you know, these things are reality.

[00:01:26] So, I just moved on and let myself be a little bit bummed about them. And That's normal, right? We all have the shared human experience of feeling disappointment. But when it comes to sex and relationships, sometimes we try to suppress our disappointment because we are afraid that feeling it will break our connection.

[00:01:47] But the truth is that suppressing it is usually a lot worse. So we're going to talk about why and some common kinds of disappointment that are actually just useful to let yourself feel and move on from. And the thing is everyone has disappointment and frustrations about our partners, our relationships, and our sex lives at some point.

[00:02:13] It is a myth that anyone ever gets exactly what they want all the time from their partner forever. So chances are you have disappointment and your partner has it too. That is okay. That doesn't mean either of you are wrong or lacking. It is just because disappointment is normal. We don't get everything we want or wish for from other people, right?

[00:02:38] And we know this, and so some of the things I say today are going to sound kind of like, well, duh, of course, are you being just like really patronizing? And I don't mean to be patronizing at all. These are the kinds of things that I need reminded of, and it really helped me when I learned about disappointment and really just kind of looked it in the eye.

[00:02:58] Because yes, we do know these things, and I'm putting that in air quotes, like. air quote, know these things in our heads. But it's really different to kind of know them in our heads intellectually and to really kind of live out a relationship with the emotion of disappointment, with the feeling of disappointment that actually feels kind of liberating and good and healthy and not suppressing and creating this sort of like long term resentment.

[00:03:29] So we're going to get, we're going to just get a little bit silly about this today. But yes, at some point, some points it will sound kind of like I'm telling you stuff that of course, you know, and it's because I'm kind of talking to that little part in all of us that. is just this really, really young little infant who actually doesn't really know these things, okay?

[00:03:56] Because it starts really early in infancy, not getting what we want from other people, right? And that's kind of the part of us that tends to feel really disappointed in relationships, too. at at this sort of level. Now, there's different kinds of disappointment. You could be disappointed because there's things that actually are incredibly problematic, and you could indeed decide that they are not what you want, and you want to leave that relationship.

[00:04:27] That is, a great thing. I'm so glad we all have free will and we can do that. But what I'm more talking about today are the kind of, the kind of disappointments that do come from that really young inner child that really just wants our partners to kind of make everything perfect for us. And sometimes we have inadvertent disappointment that we haven't really thought about intellectually because these little infants are running the show a little bit.

[00:04:58] So that's what we're going to talk about today. So when we were a little baby, maybe we had a heart tummy, maybe we had gas pains and our tummy hurts and we want our parent to take it away, but they can't. So what do we do? We are just mad, right? We are yelling and wailing our mad anger. Why can't you take this away?

[00:05:20] And that's 100 percent normal. We have a little bit of a fantasy as adults that we grow out of this desire for other people to just fix things for us and to do everything perfectly so that we never have to feel bad. But we don't actually really grow out of it. We kind of bring that little infant with us in our adult life too.

[00:05:42] And it's a normal thing. That's a, it's a normal default response to not getting what we want.

[00:05:51] And in reality, if we are completely honest with ourselves, which is always helpful, I promise, even though sometimes it's hard, we tend to still get kind of mad and act like babies when we don't get what we want, right? I mean, we might just be wailing a little bit on the inside, but it's there. I sure do it.

[00:06:14] And it's really actually super normal. And as we get older, this simple sort of mad response, right, can turn into a real like simmering frustration and disappointment. And there's often blame in some direction, either externally or internally, because we're not getting whatever the thing is that we want.

[00:06:36] And externalizing it, if you tend to do that, sounds in our head sort of like. They should do X, so I get what I want. Internalizing it sounds, if you're somebody who does that, if I were only, fill in the blank here, better, more worthy, more attractive, etc. If I were only better, I'd get what I want from them.

[00:06:58] Either way, here we have something we want that we're not getting, and at the root of it, we're just bummed about that. So instead of blaming or shaming, right, blaming them or shaming ourselves, we can actually choose just to acknowledge and accept some disappointment. And maybe it's because you don't love the way your partner touches you or kisses you or you don't get the foreplay you want or you don't, or you wish they wanted to have sex more often with you and they just don't.

[00:07:30] Right? Or you wish they weren't busy, or you wish they weren't a nursing mom who's exhausted and hasn't slept in weeks, right? Or you wish that you were both younger, or whatever it is, right? Sometimes, it's okay to just acknowledge that you're disappointed about reality. It actually feels a lot better. And I highly recommend just embracing what I call, with capital letters, Disappointing Aspects of Reality, because they aren't going away.

[00:08:02] And it's okay to feel some disappointment about the world not being perfectly suited to us all the time. If we pretend we're above that, we're not entitled to feel disappointment about the world not being perfectly suited to us all the time. Then we wind up just bottling it all up with denial. So that's why I suggest we just learn to accept it, maybe with a little bit of humor, which is what we're going to do today, and move on instead.

[00:08:29] In relationships and sex, disappointment and frustration happen all the time, right? So much. And sometimes we don't acknowledge that. And we act like we're not supposed to be disappointed with our partners or with our relationship. And that then makes us kind of hide it. Right? And then we get resentful because now we're hiding and suppressing something.

[00:08:55] So we're dealing with another person who is not us, right? They aren't actually on this earth to give us 100 percent of what we want all the time. And in fact, that's actually probably the number one disappointing aspect of reality. There are lots of them, but this is basically the bottom line one, that no one can give us 100 percent of what we want.

[00:09:18] all the time. And to be honest, we don't actually want our partners to do that. Even the best parents can't do that for their kids. And if we try to parentify our partners, I promise it just doesn't work out well. There winds up being even more disappointment. And really, no one should give us 100 percent of what we want all the time.

[00:09:39] They would have no life of their own. And I think we'd wind up hating them for being just generally pathetic. And also for even maybe taking away our striving by catering to us so completely, right? So we, most of us, most of our brain doesn't actually want somebody to give us a hundred percent of what we want all the time.

[00:10:00] But there will always be that part, that little inner infant who will want it. And that's okay. We can love our inner infant. They bring all kinds of lovely, warm, connecting, innocent aspects to us as well. But they do come with this downside that I think the best approach to is just kind of noticing and just allowing it to be there.

[00:10:23] Part of us will want people to give us 100 percent of what we want all the time. Okay. It's baked into us as humans. And even the fact that we want that is actually a disappointing aspect of reality worth accepting. So. What happens as adults in relationships with others, when we sort of don't pay attention or own and accept this shadow side of ourselves, where we really actually want people to do everything that we want all the time perfectly, is that we tend to do two things in our relationships.

[00:10:57] We first, one, do the default thing of getting mad about it and seeing if the other person will fix it for us. And then two, if that doesn't work, we notice that being mad will probably create disconnection. And so we try to suppress our disappointment. We just push it down. And the problem is that it's still there.

[00:11:18] And now we are actually actively resisting it. So that means it starts sapping our energy. It's kind of like trying to push a beach ball under the water. The farther we push it down, the more energy it actually takes to hold it there. And to be honest, I wish that getting mad and blaming others actually helped and felt good because it is so much easier.

[00:11:41] But as adults, it's just not very helpful past a certain point, right? A tiny bit of initial wailing is understandable and sometimes just needs to happen, right? It's okay to wail a little bit. But staying in that anger and frustration is actually really disempowering. Whether it's being mad at ourselves or someone else, it's actually not very fun and it saps our energy just like the resistance to disappointment does.

[00:12:09] So what can we do? The thing that seems to work best from all the empirical research, and in my own experience, is actually just accepting disappointment as this normal part of the human experience. It is an emotion. It is an emotion we are designed to feel like the whole range of human emotions. We are completely capable of feeling all of them, even if they're uncomfortable.

[00:12:35] So we just let ourselves feel it in our bodies, let it wash all the way through us, and even maybe bring a little bit of lightness or humor to the situation. Because laughing at ourselves and our expectations of getting, you know, 100 percent of what we want all the time is actually pretty helpful. Right?

[00:12:53] What do we do when we can't take that little baby's gas pains away? We might try soothing them. We also might try making them giggle. So today we're just going to look at some of the most common disappointments, the most common like disappointing aspects of reality. And I'm not saying that you should just tolerate.

[00:13:14] behavior that is problematic or that's just a really bad fit for what you want in your relationship. That's not at all what I'm saying. We're looking at understanding that maybe there are aspects of our partners and our relationship with our partners that are just, even if they're phenomenal, they're just not going to be perfect.

[00:13:34] And accepting the disappointment actually doesn't keep us from making change. It actually allows it, it makes it a lot easier to make change. Whether that change means a decision to get help, whether that change means a decision to leave, whether whatever, whether that change means a decision actually just to stay in acceptance of this being the status quo, it's easier to do that when we acknowledge and don't suppress our emotions about it.

[00:14:05] Okay. So, We're going to just take a look at some common disappointments in relationships and sex that are sort of the top, sort of like, geesh, humans, we have silly expectations kind of things. And it actually just helps to recognize that they, it is actually a fucking bummer that these things are reality in a lot of ways.

[00:14:28] So here goes. Okay, so one disappointing aspect of reality, other people aren't the same as us. What the actual fuck, right? Why aren't they totally the same? Why don't they do things just like we do so that we can understand them? Why don't they operate according to the exact same set of unconscious rules that we do?

[00:14:51] Why don't they have the same needs and desires and responses as us? Why didn't they read our manual for all of these things that we think they should be doing? And why don't they always want what we want at the exact time we want it? So, yes, other people are not the same as us is actually a disappointing aspect of reality.

[00:15:13] Number two, people are autonomous. They have things like stupid free will. And it is really disappointing. Sometimes people say no to us. Sometimes they change their minds. And it would be so fun sometimes just to have them do what we want, but they don't always do that. In fact, they don't do it a lot of the time.

[00:15:36] So that it's actually okay to just acknowledge that it's kind of disappointing that people don't just do what we want and that they say no to us or change their minds. Alright, number three. Partners can't be everything to us or everyone that we need in our lives. People have actual limitations and capacities.

[00:15:58] They can't fill the role of a village, and we actually need to cultivate a whole circle of people to do that. To do those things, which is really annoying when we're sold this idea by society of this, you know, end all be all one true love thing being completely fulfilling, right? That we, we actually run into the reality that sometimes our partners aren't good for certain things.

[00:16:22] Maybe they don't like hiking and we love hiking. Maybe they don't want to go collect rocks with us. Maybe they're not into jazz music, whatever it is, right? Right. And we have to find other people to fill those roles. Maybe they don't want to do the kind of kinky shit we want to do, and we might have to figure out if we're going to open the relationship to outsource some of those things.

[00:16:44] And at the end of the day, we might need to acknowledge that we have some disappointment about that. Okay. Number four, partners are not always good. at what we like. They may touch us in a way we don't love, right? Maybe they give us some touches that just feel kind of icky. Maybe they give us sloppy slimy kisses.

[00:17:04] Maybe they manhandle our clitoris. And sometimes they can learn better and sometimes they can't. Why can't they just be good at everything we like right out of the box, right? And plus when they actually do need to learn, usually the learning. It takes lots of practice and time, like ugh, that is just disappointing, right?

[00:17:28] And it's okay that that's disappointing. Here's another one. Number five, mind reading is just not possible, which, you know, dang it, it just doesn't work to outsource responsibility for knowing and communicating our own desires. And as much as we'd probably not want to have mind reading be on the table most of the time, because I certainly want, wouldn't want people in my head all the time, there are times when it's just like, couldn't you just know exactly what I want right now?

[00:18:01] Fuck, it doesn't work that way, which is really disappointing. All right, number six, not only is mind reading impossible, but people need to be told something a lot of times before it sticks, which is It's really annoying. So the reality is that once I tell somebody something once, and that doesn't actually usually do the trick.

[00:18:26] And you know, what's even more annoying maybe is that the same is true of me. People have to tell me things a bunch of times sometimes in order for me to really understand what it is that they want and how to do it. So when I tell my partner I'd like them to kiss my neck in a certain way or touch my butt in a certain way.

[00:18:45] I probably have to acknowledge that I'm going to have to tell them at least 10 times, which, you know, that's okay to be disappointed about. All right, number seven, and the last one, good communication requires vulnerability, which sucks balls. So it is just super disappointing. It would be so much easier if defensiveness and passive aggression or just like yelling at people worked and didn't cause arguments.

[00:19:14] I mean, really, wouldn't it be so much easier because it is the default, right? We just want to kind of get mad or just like, you know, shouldn't I just be able to give them a look, like a nasty look and then just figure out that they fucked up? I don't know. doesn't actually work that way. So really, vulnerable authenticity is always going to get better results than passive aggression or venting frustration, even though those things are so much easier.

[00:19:46] Okay, that was a bit silly. And I know I'm being silly, but also not really. I mean, Don't we wish all these things weren't actually true? Even if secretly there are parts of us that are actually pretty happy about things like free will and a lack of mind reading, there are other parts, our little inner infant who's just really fucking disappointed.

[00:20:08] So I think it's really valuable to just embrace the disappointment. It actually is incredibly liberating to say, it's okay for me to be disappointed about these things. It lets us off the hook for doing all that suppression. We don't have to be mad about it. You know, And what I love is when I learned about this, you know, even in my relationship, my, with my partner, like we will just admit that we're disappointed about things like, ugh, you couldn't just read my mind or like, I showed you this last week and you're still not getting it.

[00:20:49] And I, I'm a little disappointed about that, babe, but okay. And I'm going to show you again and we're going to do it, but we kind of laugh about it now, right? Which. Feels much better than trying to pretend that it's all okay and that it feels great, right? For someone just not to get something or someone not to do something that you've asked for five times because you haven't asked for it 10 times, right?

[00:21:16] Okay, so your exercise today. Because you know I love giving you exercises, and if you don't do them, that's totally fine, I'm not the exercise police. But I do invite you to really do them because they will internalize everything so much better. You will get so much more out of the time you spend on this podcast if you go back and do the exercises.

[00:21:37] So, This one is also just really fun. I do this pretty often and it feels like it releases a burden from me. And it's super easy. It's just, it's a journaling exercise, but you can just grab a random piece of paper. I want you to write at the top, disappointing aspects of my reality. And then underneath, list the words.

[00:22:01] All the shit that's just plain true and real that kind of sucks. So include whatever stuff you want from your relationship and sex life, but you can also include whatever else you want. The key and the trick is to write it factually without blaming or shaming anyone. So I'm going to read you a few from mine from my latest journal entry on this a couple months ago.

[00:22:27] Here's, here's a little sampler of my journal exercise book. Humans, including me, have limited capacity. Sometimes I don't actually feel turned on even when I wish I did. I can't fix all the pain and suffering in the world. I don't have a million dollars in my retirement accounts. I do not have longer legs.

[00:22:47] There is not more time in each day or in life. My cats don't always want to sit on my lap when I want them to. My partner doesn't always do things perfectly, even after I've asked. When I travel, I can't sleep in my own bed. It's really disappointing, isn't it? The last one I'll give you is, I usually have to be the one to take the lead to get what I want in bed.

[00:23:11] So those are just a few examples. This is a really simple exercise, but I will be really curious about how it feels. It always feels really good to me to acknowledge that. these things, just the real things about life that feel disappointing in a factual manner, and see if it helps you. And let me know how it goes if you like, because I'm always interested in hearing from listeners.

[00:23:36] So I hope you enjoyed this. And I will see you here next week. Hey, if you're curious about how you could have better sex and connections, go grab my free guide, Find Your Secret Turn Ons. It's right on my website, www. laurajurgens. com and the link is in the show notes. I'll see you here next time.