Getting married is not a time when you expect to have to manage disappointment, but it is just at this time when you may have to come to terms with such feelings.
Perhaps your friends, family or siblings fail to do exactly what you want from them. But remember, everyone has their own reasons.
Maybe your sister is genuinely happy for you, but sad as she hasn’t been able to find a partner for herself. Perhaps she is so caught up with her own challenges and priorities that your wedding is just not her number one interest. Although she is happy for you she would be happier if she could find the man of her dreams. She is experiencing very mixed emotions that alternate between jealousy and sisterly love and affection. She wants this to be the best day of your life but has problems in compartmentalising your happiness and her current disappointment in life.
It is important to remember that although this is your big day, others may have personal challenges you know little about. For you, your wedding has taken over your life. You eat and breathe it and love every moment, but this is not necessarily the same for everyone else in your family and circle of friends.
At any wedding a great many guests, married or otherwise, will experience mixed emotions that relate to their own lives. We all think back to our own weddings — did our dreams materialise or did they just turn out to be daydreams?
Weddings are very important social events that perpetuate the chain of life and of families, but they often engender complex thoughts and memories. Fortunately, most of them are good!
Quick Tips:
- Your wedding is your number one priority, but it is not necessarily so important to everyone.
- Do your best to manage disappointment and have a conversation with the person concerned if you are feeling let down by them. Then, hopefully, you might receive an explanation that will put everything into perspective.
- Ask yourself, ‘are my expectations too high?’ and ‘am I being realistic?’
Sometimes we have to manage disappointment in our lives, and that is an ongoing life challenge for all of us.
Article by Carole Spiers, Love and Relationship Expert
Image from Flickr by Kristina Alexanderson (CC BY-NC-SA 2.0)