If a friend promises something but can’t delivery… What do you do?
With Reid Mihalko from ReidAboutSex.com and Cathy Vartuli from TheIntimacyDojo.com.
Reid: Last video. Hugh Jackman Maroon 5. In this video, how do you handle mispromises, you have a friend who promised you something and they couldn’t deliver. How do you handle mispromises?
Cathy: This is Reid Mihalko from https://reidaboutsex.com/ and I’m Cathy Vartuli from http://theintimacydojo.com/.
Reid: That’s true. That’s correct. The last time I checked that’s exactly who we are. So a friend promises you something and then they can’t deliver.
Cathy: I think part of it, for me it depends on if it’s a little promise or a big promise, or it was made over or repeated over a long time or just like one time.
Reid: Give me the worst case scenario. Promise over time big deal. And then all of the sudden it’s revealed that they, let’s assume that it was done in a good faith. They cannot fulfill the promise. They were mistaken.
Cathy: There’s a lot of feelings about that, I mean like if I’m trusting someone I’m basing my decisions on their assurances and it makes or can shake the relationship.
Reid: Let’s assume good intentions and good faith and feel free to leave comments on this one, this is a deep one, right? They were wrong.
Cathy: When we talked about restitution the last video and they can try to apologize and make up for whatever they can.
Reid: And I look coz were stuck on deck in this situation, let’s assume that the things they promise there is nothing better maroon 5 tickets or the last video, there’s redeem, there’s nothing equal or better than you promise something that was so big for them and then it motivated for all the other stuff. The example was there was an exchange of services for this promise or at least emotional services. And there’s nothing better than Maroon 5 even a weekend in Paris with Hugh Jackman wearing no shirt for one day was not better. So, the person in this situation mispromise what they thought they could provide. Kept reassuring them, building up the tension that juicy, delicious tension that people love to roll around in and then it was not possible.
Cathy: And then the scenario, we cannot get maroon 5 tickets the band just broke or whatever. And what can you do? And we’re talking about restitution and there’s nothing as good as or better than maroon 5 tickets ever.
Reid: Now this video is focusing on, so what they promised they meant well and tried but they mispromised. They were wrong about what they were capable of. How do we handle that?
Cathy: So and this scenarios also have a good exchange of efforts, I agree to help you get your house ready for the sale, we’re going to scrub it from top to bottom spend a really good weekend and you’ll gonna reward me with Maroon 5 tickets. And I’ve gone through scrub the house like killed myself 12 hours a day 3 days the house is perfect, I’ve done all the work.
Reid: The carrot that was dangled in front of me.
Cathy: Knowing we have 5 tickets, so the effort was already put in it’s been used, the house is sold or whatever. One side got the valuable out of the exchange and the other side hasn’t gotten it. There are no Marron 5 tickets but there must something that add to the emotional equivalent in that. Maybe you can give 5 things that are add up to that or you can look to things to exchange that for.
Reid: And then, what if for that person like there’s just nothing that can add up to that.
Cathy: If you can’t give it to them maybe they need to be mad at you for a while and I think you kinda have to show up for that unless it starts becoming abusive because you did let them down. I think maybe after a little while they like okay ‘I’m not okay that this has happened but maybe if we did this and this that would help make out for it.
Reid: So my take on this and why Cathy thinks that I absorbed people with responsibility is having grown up with alcoholic family where people and with the parent that lied and made a lot of promises that never delivered on. I’m sure there’s a psychiatrist that are watching like “this is rich, let me get my hands on how to help you”. My coping mechanism is that people aren’t perfect. People do make a lot of stuff out of good intentions and sometimes it doesn’t work out. That’s a founding principal of mine, I assume people are doing the best they can and that not everyone will be accurate or be able to judge where they are in the future. That is why we personally and some people get pissed of me about this, I don’t do a lot of promising for things in the future.
Cathy: No you tend to if you have an exchange and you tend to make the other person deliver before you give. But then if it’s already been..
Reid: And I’m usually really good at my self-assessing what I’m capable of. Because when I look at my life, there are certain things I kinda promise like “yeah, we’ll see or odds are” odds are some people take as certainty. And then when odds work out and then it’s not happening they feel rob. And so, this is just very tricky however if you gonna barter, services for services I do recommend that you try to be as accurate as you can with what you wanna do on the promise over deliver if you can. But have other people do their thing first because when you do stuff first and then they never show up, it’s tricky.
Cathy: But then if they do all their stuff and you can’t show up that’s a really tricky place, too.
Reid: And there’s a conversation about “hey “and this what I would advocate for when you’re negotiating stuff just like “hey, what are your thoughts on and how do we handle if stuff falls apart.”
Cathy: I tend to go to relationship stuff slowly and do some small exchange back and forth first but even then that’s not guarantee that someone is gonna show up for something that they promise.
Reid: And when you build things small people are comfortable making bigger and bigger promises and some point people reach promise overload where they’re excited and they’re in good faith whatever happens and they promise something it’s not possible and that’s human beings tend to try to get excited and try to pull off great feats for each other. How do you handle when those great feats don’t work out? And this is not an easy conversation to have with people and most people never have this conversation and never grew up with families that really talks about disappointment. So most people don’t know where they stand on this things. All they know is that they have been disappointment because of how there life unfolds and they don’t have any tools to handle it. And then they went in good faith and then provided all this house cleaning and scrubbing and then your house sold and I didn’t see Maroon 5 and fuc* you Jackman, right? So then, which is a conversation about that’s not fair. Talk to people about their ideas on fairness because you may had mismatched idea of fairness that if you talked about it sooner than later might indicate where there’s a problematic like a land mine that both of you could follow. And this is again, we’re stocking about this analogy as crazy as it is, is that there’s nothing more important than Maroon 5 for this person.
Cathy: I bet if they had a kidney failure, donating kidney would be a Maroon 5.
Reid: What if that person is not a match? Like when you’re in a situation where there’s no win situation, how do the people involved handle it? And this is where it’s really deep like relationship dynamic stuff and this is business partners, lovers like all kinds of relationship stuff. It’s not just romantic relationships so think about what your needs are when people disappoint you or can’t fulfill on things and how you navigate that so you can start the conversation with other people. And again the thing that you think I just absorbed people for me the way that I look at it, okay what’s actually going on here and when people take can work through or removed or get on the other side of the emotion, what’s the intention? What’s the shared intentions? And what are we actually trying to accomplish? Which some people think it’s heartless because they’re like “Reid you’re getting down back to the work and not like seeing my emotional stuff and then this is me like coz I can see your emotional stuff but what’s gonna happen right now is I can get you those Maroon 5 tickets. So until that is handled by you, I would be the bad guy I would be the person who didn’t give you Maroon 5 tickets or Hugh Jackman. You would take Hugh Jackman that’s because you’re not actually a Maroon 5 fan.
Cathy: I love Maroon 5 fan.
Reid: No not really you’re not like me.
Cathy: We love to know that you think it’s really tough discussion and if you care about the person and you wanna continue the relationship, I mean some people would end the relationship with that point. If that person lets you down and that big deal. But if you have a good relationship overall and you wanna stay in that, how do you move forward if you can’t have restitution or something?
Reid: There you go, leave some comments start with long videos. Hopefully this is a big concept. And we wanted to talk about Hugh Jackman.
Cathy: Or I may have lost with Hugh Jackman without a shirt.
Reid: No, you had me at Hugh Jackman.