Give yourself a day or so to experience your emotional reaction to a disappointment. You do not have to act on your emotions at this point and, in fact, it is better not to act. You can simply let yourself take a low-key day to consider how you’re feeling. Do you feel angry? Confused? Afraid? It can help to do some light journaling, jotting down how the disappointment made you feel and why. It’s important to experience your emotional reaction to an event. Your emotions can offer you insight into how much something meant to you. If you feel mildly annoyed that your boyfriend cancelled date night at the last minute, your disappointment may not be that significant. However, if you find yourself emotionally distraught all day over the let down, there may be deeper issues at play you need to address.

Many people have a tendency to internalize life’s setbacks. You may feel if someone else let you down, you must have done something to bring that letdown on yourself. You may feel like you deserved it, attracted it, or are simply not good enough to have experienced a different outcome. Try to silence that negativity. This narrows your point of view in a way that’s simply inaccurate. There are a variety of factors that may lead to a disappointment. The person who let you down did not, in all likelihood, intend to hurt you. Before personalizing disappointment, consider all the factors involved. Remind yourself that you don’t know all the facts. If your best friend suddenly cancelled a lunch date, this can sting. However, maybe she was having a bad day. Maybe she experienced a disappointment of her own, at work or in her personal life, that affected her mood. She may have just wanted some time alone. While it’s okay to be disappointed, try to remember you don’t have all the facts.

For example, say you’re feeling let down because your friend went out to a club without you. The two of you had plans to stay in and watch a movie, but a co-worker your friend wants to get closer to invited her out at the last minute. If you initially feel hurt, you may feel your friend acted poorly and that you would never cancel plans like this. [2] X Research source However, put yourself in the other person’s shoes. Say your friend is new to the city. She’s been struggling to make friends for a while and feels somewhat lonely. Maybe, given her situation, she was worried about alienating this co-worker and missing the opportunity to aggregate to a new community. Also, consider yourself from your friend’s point of view. Are you the kind of person who enjoys going to clubs? If not, your friend may have decided it was better not to invite you as she figured you wouldn’t have fun.

Try to write down what you’re feeling. After spilling your thoughts out onto the page, consider how you can best articulate them. Reword your thoughts a bit, trying to phrase them in a way that would make sense to another person. Also, keep in mind what you want to accomplish. Do you want an apology? Do you want the person to explain his or her actions? Do you want this person’s behavior to change in the future? The answers to these questions can help guide your writing.

“I” statements have three parts. They begin with “I feel,” followed by the emotion you’re feeling. Then, you explain the action that lead to that emotion. Finally, you say why you felt the way you felt. The point of an “I”-statement is to minimize blame and judgement. You are not saying the person on the listening end is objectively wrong. Instead, you’re saying how their actions made you feel. For example, if you’re talking to your boyfriend and feeling frustrated, you may be inclined to say something like, “You make us late to every social event we go to and that’s incredibly disappointing to me. " The above statement can easily be rephrased into an “I”-statement. Your boyfriend will feel less judged, and may be more inclined to listen to your perspective if he understands he hurt your feelings. Using an “I”-statement, you could say something like, “I feel disappointed when we end up late to social events because I feel like you don’t respect my need to see my friends. "

Returning to the above example, maybe your boyfriend simply does not understand timetables like you do. He may say something like, “I guess I didn’t realize 7 o’clock meant exactly 7 o’clock. When I go out with friends, we have a general time to meet and then people just kind of trickle in. " The problem is an issue of communication rather than disrespect. Your boyfriend simply interprets timing for social events more loosely than you. In the future, you can try to be clearer about when precise timing is important.

Oftentimes, we may have expectations that seeped in from past relationships. For example, say your last girlfriend moved to a city to be with you. She did not have a lot of friends there and, as a result, hung out with you a lot. Your new girlfriend has been living in this city for a while. She may go out more and be less reliant on you for entertainment and socialization. If your expectation is that social events should always be done together, this may be a leftover expectation from your old relationship. It’s not really reasonable, considering your new girlfriend’s situation. You may also have expectations that are unrealistic in other ways. For example, your girlfriend may give you a “maybe” if you ask her if she wants to hang out later. For you, a “maybe” might come off as a “probably” or “definitely. " You may find yourself consistently disappointed when your girlfriend lets you know she can’t make it that night. Maybe your expectations are unrealistic. Many people, especially people with busy schedules, may simply be unable to commit some days. You can start seeing a maybe as a maybe, and expect that you may have to find something else to do that night.

Let’s return to our above example. Your new girlfriend is clearly more independent. She has her own life, her own career, and her own social circle. She may not be the type of person who needs a significant other to feel complete. In this case, try to reframe what you expect of a romantic relationship. In this relationship, you may not spend all your free time together. Your girlfriend may go out with just her friends a few times a week. Try to accept this is just your girlfriend’s personality and it’s not a bad thing. Next time she’s going out for drinks with coworkers, you may be less disappointed that she can’t come over and watch a movie after work.

For example, look at a typical romantic relationship. At the beginning of the relationship, you and your partner may have sex more often, spend more time together, and talk constantly. As the relationship progresses, things may calm down some. You may have moments of silence, for example, and sex may be less frequent than how it was before. It’s natural for the excitement of a new romance to fade with time. The intensity of the first few months of dating usually calms down. This is not necessarily a bad thing. While you may miss the thrill of a new romance, there are benefits to falling into a routine. The two of you are more comfortable together. You’re both able to be yourself. Try to look at your changing relationship as an indicate of stability rather than stagnancy.