All us us have to cope with the challenges of peer pressure. When we face peer pressure situations it helps to understand our motives.

Often we don’t let down the internal pressure because we feel that the expectations of others don’t let us — or at least that’s what we think.

We assume “making people happy” is a sign of being a good friend, when it really drives us to a dangerous place and perpetuates unreasonable expectations.

You have choices.
I have choices.

Choices

We have choices, more choices than we let ourselves see.

Trusting people, like trusting the weather forecast, is difficult; there are many variables.

Trusting someone is hard, but it’s even harder for some people.  When we’ve been burned by untrustworthy people, we distrust others.

When friends or family member abandon us, we assume others will do the same thing.

When we’ve lost a loved one, we have life experiences that often make trust seem even more risky.

When we have scars and unhealed open wounds they beckon us to believe that love is not worth it.

Trust is precious.  Trust is a gift.

Guest post by Amy Volltrauer

The Legend of the Hippo Pillow

A little set up.

I am a traditionalist and had been looking forward to when I had a boyfriend on Valentine’s Day and what special gift he would give. So needless to say, I had expectations.

Scott on the other hand is a non-traditionalist and hates having to live up to the expectations put on him by marketing, etc. And we didn’t know each other well enough yet to know these things about each other.

Hence the story.

Yesterday I wrote about the importance of having clear expectations in your relationships.  If you have not read it you might want to do so now.  Here it is:

It’s important to talk through expectations throughout the life of your relationship or sadly it may lead to the death of that relationship.

Below is a quick but provocative quiz listing common but unspoken expectations that affect relationships.

If you’re single and you aren’t in relationship now take it anyway.  Ask a friend to answer it for you and discuss his/her answers.  Either way, copy and paste this quiz into a document to save it for the day you want to take your next relationship to a deeper level.