Is Your Invitee List Half-Attending or Half-Absent?

I've recently noticed a difference in approach between my friends and myself with regards to expectations on friends to come to events.

I'm of the approach that if you don't explicitly say you're coming, you're not coming. But some of my friends are the other way round: they think you're coming unless you explicitly say you're not.

To me, this is a variation of the "glass half-full, glass half-empty" thought experiment. Are your expectations of your friends half-full or half-empty?

Invitee List Half-Absent
I'm very sensitive to whether people want to come to event or not, and I hate the idea of trying to persuade someone to come to something when, to everyone else, it's obvious that that person clearly doesn't want to come. In this way, I'm probably a lot quicker to throw in the towel with trying to have my friends show up for events, and I always create clauses in my invitation so that anyone can back out easily. I often use the line "I want to see people who want to see me" along with this. An example of how this manifests in my communication is the text: "I'm going to be here at 6 PM to see a friend, give me a ring if you can make it, otherwise no worries."  The expectation is they'll not make it, and I don't do the dreaded nagging, and they can actively tell me if they do want to come.

You expect nothing, so that you're not upset if no-one turns up, and you have a baseline from where everything can only get better. It's a bit Nihilistic.


Invitee List Half-Attending
On the flip side is how my friends think about events. They think "why wouldn't everyone want to come to this? We always have fun and we're good friends."  An example of how this manifests itself into communication is, "Guy, when are you coming tonight??" The expectation is that I'm coming, unless I actively tell them I can't.

Maybe it's a sign that my friends are able to create more secure attachments than I am. Although is that mentality an inherently good thing? Yes, a secure attachment sounds inherently better than an insecure one: the word "secure" has associations with positive qualities, but the mindset of how we approach situations has trade-offs for each.


The Same Mentality Used In Trust Models
This also leaks out to how we trust people. The old question to reveal our mindset in this situation is, "do you think trust is earned, or do you think trust is given until proven otherwise?". In this question: 'trust is earned, not given' (glass half-empty: expect nothing unless people show you otherwise) or 'trust is given until shown otherwise' (glass half-full: people are inherently good and can be trusted until shown otherwise). I'm definitely in the 'trust is earned, not given' camp.

So What Does All This Say About Me?
Maybe I have trust issues. Maybe I should allow myself to trust people more. I know that I've been let down by friends and in relationships before: maybe that's affected me more than I realize, and it's changed my mindset to be more cautious and expect less from people. On the flip side, when I think back to all big relationships I've had: I've not really been fucked over, and, even though all past relationships have at some point ended, I've always walked away feeling like they've added something to my life. I've been very lucky with the people I've met. It's just that sometimes things don't work: I can't expect everyone to fall in love with me, and it's been a real shame that sometimes I just haven't felt that spark with others.

Maybe we can allow ourselves to focus on either the negatives or the positive. Consciously, I can focus on the positives and tell myself that I've been lucky with the people I've met. Unconsciously, maybe I've focused on the negatives too much: allowing the times that people have let me down before to affect me more than the countless times they've been there for me.

Either way, I'll definitely continue to consider whether I need to change my mindset. But the first step in solving a problem is recognising a problem. If I decide that this is a problem mindset in the future, I'm already past stage one...