How Should I Handle Disappointments in My Relationships?

When was the last time you felt disappointed by someone? Your spouse just can’t understand why you feel the way you do. A friend’s been distant, not responding to texts. Someone at church who you’d really like to get to know can’t schedule a coffee date for three months. Or that guy or that girl who you really had your heart opening up towards now says, “I’m just not feeling it,” and you’re back to what feels like ground zero in your desire to be married.

You know, no matter what kind of relationship it is, disappointments are bound to happen. But here’s some good news: God can actually use these painful circumstances in powerful ways in our lives, if we’ll receive it.

Here are three of many ways that God uses relational disappointments for good. When I remember these, it rescues me from sliding into a pit of self-pity. My eyes are drawn back to Jesus, and he gives me hope and comfort to keep pressing forward in loving people rather than avoiding, isolating, or self-protecting.

Number one: God uses disappointment to draw us to himself. When people are oblivious to our needs or unable to give us the love we crave, this is always an invitation to draw near to the Lord. When people aren’t loving us well, God may be wanting to teach us about holy, Christ-centered love that keeps pouring out even when our desires aren’t satisfied.

Two: God uses disappointment to actually detach us from relationships that aren’t his best for us. Sometimes we experience disappointment because God is intervening in a relationship that has become a god or a distraction to us. He loves us so much that he will step in between us and someone when that relationship is tempting us towards sin, or when our unsatisfied desires have morphed into demands that people love us in a certain way. God is committed to rescuing us from sinful motivations that move us towards people in selfish ways.

Finally, a third way God uses disappointment is to guard his purposes for us. You know, up to this point, God has kept me single. I’m confident of this. And yet that assurance hasn’t protected me from feeling painful loss and disappointment in regards to certain men. God has used the freedom that singleness affords to send me out into amazing ministry opportunities all over the world. Being unmarried has helped me cultivate sweet intimacy with the Lord. But those men? God had beautiful purposes for them in bringing them to the women they married. God has kept me and them in the path marked out for us, just as Hebrews 12:1 describes.

I hope these three ways of rethinking disappointments will encourage your heart and help you respond to disappointment in new, redemptive ways when relationships are tough.