Why We Expect So Much From Others

There’s an unspoken contract we keep writing. It goes like this: “If you say the right thing, in the right tone, at the right moment, I’ll feel safe. And if you don’t, you’ve failed me.” Most people would never say it aloud, but they’re living by it. Especially in the churn of social media, where emotional discomfort is often rebranded as harm, and silence is perceived as moral cowardice. We place impossible expectations on strangers, public figures, creators—sometimes even friends. Expectations they never agreed to and couldn’t meet even if they tried.

You see it clearly when someone like Jennifer Lawrence says, “Maybe I shouldn’t talk about politics anymore.” She’s not being evasive. She’s being self-aware. She’s trying to protect the art she cares about—the characters she plays—from being overshadowed by someone’s personal reaction to her beliefs. And it’s not theoretical. She grew up in a conservative family in a conservative part of the world. She knows what it feels like to lose people because of what you believe. This isn’t indifference. It’s personal.

Still, the backlash is immediate. “She’s spineless.” “She doesn’t care.” “This is privilege.” The demand is apparent: speak up, take a stand, and stay visible forever. You don’t get to step back. You don’t get to opt out. Beneath the outrage lies something softer. People aren’t furious about the silence itself. They’re hurt because that silence left them feeling alone—unseen, unprotected, and unimportant. And instead of saying, “This stirred something up in me,” they say, “You failed me.” It’s never really about the other person. It’s about what they bring up in us. And that’s where the discomfort lives.

Each of us holds unspoken expectations about how others should act to help us feel safe. But the truth is, most people don’t know our inner rules—so inevitably, they break them. When that happens, we feel hurt or betrayed. We may say things like, “Why didn’t you speak up?” or “You should have used your platform.” But beneath those words, what we’re really expressing is, “I needed you to protect me from this feeling, and you didn’t.”

This isn’t about letting people off the hook for causing harm. It’s about recognizing those moments when we expect someone else to manage our emotions for us. That’s the hard truth most of us avoid—especially online, where moral certainty often feels like a badge of honor.

We reward call-outs. We reward the sharpest take. We reward whoever can detect harm the fastest. But we rarely reward introspection. We don’t pause and say, “Actually, I think I was being self-centered just now. I wanted to control the narrative. This wasn’t about justice. It was about me needing to feel like I mattered.”

There’s also something much older happening underneath the surface. A kind of primal fusion—between friction, conflict, and annihilation. In some systems, especially those built on a survival mentality, any disagreement is treated as an escalation. You challenge me, I lose face. You oppose me, I lose ground. You refuse to bend, I cease to exist.

There’s no differentiation. No space between tension and death. It’s an ancient war logic that shows up in modern emotional armor. And when people carry that fusion, there’s no chance of vulnerability. There’s no curiosity. No movement. Just rigidity and moral performance—because anything less than full control feels like destruction. So no one budges. And the conversation turns into a battlefield, even if it started as grief.

This is where selective outrage finds its fuel. We don’t apply the same standards across the board. We apply them where we’re already raw. Where we’re already afraid. Where we’ve felt powerless before and want to preempt that feeling at all costs.

We direct our outrage at whoever seems safe to target: the visible, the privileged, the too-quiet. But it’s not consistent. It’s strategic. And it’s often unconscious. That’s why it feels righteous in the moment—but it’s dissonant when you step back and analyze the logic. We punish silence selectively. We punish nuance selectively. And we mistake that pattern for justice.

When Jennifer Lawrence says she doesn’t want her political beliefs to compromise her work, it’s not a dodge. It’s a boundary. It’s her saying, “I don’t want my identity to interfere with the art itself.” If your favorite says it, you may give them a pass. However, if the public figure triggers you in any way, you won’t. In a culture obsessed with transparency and alignment, those triggering words sound like betrayal even though it’s not.

Most people lack the tools to identify what they’re feeling. Many don’t know how to hold friction without turning it into conflict. Most can’t tolerate discomfort without needing to label someone as a villain. So when someone doesn’t behave the way we silently expected, we quickly judge. And if you’ve moved beyond that pattern—if you’ve stopped relying on others to regulate your internal state—it becomes harder to stay in those spaces. Because now you see it. You see how easily pain turns into performance. You see how outrage becomes a group identity. You see how people call it community when it’s really a shared defense system.

It’s not about feeling superior. It’s about feeling tired. Because once you’ve done the work to not confuse difference with danger, there’s nothing satisfying about watching others remain stuck in that cycle. It just feels noisy.

Two-thirds of Americans are now self-silencing. Not because they don’t care, but because they do. They’re watching connections collapse under the weight of invisible contracts and unspoken expectations. They understand what happens when you say the wrong thing or remain silent. Perhaps the work isn’t always about speaking, fixing, or explaining. Maybe it’s about not absorbing someone else’s fear just because they made it loud. Maybe it’s about sitting with the discomfort without trying to turn it into a lesson. Maybe it’s not about metabolizing everything. Maybe it’s about knowing when not to.

Sometimes, authenticity is the only thing that truly matters. It may lack flash or viral appeal, and it may not score points in the crowd's eyes. But perhaps, in the end, honesty is the only way forward we can truly trust.