What do you do when you're disappointed?

Disappointment is guaranteed in any long relationship, and it comes in many sizes: small ones every week, significant ones every few months, large ones that determine whether the relationship continues. The question isn't whether your partner will disappoint you — it's whether the way they handle disappointment is compatible with the way you need to be treated when it happens. Do they go quiet and cold? Do they speak up directly? Do they overcompensate? Do they disappear? This answer is a better predictor of long-term compatibility than almost any other question you can ask. The pattern of how someone metabolizes disappointment — how they communicate it, what they need from you while they're feeling it, how long it takes to process — will play out thousands of times over the course of a relationship. You're looking for a pattern you can work with, not a perfect pattern. But you need to know what it is before you're in the middle of it.