When you hold a standard for someone that you have never communicated, and they fail to meet it, the failure feels like evidence of who they are. But the evidence is actually of what was never said. The resentment is real. The cause of it was manufactured. Most relationship friction is not a values mismatch. It is a communication failure — the gap between what you assumed was understood and what was actually known. The antidote is not lower expectations. It is spoken ones.