When expectations can hurt
Apr 14th, 2008 by spaceagesage
My husband and I learned early on in our relationship that we both carried a lot of baggage into our marriage. He thought leaving the house a mess gave me something to feel good about cleaning up like Aunt Bee in The Andy Griffith Show and that slapping me on the butt in public showed love. I thought he should act more like my handyman brothers and fix every problem with the car or house, and, of course, carry out the garbage. Making matters worse, we married in our 30s with neither one of us having been married before.
This “curse of expectations” also snares other people into its clutches:
My brothers need to step up and take care of our mother.
My friend needs to discipline his kids more.
My mother needs to stop worrying all the time.
The problem with these types of expectations, like unwanted advice, is they set two or more people up in conflict by creating a battle ground between two opposing views. Instead of giving my husband space to grow at his own pace with patience, nurturing support, and by being a good example myself, I initially tried to play “hover parent.”
The result of this curse of expectations was that I wanted my husband to be someone he wasn’t and vice-versa, and we ended up feeling like damaged goods, flawed or loved less for just being our selves.
My husband has a saying, When it ceases to work for you, you will move on. Trust me when I say he learned early that the butt slapping ceased to work for him. For my part, I had to let go of ever expecting him to seriously tackle a “honey-do” list. It took — and still takes — a lot of personal growth work that is never easy to face, but we agreed our marriage was worth it.
POCKET-THOUGHT:
When I load up other people with my expectations for them, I find it takes a lot of time, energy and effort on my part, but it doesn’t seem to really make much of a change in them. Yes, I may be able to force by nagging, or manipulate by throwing down a challenge, or appeal to their better nature, but in the end, they may just do something for a time because of me, not because of a real change in their own heart. As John Welwood notes, “The most powerful agent of growth and transformation is something much more basic than any technique: a change of heart.”
Do you think putting expectations on people is helpful or does it just stress the relationship unnecessarily?
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I believe it stresses the relationship unnecessarily. Our expectations are ours to own, not someone else’s. The quote from John Welwood, you used above, says alot.
We choose our husband and friends for who they are. Why then, do we turn around and try to change them. We can not change others, nor should we want to, we can only ourselves.
Very good article.
searchingwithin — Thanks! I agree we cannot change others, but we always seem to see their areas of growth far more easily than we see our own.