Expectations

(Can you tell I love quotes?)

I remember back in October of 2000 being SO excited for my 16th birthday....getting my drivers license, having a party that evening, it was going to be great.  I had an expectation in my mind of what it was going to be like before it even happened.  Then came my birthday.  And guess what?  It was a good day, better than most days.  I went to the DMV to get my license with my mom.  I got flowers delivered to me at school from my parents.  My close friends threw me a small party that night with a few of our friends.  And then it was over.  And sadly, I couldn't help but be a little disappointed.

I don't know exactly what I expected.  It's not like I expected my parents to pull up in the driveway with my dream car and a big red bow around it, or get a kiss from my latest crush, or have hundreds of people at my party.  It wasn't like that.  But for whatever reason, the build-up to that day in my mind didn't match what happened.

Expectations set us up for disappointment.  Of course when you expect something to be great, even if it ends up being okay or even good, you feel disappointed. This got me thinking about why we have expectations in the first place.  I think, for me, expectations are a way of coping with uncertainty and exercising some control.  It also gives me something to look forward to.  Those aren't necessarily bad things, but how do we prevent expectations from getting in the way of our happiness?  I've been trying to figure this out for myself for a while.  Especially in my marriage.  Because let's face it, expectations play a huge role in marriage.

I came up with three ways that I feel we can keep our expectations in check.

1. Be realistic.

There's two different ways that we need to be realistic about expectations in marriage.  The first is about "falling in love".  I came across THIS really good article that was going around on facebook called "I Didn't Love My Wife When We Got Married" by Pop Chassid.  The title caught my eye, so I read through it.  It talks about how we have unrealistic expectations of what marriage is supposed to be like.  You "fall in love" with someone....can't stop thinking about them, get butterflies when you see them, spend all your waking hours with them, talk on the phone until 3 am, can't keep your hands off each other, etc.  (This time period usually involves overlooking all that person's faults, too).  You date that person, get married, and the first few months are wonderful.  You can't imagine life without that person!  Then a couple of years go by and reality sets in.  That "twidderpated" feeling wears off.  A few more years go by and suddenly you're thinking, "Who is this person I married?!  I don't love him/her anymore."  We think that maybe our spouse wasn't "the one" after all and maybe "the one" is still out there.  Well what REALLY happened is....you were never "in love" in the first place.  Love is so much more than that.  We get unrealistic expectations through movies or books or whatever that being happily married means that everything comes easily, that you never fight or have disagreements, that everyday is blissful.  When really, marriage is HARD. It takes A LOT of work.  A LOT of sacrifice.  A LOT of compromise.  And there are times when you might feel like you don't "love" that person anymore.  But "real" love means being committed to that person despite all those hard times.  It means putting up with all their faults and forgiving them when they make mistakes.  "Real" love is not glamorous.  It's exactly that....REAL. 

The next one is the expectations we have of our spouse.  A lot of the expectations we have of our spouse stem from watching our own parents' relationship.  Imagine a young man who grew up with a mom who always had dinner on the table when his dad got home from work.  Then he married a young woman whose mom worked full-time and didn't make dinner very often, if at all.  Her version of dinner is picking up a pizza on the way home.  You can imagine that there might be some difficulty in this relationship.  Or imagine a young woman who grew up with a father who was a great provider and did well financially.  Then she married a man who struggled financially and kept moving around from job to job.  Naturally the young woman would feel like her husband was not filling his "role" as a husband.  Not only should we not compare the expectations our parents had of each other to the expectations we have of our spouse (although it can be difficult not to), we also need to be realistic of what our spouse can do.  Maybe the young woman in the first example isn't a good cook or doesn't enjoy cooking.  We can't expect her to suddenly be a whiz in the kitchen.  Or maybe with the second couple, the wife can't expect the husband who struggles financially to suddenly become a millionaire.  We need to be realistic about the expectations we have for our spouse.  And we need to make sure they know what those expectations are.  That leads me to the next one.....    

2. Communicate.

I remember the first Valentine's Day after I got married. I was building up in my mind this amazing, romantic evening that my husband was going to plan for me.  The day came, aaaaand.....it didn't happen.  Not only is Valentine's Day my husband's birthday (which makes it a little complicated) but I had unrealistic expectations about what it would be like.  The silly thing about it is, I expected him to be a mind reader!  He didn't know what I wanted.  I've even heard girls say (and I'll admit I've been guilty of this before too), that "he should just know".  Yes, of course it's more romantic when a guy does something we don't expect and we don't have to ask.  But realistically, most guys are just normal guys who love their wives but aren't always savvy when it comes to romance.  I've had to learn over the years that I have to TELL my husband what I want.  And ever since I figured that out he's gotten better and better each year.

The same is especially true of the expectations husbands and wives have of each other when it comes to their roles in the home (as I touched on earlier).  I realized after years of marriage that one of the expectations I had of my husband was to be way more hands-on with chores around the house than what he was actually doing.  I EXPECTED HIM to know this, and after years of him not meeting that expectation, I became resentful.  It seems almost embarrassing now looking back at it.  I was getting mad about something he didn't even know!  Then one day we sat down together and wrote out what our expectations were of each other, and rated them on how important they were to us and the likelihood of our spouse being able to meet that expectation. Then once we knew what those expectations were, we started doing them.  Boy did our marriage improve!  It's amazing how something as simple as communicating improved our marriage exponentially.  

(I'm sorry, I couldn't resist!)

Then the next step is:

3. Be grateful.

We need to learn to be grateful for what we do have, so that we're not disappointed by unmet expectations.  Instead of thinking, "boy, my spouse didn't clean up the house as well as I would have liked him to" (or as well as you would have done it), we should think instead, "wow, I know my husband really hates cleaning and yet he worked really hard on this because he knows it's important to me.  I am so lucky."  It's amazing how that shift in perspective makes such a huge difference.  On my 16th birthday, instead of being disappointed, I should have thought, "my mom went out of her way to take me to get my license today and to send me flowers, and my friends planned this whole party just for me because they care about me....I must be really special."  We should think about what we have as always being BETTER than the alternative, not WORSE.    

So Small

The other night I was trying to remember the name of a Carrie Underwood song and ended up spending about an hour listening to a bunch of her songs on you tube.  She is one of my favorite singers and is so talented!  I came across this song that I've heard many times and known for a while but for some reason on this particular night I decided to read the lyrics.  Maybe it was my daughter starting Kindergarten or my baby turning 3 later this week but I've been pretty emotional and this song caused the flood gates to open....

  (Click on the title to listen to the song on you tube)

"So Small"

By Carrie Underwood 

What you got if you ain't got love?

The kind that you just wanna give away

It's okay to open up

Go ahead and let the light shine through

I know it's hard on a rainy day

You wanna shut the world out

And just be left alone

But don't run out on your faith

'Cause sometimes that mountain you've been climbing

Is just a grain of sand

And what you've been out there searching for forever

Is in your hands

And when you figure out

Love is all that matters after all

It sure makes everything else

Seem so small

It's so easy to get lost inside

A problem that seems so big at the time

It's like a river that's so wide

It swallows you whole

While you're sitting around thinking 'bout what you can't change

And worrying about all the wrong things

Time's flying by, moving so fast

You better make it count 'cause you can't get it back

Sometimes that mountain you've been climbing

Is just a grain of sand

And what you've been out there searching for forever

Is in your hands

Oh, and when you figure out

Love is all that matters after all

It sure makes everything else

Seem so small

Sometimes that mountain you've been climbing

Is just a grain of sand

And what you've been out there searching for forever

Is in your hands

And then you figure out

Love is all that matters after all

It sure makes everything else

Oh, it sure makes everything else

Seem so small

This song really has so much meaning to me, especially with some of the struggles I've gone through over the last few months.  {I bolded some of my favorite parts}. It's so easy to get wrapped up in the day-to-day hustle and bustle of life and lose sight of what's really important. It's also easy to let things that really aren't that important to get in the way of what is.  I love songs like this that help me to keep that perspective.

Fragile: Handle with Care

"If you want something to last forever, you treat it differently.  

You shield it and protect it. You never abuse it.  

You don't expose it to the elements. 

You don't make it common or ordinary.  

If it ever becomes tarnished, you lovingly polish it until it gleams like new.  

It becomes special because you made it so, and it grows 

more beautiful and precious as time goes by."

~ F. Burton Howard

I am not an expert on marriage or relationships by any means, and I still have A LOT to learn when it comes to my own.  But one thing I do know for sure is that marriage is fragile and should be handled with care. It should be treated with sacredness and respect.  It doesn't take much for a relationship to be damaged, and it takes a lot of work to fix it once it's broken.  But I do believe it can be fixed if both people are willing to give not 50/50, but 100% each in the relationship.  Marriage is an investment, where the more you put in to it the more you get back (as long as both partners are investing equally).  It requires unselfish sacrifice.  It takes HARD WORK to make it happen....but it is worth it.

Vulnerability

"To love is to be vulnerable."

-C.S. Lewis

A few weeks back I had to go to the dentist to get a cavity filled.  Not my favorite thing in the world to do, but necessary nonetheless.  Thankfully, dentists have this wonderful thing they can shoot in to our gums to make us numb so that we can't feel the pain of getting the tooth drilled and fixed.  Then after a few hours the numbness wears off and while we might be a little sore after, we don't feel much pain.  It got me thinking, wouldn't it be nice if we could just numb ourselves from all pain in life??  (I'm being facetious). Well there are ways that we numb ourselves in life from emotional pain.  Lots of ways actually.  For some it's drugs or alcohol.  For others it could be overeating or overspending.  Gambling. Watching excessive amounts of television or playing video games for hours on end.  The list goes on.  Now I'm not saying that these things are all bad (with the exception of drugs), as long as they are done in moderation.  But when it gets to the point where we are doing these things to numb ourselves, then it has become unhealthy.  We numb ourselves from feeling emotional pain and to protect ourselves from getting hurt, because otherwise we would be allowing ourselves to be vulnerable.     

When I think of vulnerability, I think of children.  Children are some of the most genuine creatures on earth because they are so willing to be vulnerable.  Children love others with their whole hearts and are very forgiving.  They are trusting of others.  They take the time to enjoy life, to be in the moment.  Then somewhere along the line they become adults and a lot of this stops. I think many of us start out being vulnerable as children and then over time we get hurt by others or just life in general and we slowly start to build up a wall.  For some that wall is thicker and higher than for others, depending on our experiences.  Or we walk around wearing a symbolic suit of armor to protect ourselves from getting hurt in the future.  Of course children don't always understand that not all people can be trusted and as adults we often have to protect them for those kinds of people.  But I also think we can learn a lot from children in this regard.

Someone recommended THIS Ted talk to me called "The Power of Vulnerability" by Brene Brown that I think is fabulous.  It's about 20 minutes long but it is totally worth your time.  Seriously, you must watch it!!!  Stop reading and go watch it.  It will change your life.  She is an expert on vulnerability and has actually done tons of research on how important vulnerability is in our relationships. When we numb ourselves, although we can protect ourselves from feeling pain, we also prevent ourselves from feeling the great things in life too. Brene Brown said the following about this very thing:

".....We are the most in-debt, obese, addicted and medicated adult cohort in U.S. history.  The problem is -- and I learned this from the research -- that you cannot selectively numb emotion.  You can't say, here's the bad stuff.  Here's vulnerability, here's grief, here's shame, here's fear, here's disappointment.  I don't want to feel these.  I'm going to have a couple of beers and a banana nut muffin.....You can't numb those hard feelings without numbing the other affects, our emotions.....So when you numb those, we numb joy, we numb gratitude, we numb happiness.  And then we are miserable, and we are looking for purpose and meaning, and then we feel vulnerable, so then we have a couple of beers and a banana nut muffin.  And it becomes a dangerous cycle." 

(see Ted talk link above for reference).

(I LOVE Brene Brown, she is so awesome....next book on my wish list, her book Daring Greatly)

Now I'm not saying go out and get a root canal without anesthetic....that would be ridiculous!  But I am saying that we should all take risks once in a while.  Let others see parts of ourselves that we're often too afraid to show (and I don't mean go out flashing people, lol!).  Odds are if you start to open yourself up a little bit, others will too.  And it will be amazing how this will affect the quality of your relationships.  There is also a chance that there are going to be those people who will still hurt you when you open yourself up to them.  It's just a reality.  But kudos to you for putting yourself out there and taking that risk.  (And try to keep in mind that they've probably been hurt too).  This concept reminds of the 2009 movie "He's Just Not That In To You" (cute movie, I recommend it).  At the end of a party, Gigi (Ginnifer Goodwin) goes out on a limb and kisses Alex (Justin Long), only to be rejected afterwards.  Alex gives her a hard time for always putting herself out there just to be hurt by men, and she says something so profound.  She says, "I'd rather be like that than be like you.  I may dissect each little thing and put myself out there too much, but at least that means I still care.....you may not get hurt or make an ass of yourself that way, but you don't fall in love that way either.  You have not won, you're alone Alex.  I may do a lot of stupid shit but I know I'm a lot closer to finding someone than you are."  Isn't that awesome??  I just love it!  She hit the nail right on the head.  By not allowing yourself to be vulnerable you may prevent yourself from being hurt by others, but you also prevent yourself from experiencing life to the fullest.

Now the next question is: how do we allow ourselves to be vulnerable?  What does it actually look like?  I'll let Brene answer this since she says it so well (this is another excerpt from that same Ted talk):

"To let ourselves be seen, deeply seen, vulnerably seen; to love with our whole hearts, even though there's no guarantee -- and that's really hard, and I can tell you as a parent, excruciatingly difficult -- to practice gratitude and joy in those moments of terror, when we're wondering, "Can I love you this much?  Can I believe in this this passionately?  Can I be this fierce about this?"  Just to be able to stop and, instead of catastrophizing what might happen, say, "I'm just so grateful, because to feel this vulnerable means I'm alive."  And at last, which I think is probably the most important, is to believe that we're enough.  Because when we work from a place, I believe, that says, "I'm enough," then we stop screaming and start listening, we're kinder and gentler to the people around us, and we're kinder and gentler to ourselves."

Isn't that beautiful?!  I'm going to start working towards being more vulnerable in my relationships, and I hope you will too.

In doing research for this post I came across this "badge" (below) that I'm going to put on my side bar as a reminder to always strive to be authentic and genuine with others (found it here....there's also a great interview Brene did with Oprah found at that link):