real life: how unrealistic or unmet expectations hurt our romantic relationships

“Expectation is the root of all heartache.” |William Shakespeare

How many times you were disappointed because your partner did not plan that dinner on your birthday, or because they didn’t say the thing you wanted them to say, or they plan something other than what you expected? When someone complains about their partners or someone they have a relationship with, they are usually complaining about what, in their opinion, their partner should do.

I have been guilty of this. I believe we all have.

Let’s talk about expectations in relationships, specifically unrealistic ones. I want to explore a couple of relationship expectations that I know that I have had and know that others have experienced as well. We'll talk a bit about where they come from and then about how unrealistic each are.

Expectations can feel overwhelming and suffocating to the organic flow in relationships. We often miss the real beauty of what is available, when we have only one way that we want to interact with our partner. If we have expectations and are really attached to the outcome, then we can engage in power struggles by using manipulation or control tactics to get our way. This strategy often leads to conflict and unhealthy dynamics where partners do not feel free, authentic, and honest with one another. Realizing that your partner is not going to live up to your expectations or ideals can be devastating. Couples can feel disappointed, frustrated, betrayed, or resentful and move to end the relationship because of unmet desires and unfulfilled expectations.

Real talk: most of us don’t even realize that we have expectations until we find ourselves feeling disappointed or upset. Why?

Because our expectations are often unconscious.

I think a great place for us to start this conversation is to talk about where relationship expectations come from. And simply put, they come from our earliest relationships.

For most of us, the relationships that we're talking about are those relationships we had in childhood with our parent figures, with our caregivers, with our siblings and our peers. We all picked up conditionings and patterns of relationship dynamics from those earliest relationships. We witnessed, sometimes consciously and sometimes subconsciously, how relationships work and what they look like. A lot of times we were probably told certain things about what makes a relationship healthy or positive. It’s important to know and remember that whatever may have been said or not said to us as we were growing up, our expectations come from how we experienced the relationships and what happened in those earliest relationships. A lot of our expectations also get formed as we go out into the world. We can be influenced from the various messages that we're getting - whether it's in our cultures, in our environments or in our interactions with the outside world.

|Meet All Of My Needs

Let’s talk about the first really common relationship expectation that many of us carry, which is this belief that other people should meet all, with and emphasis on all, of our needs. If we do some reflection on the reason why this happens, it is really understandable. Read on.

When we think about our childhood, we are actually completely dependent on someone else to meet all of our needs. We are the one species that can't continue life on our own when we enter this world. We can't survive as a human infant on our own. So in regards to childhood, it’s a very accurate expectation for someone to meet us and take care of everything. In childhood there was this accuracy in the idea that our caregivers were mind readers. We didn’t have to say or do much for someone to come to the scene and take care of us. If someone didn't meet our needs, we wouldn't survive. However, as we age and as we mature, the goal is for us to take over meeting those needs ourselves.

Now, through no fault of their own, most of our parents didn't sit us down and have a really conscious conversation about healthy boundaries or expectations in a relationship. A lot of what we learned from them about relationships was simply the silent observing and witnessing of their relationship. And because so much of what happens in childhood happens nonverbally, a lot of us have carried other’s expectations into our adult relationships - the expectations, ideas, patterns and conditioning that are not original to us - but are from the adults in our lives. Most of our parents also didn't have access to the tools available to them to even have that conversation with us. Now, this is not good or bad. It's simply very powerful to witness the fact that the verbal and nonverbal communication that we had growing up from caregivers and parent figures formed our ideas of what a relationship “should” look like. In addition to that, the media can portray a sort of fairy tale existence that can very much condition our outlook. The expectations that we create for ourselves and others can at times be based on what we see in movies.

These expectations can also be based on our past as well as on the hurts, failures, achievements, beliefs, and sufferings that we have lived through. They are the result of us using our past to predict our future which completely takes us out of the here and now - the present. We miss what is actually happening in front of us and this lack of presence can be destructive to our relationships.

As we evolve into adulthood, we can't keep holding other people responsible to meet our needs, especially those of us who aren't even aware of how to meet our own needs. If we're not sure of how to meet our needs, if we are that person that's relying on someone else to meet all of our needs, we probably aren't really aware ourselves of what we even need in any given moment, so this expectation that someone else has to be able to anticipate our needs is simply unrealistic.

|We Are Not Mindreaders

You can have the expectation that your partner should read your mind but know that it's going to cause problems. It's going to cause eruptions, because life just doesn't work that way. It does make perfect sense why you and your partner have this need or this innate thought that if they know you well, they should know what you need, especially if they love you. We believe since this person knows us so well that they should come to us, that they should tend to our own needs, without us saying anything to them.

This is only going to lead to us to having relationship issues because we're expecting something of someone else, that we're also not giving ourselves. We need to learn to not act on assumption. We need to unlearn not speaking up. We can’t be afraid to ask for what we want. So, how do we do this? We can cultivate courage and the self awareness to be able to speak what we need versus making a complete assumption about our partner or the dynamic and piling some expectation on them that they obviously can't fulfill on.

The fact is that your partner doesn’t know what you need. Unless you tell them.

But instead we do this - sulk in a corner when our needs aren’t met and it feeds our ego that we are in fact right. It keeps your ego safe when it knows the outcome that's going to happen. “See? I was right. They don’t care about me.”

This is a great opportunity for us to be really raw with ourselves in those moments, and really honor and understand what it is that we need in that moment, and then being able to have the courage to actually speak that to our partner. You do have every right to ask for what it is that you need. You also have to understand that your partner has every right to say yes or no, just like they have every right to ask you for what they need and you also have every right to say yes or to say no. The important thing here is to not argue with reality. To not get lost in the stories and reactions, and to actually be present in the moment with the other person, dealing with the reality of what's right in front of you. To ask for what you need, authentically and purposefully.

|You Complete Me

Another unrealistic expectation that a lot of us hold in our relationships is this idea that others should complete us. That others have this extra “thing” that we need…..this additional piece. And this missing piece makes us feel like we can’t be whole on our own.

You are NOT incomplete.

All of this leads to the false idea that we're not separate and that we're not whole on our own. Which then leads to co-dependency. We form this belief that we need this other person to either to meet our needs or to make us emotionally complete. And again, that is just not grounded in reality. Us humans are interpersonal creatures. We do need other humans. We absolutely benefit from relationships and the benefits are great. However, we don't need a relationship to make us whole. We are completely whole on our own.

“I love you so much. You complete me, “ is disempowering yourself. Why? Because you already are whole. You are already perfect and complete - just as you are.

When we attach to that desire for another to complete us, we're walking ourselves down a path of assumption, of projection, of taking everything personally because we're not actually attuned to ourselves. And if you are not attuned to yourself on a true core level, you don’t understand how complete and whole you are going into any relationship. So without that attunement we go right back to those first stages in childhood where you were attuned to your caregiver. You expected and knew that your caregiver was likely going to show up for your needs before you could even speak.

We can still have this expectaion as adults. You are now responsible for now being your own caregiver. Your first responsibility is to be attuned to yourself, to realize that you complete yourself first.

|Our Relationship Will Be Filled With Passion 24/7, We Will Never Fight & We Get Along ALL Of The Time

Another area of unrealistic expectations is when we think we’re going to live that Disney life and nothing will ever be wrong in our relationships and we will live happily ever after forever, we will have sex all the time, that the birds will sing when we wake up in the morning next to our lover and we’ll never, ever argue, with no problems to be had. Life is going to be PERFECT.

Oh, bless our hearts.

A lot of us are what is called conflict avoidant. We are fearful of conflict and are good at running away from any sign that something could be off, or that there could be any issues in our relationship. A lot of this behavior goes back to how conflict was experienced in our earliest relationships. What was it like in your home? Was there a lot of conflict? How was it handled? Was it scary? Was there screaming? Was there yelling or were there silent treatments? Was there icing out? Was there removal of love? Was there yelling? Stonewalling? Sweeping things under the rug? Did someone flee? Disappear?

All relationships will encounter conflict. So many of us want to stay in the honeymoon phase in our relationships and are disillusioned and hurt once the honeymoon is over and real life sets in. Conflict is seen as meaning that something is terribly wrong within the relationship. That you and your partner are incompatible. That the relationships needs to end.

It's not the presence of conflict that is an issue - again, every relationship will encounter it. What is important is how the conflict is handled.

Conflict is not bad. No one loves it, it’s not fun to be involved in, but conflict is such a great opportunity for open communication to bloom and for developing deep intimacy in a relationship. We can use conflict as an opportunity for authentic communication and the desired connection we seek. We can use it to actually grow closer and more intimate to the important people around us.

I personally have been trying to view conflict with a new mindset and reframing it as an opportunity for communication. And instead of running away, while that feels safer, it takes courage to stay and communicate when you’re scared to engage in conflict. When we are fearful that our partner will leave us, causing us to feel disconnected, alone and wrestling with hard feelings. I have been practicing using conflict as an opportunity to realize, “Oh, this conflict is a great chance for communication and connection to happen. Be courageous. Stay with it,” and it's been really cool to personally see closeness and connection deepen when I choose to stop running away from it.

We hold this idea of having ongoing passion very unrealistically. That we’ll have sex like we see in the movies and life will be easy peasy. But then REAL life happens. Kids. Mortgages. Car payments. Illness. Jobs. Relationship challenges. Annoyances. Hurts. Frustrations. Up and down seasons. Easy and hard seasons.

We become disappointed when that idea we had doesn’t happen, we then believe that we need to find another person that can hold this passion with us. We attach to the belief that we need to find the “other person” that will fit into this illusion for us in the future. We can have this belief that something is wrong if we are not in the throes of passion all of the time. That once things become more stable, more “normal” then it’s a red flag and it's something to be avoided. We expect this fairy tale relationship to be there and it can be devastating for people when they realize they’ve been disillusioned and begin to ask,

“Why isn't this going so smooth like it was on that rom-com movie that I saw? How come this is so hard? Why do we have these extreme highs and lows? What’s wrong with our relationship? Why isn’t the person I thought I was going to spend the rest of my life with not the person I fell in love with? Are we even compatible? Did I make a mistake in choosing this person? Who IS this person? I want out.”

|Let’s Get Real And Do The Real Work

You get to create what relationship looks like for you. With healthy expectations and space for each person, you’ll be able to be open and honest about what each person needs in a relationship. Relationships are about stability and security. About respect. About vulnerability. About healing and growth. About weathering the hard times together. About having a home base to go back to. Of course there is pleasure and passion and intense feelings - and all rightly so. But again, it's not the roller coaster we expect to feel all of the time in our romantic relationships. We want that passion, that constant romance, that high feeling all of the time and that if we don't have this or if we lose it overtime, we feel we’re doing something very, very wrong. Nothing is wrong. You’re living in a real life relationship and it will take real life work to create what you want.

The work begins when we can first witness ourselves - without judgment. Witness which of the relationship expectations you are carrying. The expectations that can seep into our relationships and reek havoc on ourselves and those we care about. The expectations that leave us feeling jipped and resentful.

The expectations that aren’t serving us in real life, where real people live and love.

What expectations are you holding? xx