I have been spending a lot of time mulling over the concept of expectations lately. If you don’t have any, you accept less than you deserve in many aspects of life. But if you have too many, or they’re too high, you set yourself up for disappointment. I know this because I used to have roommates and I expected them to keep the house clean. I got so fed up that I seriously created a Facebook album of what my house looked like when it was actually clean and tagged them in it (#savage #pettyaf). Needless to say, my house still didn’t stay clean. So what’s the trick? It’s incorporating a little reality when you set your expectations, reconsidering them VERY often, and making them clear to the people around you.
- Frequency– The frequency with which you revisit your expectations has a lot to do with how much time you spend with someone (or something) and on what the expectation relates to. For example, I re-evaluate some of my expectations for Seth on a daily basis because I see him every day. I re-evaluate the expectations I have for my mother or my best friend or my coworkers less often because I see them less often.
- Reality – On days when Seth slept poorly and he’s cranky, I know not to expect to come home to a project completed or the dishes done. It’s more likely that I’ll come home to him playing video games in his underwear to decompress. So that’s what I expect. And if his day improves because he sneaks in a nap or something and I come home to a completed project or an empty sink, then I’m pleasantly surprised. And if not, I knew already that he was having a rough day. So instead of expecting him to do things that probably weren’t going to happen and then getting upset, I expect to give him a big hug and a kiss when I get home and ask him about his day. I expect to let him vent a little and maybe make him dinner and snuggle up to him on the couch. And that’s the other thing about expectations: they go both ways! You can’t just expect things from people all the time without expecting to give them something back. For every expectation you have for someone, they also have one for you. And for every day that I cut Seth some slack on getting things done around the house because he’s beat that day, he cuts me a little slack if I don’t make him dinner every day or if the laundry hasn’t been folded in a week because I’m burned out from my 70 hour work weeks. We don’t let petty unmet expectations get in the way of our happiness.
- Clarity – Making your expectations for another person clear also makes them a lot more likely to meet them (this was the point of the Facebook album, but I hadn’t taken the other two aspects of this post into consideration yet). Take my Mom, for example. I used to expect to hear negativity about my tattoos every time I saw her or posted about them on Facebook, but I realized that wasn’t fair. My mom is entitled to her opinion about tattoos, but she is not entitled to berate me about them every time I see her. So I gave her 60 seconds to bitch about my tattoo, and then made it clear I didn’t want to hear about it again after that. Making my expectation that she stop clear to her has made our relationship better. I don’t stress about the possibility of being criticized every time I see my mom, so I enjoy my time with her more. And it seems like she spends less time stewing about my tattoos since she can’t say anything to me about it anyway, although I can’t speak for her.
Here’s a link to my ridiculous album if you want to read all of my passive aggressive comments and see what my house looked like about four years ago.
So those are the three basic ways you can adjust your expectations to help increase your day to day happiness. They work on a sliding scale and obviously they involve other people, so there is always some give and take. I have some daily expectations for Seth that can change from day to day, but I have larger overarching expectations for Seth too. I expect him to support me in life. I expect him to love me for who I am. I expect him to help me be my best self (those two things seem like they should be opposite, but somehow they aren’t and he does a great job at both). These I don’t re-evaluate very often (pretty much never, actually). They can’t be evaluated except on a larger time scale and the results of them are far less tangible than other, more petty expectations (like expecting the dishes to be done). I also re-evaluate them less often because they are much more important to me than the petty daily expectations. If I don’t feel supported and loved in my marriage, then what the heck are we doing?! So those expectations stay put because they are very important. And Seth knows which expectations are the important ones because we communicate. He may not do the dishes, but he’ll always give me a hug and kiss when I get home and ask me about my day. That does much more for my happiness than an empty sink.
Now, knowing which expectations need to be flexible and which ones are more important doesn’t mean we don’t occasionally fight about stupid stuff or that it’s not okay to expect improvement. I do have the occasional meltdown about how much clutter is just sitting around our house, for example, and I do expect Seth to improve his ability to put things away after he uses them in the long run. However, right now a lot of our mess is due to our house being in construction chaos (lots of things don’t have a “spot” right now because of everything being jumbled and half of our house being empty) so it’s not fair for me to expect him to be more organized right now. Especially because he is doing the bulk of the work upstairs, which is no easy feat either! However, once everything is put back in place again, I’ll go back to expecting him to help me keep things clutter free. I won’t let him get away with just dropping things on the table and leaving them there most days. But I may let it slide once in awhile when I come home and he’s sitting at the computer in his underwear, because I know what that means.
For the record, I use my husband as an example frequently because I know he doesn’t mind and I spend a lot of time with him, but this advice applies to everyone in your life. If you expect your best friend to text you every 20 minutes and she doesn’t, you’ll have the same problem with unmet expectations. I expect my best friend to share good news and bad with me, and to support me when I’m having a rough day, but I don’t expect her to check in on me every hour or even every day. She is a busy woman and so am I, but I know I can always count on her if I tell her I need her help. That is an expectation she has always met. I have learned to expect to hear my mom vent about how frustrated she is with my dad or my sisters. It used to bother me a lot because it felt like a lot of negativity coming my way at once, but I’ve realized that I do the same thing. I have to get the negative thoughts out of my head and then I feel better. So I’ve adjusted my expectations accordingly. I expect to hear those things, but they don’t sound like complaints anymore. They sound like worry and like love and like I’m helping my mom feel better. Sometimes adjusting your expectations is more about how you react to someone or something than the actions you expect that person to take.
Last, this doesn’t just apply to people. It applies to any aspect of your life. If you expect your job to be boring and tedious, it will be. If you expect your job to be stressful, it will be. If you expect your job to be fulfilling, and you find that it is not, your unmet expectation will motivate you to change your career path if the requirement that your job be fulfilling is an important one. If you expect your children to be perfect, tidy angels, your unmet expectations will be infuriating. If you expect your children to be children, but teach them to clean up their legos so you don’t step on them, or wash their hands before dinner, they will learn, you will have more patience, and one day they may just pleasantly surprise you by doing something without being asked. But whatever the expectation, don’t let it get in the way of your happiness. Because if your life doesn’t make you happy, what are you doing?!