Conflicting expectations can kill even the deepest love and hope

By David McElroy · April 4, 2020

When you start a relationship — especially if it leads to marriage — you assume the other person wants the same things you want.

You’ve probably never even consciously considered what you expect. Your partner hasn’t given much deep thought to what either of you expects. Each one of you comes to the relationship with what you consider to be normal — and that’s what you assume this new partner wants.

When a loving relationship is new and exciting, it’s easy to look past the times when those differing expectations create confusion or even hurt. But the longer you’re with someone — and the cumulative effect of those differing expectations makes one or both of you unhappy — the more tensions surface. And the more you start thinking there’s something deeply flawed with your partner.

What most people don’t realize is that each relationship has unspoken agreements and expectations — and those unacknowledged expectations destroy happiness and make most relationships toxic.

This isn’t true just with romantic relationships, of course. It can be a problem in any relationship between human beings. And the truth is that whoever holds the power in the relationship — whether it’s acknowledged or not — ends up getting his or her way.

When I was a child, there were ways that I was expected to behave with my father. He never told me that I was to support his lies to other people or that I was never to acknowledge that he was lying to others. But it was part of the unwritten rules of our family.

I can’t even tell you how he communicated those expectations, but they were so invisible that I never even consciously thought about them. All of his expectations for me were invisible to me on a conscious level. They were invisible to me in the same way that water is invisible to a fish or that air is invisible to us. It was impossible for me to imagine life any other way.

When you enter a romantic relationship, you have expectations of what it’s supposed to be like. Maybe you’re unconsciously modeling your parents. Maybe your ideas have come from popular culture. Maybe you’re projecting some version of an ideal relationship that springs from your personalty.

But when your partner has a different expectation or assumption concerning one of these things, you feel that your partner is wrong. If he notices the difference, he thinks you’re wrong. The worst situations are the ones in which each partner assumes the other is wrong about something — but nobody ever discusses it.

For instance, I have a strong expectation in my romantic relationships that we will be completely open and honest with each other about our feelings and thoughts and past hurts. I have a strong expectation that we will talk about those things — that whoever has a hurt or a crisis will be supported by the other person completely and without reservation. And if I don’t get that, I will feel that she doesn’t love me — and I will feel shame about not being good enough.

As I type those things, I find myself thinking that everyone would obviously feel the same way and expect the same things — but that’s just not true. Some people have an expectation that it’s OK to run away from painful feelings and that they have no responsibility to help the other person deal with their hurts or problems.

These people are so out of touch with their feelings — and so scared of looking at real feelings — that their expectation is that it’s OK to run away from such things. Simply because that has been normal in his or her life.

So when I’m in a relationship with someone and I say, “This is what happened to me and this is the way I feel about it,” I expect someone to be willing to talk about what happened and how it affected me. To me, that’s simply a non-negotiable thing that partners do for one another.

So if I have a partner who’s afraid of feelings and isn’t willing to go to emotionally difficult places, we have very different expectations. I’m going to feel unloved. And because it’s completely obvious to me that this is “the way things ought to be,” I am going to react with hurt when someone refuses to do that. And that’s going to trigger shame in me for having needs that someone isn’t willing to help with.

That’s just one small example. A relationship can have many unspoken agreements.

There might be an unspoken agreement that a man is going to spend time away from home for various reasons — maybe hanging out with with drunken friends or even having meaningless affairs which are to be ignored.

In some relationships, it’s expected that a woman is allowed to scream and shout and treat a man like dirt — and he’s not supposed to be upset about it. It could be that one of the partners has a substance-abuse problem, but the unspoken agreement is that “we don’t talk about it.”

There are a million things that you expect which don’t match your partner’s expectations. If these things aren’t discussed and if there aren’t satisfactory agreements — real ones, not unspoken assumptions — about how these things are to be handled, that relationship quickly becomes toxic. And that relationship is gong to die.

If you aren’t getting your needs met in a relationship, it’s probably because you have expectations which differ from those of your partner. It’s very possible that if you had had the foresight to talk about all these things before you married, you never would have married this person. But as long as the expectations remain unspoken and unexamined, resentment and then hatred are going to build.

People in such toxic relationships shouldn’t expect anything to magically change.

The truth is that most people aren’t willing to change even when confronted with such problems. Most people take the attitude that whatever they are — and whatever they believe — is normal and right. And that’s the beginning of the end of love, no matter how good things might have been to start with.

The truth is that these sorts of expectations need to be worked out from the beginning. Once you start down a road of passive conflict, nothing is likely to ever change.

And if you accept remaining in such a relationship, you will spend the rest of your life unhappy. And you’ll have no one to blame but yourself.

Share on Social Networks

I’m seeing a lot of simplistic and dishonest explanations right now for the current rioting in France. Those on the populist far right claim it’s all about Muslim immigrants to France disrupting the culture. Their message is that this sort of thing is going to happen in the U.S. unless “we defend the border.” On the far left, socialists and their fellow travelers claim the riots are all about wealthy people in France not paying enough taxes, resulting in cuts to government services. The truth is far more complicated, but it’s rooted in the decline of population growth in Europe. There simply aren’t enough young workers paying into the tax system anymore, so cuts in social services were inevitable. There is genuine cultural tension as more and more people immigrate from other countries, but government cuts to education and other services are even more important to what’s happening. The situation is complicated, so don’t let dishonest people with U.S. political agendas tell you that it happens to support whatever they were already promoting for partisan reasons.

Here’s another reason to appreciate the cats in your life: New research involving 93 countries found that places with more cats per person also tended to have happier people. The researchers say the finding fits with previous evidence that living with pets can reduce loneliness and stress while providing companionship, emotional attachment and social support. The study doesn’t prove that cats cause greater happiness, but it certainly adds to the evidence that sharing your home — and your life — with a cat might be good for you.

The company that owns Facebook and Instagram is heavily promoting its new AI-based software assistant called Muse, but people who are using it as it was designed are incredibly foolish. An early adopter of the software discovered that a few days ago when he advertised an item for sale on Facebook Marketplace — and he inadvertently gave Muse full authority to act on his behalf. The software agreed to a lowball offer made by another Facebook user and then gave that man the home address of the man for whom he was an agent. The software told the buyer that the seller was home and waiting for him. When the buyer showed up and waited angrily, the would-be buyer left an angry review for the man. And this angry man had the seller’s home address. It was only well after that that the software reported what it had done and admitted it had made a mistake. I won’t be putting that much power into the hands of any software. I think anyone who agrees to such terms is a fool. And the software’s user agreement says you’re responsible for purchases the software makes in your name. Nope.

Meet my new girlfriend. Her name is Meg. And she’s my little sweetheart. A couple of months ago, a neighbor across the street told me about a new stray in the neighborhood that she and I were both soon feeding. The cat had been very skittish about contact and she had a lot of scabs and parasites in her fur, but a trip to the vet last week revealed that she was otherwise in good health. The vet estimates her to be 1 to 2 years old. I named her for Meg Murry, the 13-year-old protagonist of Madeleine L’Engle’s wonderful book, “A Wrinkle in Time.” (Please read the book. Don’t watch the horrible movie.) Since we lost Lucy almost a year ago, it seems appropriate that we finally have a new little girl to join the household. She’s already captured my heart, but Alex, Oliver and Sam aren’t there quite yet.

There’s nothing socially acceptable that’s as dangerous as drinking alcohol. Most people grow up being told to “drink responsibly” — and all of us see people abusing this drug in one way or another — but the truth is that drinking alcohol is always a terrible risk. The alcohol in these drinks is toxic and the human liver has to work hard to filter the toxins out. What most people don’t realize is that alcohol is classified as a known carcinogen by the World Health Organization — because of the well-established connection between imbibing and various cancers. Many people have taken refuge behind the idea that light or moderate drinking might be safe, but a new study shows that drinking even one drink a day increases the risks of 10 types of cancer. When I was a teen-ager, I looked around and saw the negative effects that this behavior had on a lot of people and decided not to start drinking, so I’ve never even tried this poison. The evidence keeps piling up that I was lucky to have come to that conclusion early.

Related Posts