Expectations and Disappointments

Expectations can bring wonderful energy and growth to our relationships. They help us to inspire and become inspred rather than simply accept the mediocre. When expectations provide room for both fulfillment of our agreements and acceptance of disappointments and imperfections as legitimate condition of existence they come from healthy mature places inside us.

The alternative is entitlement characterized by uncompromised demands. When we look at our relationship through lenses of preconceived notions of what it is supposed to be, what our partner is supposed to give us or how she or he is supposed to look or behave we cling to our illusions and keep manipulating our partners to become actors in our own dramas. The inner life of a person is intricate and multifaceted and requires diverse experiences to cultivate both maturation and growth. Therefore disappointments play an important role in our lives as they help to break down our projections about others perfection or trustworthiness and help us to arrive at realism and see people as combinations of contradictions. Anyone can please and displease, fulfill and disappoint. But when we act on our expectations and react to our disappointments with regret about how foolish we are to love our partner and blame him or her for failing us we prevent ourselves from growing.

What do we do with expectations then? We can try to give them up but can come to realize this can be difficult to do. Tossing them out the window can limit further exploratinos as well. The perfect balance is that we do not use expectations as the lens through which we view our relationship and our partner. Rather we use them as important clues to our own life long yearnings that are important to bring out into the open The psychologist John Gottman states that behind each instance of couples gridlock or their intrenched positions are hidden dreams and important meanings.