March 8, 2015 ~ I Just Can't Get It Through My Thick Skull

I'm faced with a particular lesson time after time, one that you're probably faced with fairly regularly as well, and I just can't get it through my thick skull. You see, I have high expectations. Probably too high. My Dad always expected a lot out of my brothers and me when we were kids because he knew that we could achieve to those expectations. My Advanced Placement US History teacher put it well my junior year in high school. He said that he had high expectations of us so that we would rise to the challenge in his class; if he lowered his expectations then we wouldn't rise as high.

Well, I have high expectations in many aspects of my life, mostly of myself, which is why I beat myself up quite often when I don't perform well or when I don't handle myself well in a difficult situation. But I also have high expectations of those around me. The lesson that I need to learn, that needs to be bashed into my head over and over again, is that people are who they are no matter how high your expectations of them are. A father/daughter or student/teacher relationship is a completely different scenario than most relationships and the concept of high expectations doesn't really translate. You can have all the expectations that you want in a friendship or romantic relationship or even in family relationships outside of parent to child but the other person really is who they are and they will continue to behave the way the do no matter your expectations of them. 

I sincerely believe (and have for a very long time) that expectations in relationships are one of the main reasons for failures. I'm talking about all kinds of expectations. It might be an expectation that has been embedded in your head from a TV show about how a marriage is "supposed to" look. Or it might be the way that you expect a special event or vacation will go. Or you might expect that a person will change their behavior when they "grow up" or when you get married or when you have a baby. Either way, the reality is likely not going to live up to the expectation, which will undoubtedly lead to disappointment.

Sometimes I think that I set up expectations of the way something is going to go without considering the normal behavior of others. It's a very short sighted way of looking at things and also often leads to disappointment.

Considering that I've believed for a very long time that expectations in relationships are generally evil, long before I ever got married, you would think that I'd be better about not setting myself up for these disappointments. But I'm not. And to make matters worse, I still allow myself to be saddened by people's behavior when they don't meet my high expectations, even if it is typical behavior for them. I have known for a very long time that I need to work on becoming more accepting of people's shortcomings, including my own. I know that gaining this skill will improve my relationships but, more importantly, it will make me a happier, more satisfied person.