What Did You Expect?

Alisa and I are in a marriage enrichment class at church. I really enjoy these types of classes because they encourage you to go deeper personally and in your relationship with your spouse. During the first class that Alisa and I attended the topic of expectations came up.

Every person enters into a relationship with expectations. Some people say that they don’t, but there is no way not to! They may not be written out on long lists or etched into stones, but they are still there. And I can prove it!

The easiest way to do this is to find out what upsets them. What is it that you do that makes them disappointed, angry or hurt. When you discover this you will find an expectation that hasn’t been met! You can’t be disappointed unless you expected something different first.

We usually obtain our expectations from marriage from our parents. Whatever we saw our parents do became our norm. If our parents yelled at each other when they were angry, then that is normal to us, and when we get mad at our spouse we will probably yell too!

This works for expectations as well. For example, if your parents never argued in front of you, you may have grown up thinking that couples who love each other don’t fight. And then you get marry a man whose parents yelled and screamed at each other. Your expectation just got crushed!

For expectations to work, they must pass two qualifications: They have to be reasonable and realistic.

By reasonable I mean that most people in your situation would expect the same thing. For example, you may expect your husband to make a million dollars a year. That could be a reasonable expectation if your father and your friend’s fathers were all billionaires.

By realistic I mean that based on your personal experience with your spouse you can expect a certain action or reaction from them. For example, if you chose to marry a great guy who loves and adores you, but never made it out of the 8th grade, your expectation of him making a million dollars a year is not very realistic, no matter how reasonable it seemed!

If your expectation of your spouse fails one of these tests you have a problem that you have to deal with, and you may need to change that expectation.

By being willing to examine our expectations to see if they are reasonable and realistic we reduce our chances of making demands that frustrate our spouses and increase our chances of having a successful marriage.

Johnny Walker is a Christian counselor and the founder of Family Works Counseling. YOu can reach him at 770-456-5547