Emotional Sex

Expectations: the Basics

‘Expectations’ is one of the most powerful yet underrated words. They have a major role in every aspect of our lives whether with other people, work, church, shopping, driving and especially close relationships. It’s a word that can bring delight or great disappointment. It can make a relationship easy to handle or tragically frustrating. Whether we realize it or not, we all have a plethora of expectations no matter where we go or who we are around. They cause us to dread the dentist and look forward to vacations. They can be as simple as you expecting to wake up in the morning and not find your roof has blown off in a tornado or you taking a bite into an apple expecting it to taste like an apple and not an orange… I personally hate biting into an apple to find, instead of it being firm and crisp, it’s soft and flakey, ew. I know for my first kiss with a girl… not that I kissed anything before this… or after this… well, that’s a different story; I’ve kissed a dog. It wasn’t intentional or something I wanted to experience. I had bent over to pet the dog, but he jumped up and got his tongue into my mouth before I could close it. So yup, I’ve French kissed a dog. Needless to say, I’m much more cautious around animals who like to lick. Thus, my expectations have adapted to protect me. Anyway, back to my first kiss… with a girl… I expected it to go very differently. I grew up watching shows like Growing Pains and Saved by the Bell, so I thought that when you kiss the right person you’re supposed to hear people cheering for you with an “awww” or “yea!” When I kissed this young lady, however, there was nothing. There was no cheering; there weren’t even crickets to show it was a bad kiss... although I think a neighbor may have yelled “You suck!”… hopefully that was a neighbor and not the girl I kissed. Thus, my first kiss was definitely not what I expected… that and I was overanxious and accidentally bashed her teeth with mine. And because it fell short of my expectations, it was disappointing… it was definitely disappointing for the girl. Apparently girls don’t like to taste their own blood after kissing someone… or I guess tasting anyone’s blood. Fortunately, I soon adjusted my expectations to not include cheering fans, which allowed me to enjoy it more, and I learned not to bash teeth so she could enjoy it more. Apparently, that’s not a good move…that’s a bonus tip from me; don’t bash teeth when being romantic… I’m so smart.

Another great thing about expectations is if they are surpassed, we can experience great delight. For instance, I have a cat that will make the: “I’m puking up a hairball noise,” but he rarely ever brings one up because he has a problem referred to as “dry hairballs” where he only makes the noise. This is unlike my other cat who offers the full package; definitely not pleasant. When I hear this gagging cat noise, I dread the thought of having to clean up the saliva soaked log of hair … or at least feeling guilty for leaving it for someone else to clean up. Fortunately, I feel delight if it is my cat with the dry hairballs because then there isn’t a mess to be cleaned… by someone else.

Expectations are also important for humor and pranks since these are often created by manipulating the expected. For instance, if you were about to sit on a toilet, but someone popped his or her head out to say hello that would likely leave you screaming and/or laughing. Thus, expectations can be a really great thing to have because it can lead to funny situations.

Unfortunately, like all things, there is balance of both positive and negative. When expectations are not met, we experience disappointment and maybe even horror. For instance, I’m sure at your wedding you expect the pastor not to say anything like: “You’re in for a treat on your honeymoon; your partner is a fantastic lover. Don’t worry; I gave her a few tips after to make it even better for you.” That’s definitely not living up to your healthy expectations. My personal pet peeve is people who don’t flush public toilets like what they’ve done is a great accomplishment they want to share with others… ew. Ultimately, unmet expectations can destroy relationships because they can either be so huge we can’t get past them (e.g. your partner cheating on you and telling you on Jerry Springer) or there is a continual build up of unmet expectations that leaves one or both of you miserably disappointed.

The following diagrams help illustrate how expectations work: we’re content when our expectations are met, excited when we experience more, and disappointed when we experience less.

As these diagrams help illustrate, when we’re able to have our expectations met, we’re content. If we’re able to receive more than we expect, we’re excited, and if we don’t have our expectations met, we feel disappointment. This leads to an important conclusion: we need to make sure we have healthy expectations. If we have too many expectations, or those that are impossible to attain, we’ll always end up disappointed. Essentially what this means is instead of a nice, normal sized box, we have this giant one that can never be full.

If this is how we live, we will be miserable. We can all be guilty of this, but I’m sure you can think of someone who’s frequently guilty of having unfair expectations. They are always stressed or upset about something. They live very sad and lonely lives because this kind of behavior drives others away.

It’s also important to make sure that our expectations aren’t too few, which would mean we have a box that’s too small. This can end up causing us to live a life that’s second rate since we don’t expect or want anything better. It can also leave us with a whole gamut of undesirable things like neglectful partners, limited jobs and lives that don’t challenge and inspire us.

From a personal experience, I once did a stand up routine that I thought tanked hard, but other people there came up to me after and said they really enjoyed it. The problem was I had made unfair expectations that were impossible to achieve: “They’ll nonstop laugh.” I had essentially set myself up to fail; thus, instead of enjoying the moment on stage, I thought the experience was terrible. The opposite can also be true. I’ve seen comics get booed, but afterwards thought that it was a great set. I think we’d all benefit from these comics having higher expectations. Ultimately, we need to make sure that we have proper expectations. Using the box illustration, we need to have a healthy sized box; if it’s too big or too small, we need to fix it.

Tip: Healthy expectations are vital to a happy and fulfilled life.

The best way to prevent poor or unfulfilled expectations is to continually be aware of what it is we want and to properly communicate this. Many times, we are disappointed because someone hasn’t lived up to our expectations when the other party wasn’t even aware of what was expected of them. Ultimately, we can’t be angry for someone not living up to our expectations when they had no idea what it was we expected.
Expectations have strong ties with the earlier exercise we did, Life Scripts, because people often see what they expect to see. For instance, if we do something with the attitude: “This is going to suck,” it typically does. I know in my experience, the one person who is the most afraid of doing something even if it’s not that big a deal, ends up being the one who gets hurt. This doesn’t mean we should ignore fear or apprehensions, but it does mean that we need to be careful not to ignore the positives or set ourselves up to fail. Ultimately, in any situation, if you’re looking for something positive you can find it, but, unfortunately, if you’re expecting something negative, you’ll be able to find that as well.