Happiness and Expectations

Lately I’ve been thinking a lot about expectations. I’ve come to realize that a lot of the unhappiness that I’ve experienced in my life has been related to my own expectations. You see, I’m someone who has always believed that you should give what you get. If someone is giving of their time for you, then you should we willing to give the same for them. I’ve always expected that if you care about someone, take care of them, give them physical and emotional support, you can expect the same. It’s that thinking that I have come to realize is wrong. Now, this is not a new intellectual realization to me, I have many times had what I call “the levels” discussions with friends about romantic relationships.

The levels conversation is a pretty simple and logical idea, in almost any romantic relationship one person is more invested than the other. There typically is someone who feels incredibly fortunate that the other person is willing to be with them. I think the relationships that work the best, are those times when both partners feel this way. When a person feels that they are lucky to have, and maybe even undeserving of the other person’s attention and affection, they will work harder to make the relationship work. They will also likely be more willing to forgive a lack of attention, affection or time out of fear that if they don’t, the other person might move on. When you’re on the other side of that, you come to realize, perhaps even subconsciously, that you don’t have to be as giving, as the other person will not move on. This can lead to a pattern of one person being more and more, and the other person being less and less invested in making an effort in the relationship. The partners are at different levels of commitment and desire to work in the relationship.

So, knowing this, you would think that I would have easily made the logical leap to understanding that non-romantic, friendships and family relationships would work the same way. Somehow, I believed that non-romantic relationships would be more equal. This is the realization that has really hit me during the last couple of months as I work through my recovery.

The expectation that others would return what I gave, often not being met, is something that has led to a lot of unhappiness for me in my life. So, there’s an easy solution right, just don’t expect anything from anyone and you’ll never be disappointed. This is a meme you’ll see on social media, and a discussion you’ll see in articles. If you have no expectations, you’ll have no disappointments, so have no expectations is their advice. The problem with this idea is that other people are trained by your actions. If you give of yourself, have no expectations, and nothing comes back in return and you’re not upset about this and there are no consequences to the other person, you’ve taught them how to treat you. They will learn that they can expect from you, but don’t need to give the same, or anything for that matter in return and they’ll still have the connection and relationship. And while having no expectations might remove your disappointment, it could also quickly make you a doormat, which is not ideal.

I’ll give a really tangible example of this. I had a person I was friends with in college, we’d spent a lot of time together and were pretty good friends. Once we graduated we stayed in touch, even saw each other from time to time. Mostly though, this was pre-email days, it was phone calls. So, every few months I’d call her up and we’d catch up and they were great conversations. But I started to notice a pattern, I was always the one who called. Finally I brought this up to her on a call and her attitude was, yeah, I’m terrible, I never call anyone but it’s ok because everybody calls me. We had all taught her exactly how to treat us. I was really offended by this attitude, and in fact, stopped calling her, and because I was the only one making the effort, we never spoke again. Not at all what I wanted, but if only one person is making the effort, is there actually a relationship?

So what’s the answer?

I think it’s a combination of two things, lowering your expectations to a lower level, but if that level isn’t met, then move on from the relationship. This has both benefits and problems. First, there is a benefit, having lower expectations you’re less often going to be disappointed and this should help prevent a negative impact to your happiness. Secondly however, humans have a tendency to want fairness, so when you lower your expectations, often like the example of my friend, you get less in return from people as there are fewer consequences to them. So you get less from them and are then often less willing to give to them, because it feels unfair. So while giving less satisfies your sense of fairness, it creates distance in the relationship and this can increase your feelings of loneliness and isolation. What I recommend is that you pay close attention to that cycle. If people aren’t willing to give you what is fair, what you need from the relationship, then you have a choice. Confront them with this information and see if you can build a better relationship or move on. But there’s a corollary to this in that there are people that do give back what they get from you. Dig deeper in and invest more in those relationships, as those are the deeper truer relationships in your life and the relationships likely to bring you greater satisfaction and happiness and are most worthy of your time.

A note on relationship contact frequency. Friendships can take on many forms, I have equally good friends who I hear from in radically different levels of frequency. Some I talk to weekly, others monthly, some only a couple of times a year. The way I gauge the depth of these relationships is by a simple question, if I really needed them, would they be here for me? This may mean either emotionally or physically. The reality is people have complicated lives, for me, most are at a large geographic distance away. So what you give and get, will look very different across different relationships.

One last thought on this topic, humans are by nature self-centered creatures. So while reading this you are naturally thinking about the relationships you have and how people respond to you, you’re thinking about who gives back what you give them and likely focusing on the relationships where you feel like you are giving more than what you give back. But we are all on both sides of this equation in our various relationships. So it’s important to think about those relationships where you’re the person who is not giving back what you get, the relationships where you are making someone else feel less valued. I think it’s important to be honest with yourself about these relationships. It’s important to make a decision, should you extricate from the relationship because it’s not important to you, or should you make a greater effort to bring those relationships into a more just balance?

So my friends, may your relationships be satisfying, balanced and bring you happier days. ~ Rev Kane