Where do expectations get in the way, and how are they helpful? When do you want agreements and when are they too much work?
Cathy: Hi everyone, I’m Cathy Vartuli from the http://www.TheIntimacyDojo.com and I want to talk today about expectations versus agreements. Most of us are really good with expectations, we have them all the time. We were brought up in a certain culture, a certain set of social expectations and that helped us move through life pretty easily. We definitely don’t want to have to talk about everything every time we do it. But for things that matter it’s really good to step outside of that expectation mode which can lead to a lot of blaming and misunderstanding into a place where we make agreements.
The other day a friend of mine was sharing how frustrated she was with her partner. They had moved into a place together and they were sharing rent and then his job changed, so he is making less and he started contributed less and they hadn’t really talked about it. As they were talking she was really blaming him and feeling really frustrated and didn’t feel very loved by him and I was talking to her and I realized that they hadn’t really talked about what the agreement was. Both of them had expectations. Her expectation was that they would split the rent. His expectation was they would contribute based on their salary and if their salary was reduced then he should reduce what he was contributing. They never really sat down and shared what their wants and needs or made a verbal or written agreement about how they were going to handle this and it was causing a tremendous amount of conflict. Both of them thought they were doing what they needed to do to be a good partner and both of them thought they were meeting what was expected of them. That they grew up in different families, they had different cultural patterning. Part of the problem was my friend was going to her family and blaming and bitching about her partner, which we all do, we all need to let off esteem sometimes and we get to go to our family or friends and say, ‘Oh my god, this person’s driving me crazy’, there’s nothing wrong with that. But they were encouraging her because they were looking from the same cultural paradigm; they were saying he was wrong. They weren’t actually telling her to go talk with him and that’s what I told her that I thought she should do and I think that when we talk about these problems openly rather than just going to someone else to blame and say, ‘look how bad that person is’, things start changing for the better and we start getting more empowerment in our life for everybody. She did actually talk to him and things did get better once they hashed stuff out. She was kind of angry once she talked to him about it. That’s expected when we don’t get our expectations met we can feel very disappointed, we can feel very hurt and angry.
Reid Mihalko actually talks about having practice conversations, which I love. Where when you go to family or friends you can say hey, ‘I’d like to have a practice conversation. I’d like to vent for a little bit and then I’d to figure out how I’m going to talk to that person.’ That lets you kind of voice what you need in a way that you can have one just holding space for you and giving you feed back. Like, ‘I get that you’re really angry. It wasn’t really clear to me what you wanted,’ so that when you do actually go to that person and talk to them, that you can be a little more articulate and you may have released some of your anger before you sat down with them. Look at your life. Where are you having hang ups? Where are you having conflict with your partner? Look and see what expectations you have for that person’s behavior and it may not be a romantic partner, it may be a business partner, it may be friend, it may be a co-worker. What expectations do you have that you haven’t voiced? Then you can say, ‘hmmm, well I haven’t said that I really would like him to call if he’s going to be more than twenty minutes late. I could ask him for that, and he gets to say yes or no’, but if you do talk about it and he says, ‘yes I agree,’ and maybe it’s up to thirty minutes, if he is going to be later than thirty minutes, whatever you negotiate, that’s an agreement. People don’t always live up to their agreements but at least both parties know what’s wanted and expected of each. Both of you can clearly, consciously expect, rather than subconsciously expecting out of the relationship. Makes this a lot easier, makes work relationships and work and friendship a lot less effort and we get our needs met a lot more of the time. I’d love to know what you think about this. How do you deal with expectations? What comes up for you on agreements? Does it feel too heavy? Love to know what you think, please leave comments below, let us know. Thank you.
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