Episode 7: Expectations In your Marriage

Expectations come from inside of you and they can ruin your relationship. They create turmoil where it's not necessary and they put boundaries and guidelines on your spouse that they didn't even know existed. Expectations are setting you and your spouse up for failure. We will explore ways to avoid this easy mistake and create a marriage where connection and communication are the pillars of your success.

Episode Transcript

Welcome back. This is the confident marriage podcast. My name is Jessica, and I'm your host. If you're a new listener to the show, I welcome you so very glad you're here. This podcast is about supporting marriages, especially those experiencing problems and hardship. But aren't we all really, if we're married, marriage is a really, really hard, it's one of the hardest commitments that we make in life.

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Maybe we did a podcast and you want me to dig in deeper. I'd be happy to do so, just let us know. So again, thank you all. Let's move on today. We're going to talking about expectations and this is a really interesting one, and it's quite ironic how this podcast came into play and what happens. So a couple of weeks ago, I'm going to tell you guys this story.

So a couple of weeks ago on my last podcast, uh, pornography, I had mentioned that I was going to be doing a podcast on expectations. And I froze. Why did I freeze? I froze because expectations is something that I have always struggled with, not just with my husband, but with many aspects of relationships in my life.

And it's something that I am still trying to work on and recognize and change within myself. So I said I was going to do this podcast. Here's a good example of expectations. I had a high standard of expectations to provide information to you guys. That I felt I was incredibly good at. And because I struggle with this, I didn't feel like I was the right person to tell you about it.

I didn't feel like I was the person that could talk about it. I felt like I was being a full, I hadn't overcome it in my life. So who am I to sit here and talk about expectations when this is something that I struggle with every single day. And so I, I didn't write the podcast and the expectation I had of myself, the high expectation I had of myself caused me to do something really stupid.

And that was prolonged the release of this podcast. Yet, as I'm writing the podcast, I am realizing that I am falling into exactly. What it is. I'm talking about the problem with expectations is it sets us up for failure. Do you see how I set myself up for failure? I'm expecting some gigantic marvelous podcast to come out of my mouth and I didn't feel like.

I had the healthy perspective to provide it. And yet I failed my expectation, set me up for failure. And that was the essence of what I wanted to write about. And that is the essence. I want you to understand as we move forward in this podcast, our expectations, whether it's for ourselves, our spouse. Our children or a family only set us up for failure.

So you're probably wondering what kicked me in the ass and made me realize this epiphany I had last week, I went out to lunch with my grandmother. Wonderful, amazing Latino woman. Just, Oh my God. She's she's wonderful. A little side note here. Okay. This is a hilarious story. So my husband thinks it's the funniest thing in the world.

If I'm busy or distracted or I'm asleep, and I'm a little bit of a hard sleeper. My husband could say my name. He'll say Jessica, Jess. Hey, Jess, Jessica. And then he'll say it like my grandmother, Jessie. And I literally will wake up from a dead sleep or turn my head to him as if it was my grandmother talking, because that's how she spoke to me when she was angry with me, my grandmother raised me.

And so anytime I was in trouble or she wanted my attention, Jesse, look it to me, Jesse. So yes, my grandmother is a beautiful Latino woman. And so there's a little funny story about her, but anyways, back to the original story, uh, we were out to lunch last week. And she was telling me about a conversation she had had with someone else.

And she said something that literally hit home for me and kicked me in the ass with this podcast. And what my grandmother said was, is don't look for something to be upset about. Hence, let go of expectations. Let go of what you think should happen. Let go of what you want to happen. Let go of how you think the story should play out.

Don't look for something to be upset about. So how did that lead me to the podcast? Well, even though she didn't say it to me, it still resonated with me. And so I started thinking about all the ways that I look. For things to be upset about, even though I don't realize it. And then I realized that all the things that I look to be upset about, or my expectations that I put on other people or myself, hence expectations.

Oh my God, my podcast on expectations. So there you have it. There's a really long roundabout of how I got my ass kicked back into writing this podcast. And so here I am explaining to you in essence, what I wanted to get across from the very beginning in a way that I can explain it to you without telling you, Oh yeah, I've got this down a note I'm talking about, you know, just listen to everything I say I'm an expert.

No, no, no, no, no. I know. What this is like, because I've gone through it and I'm still going through it. How ironic is that? I do believe that the universe, that our Lord, he works in mysterious ways. What is the difference though? Between expectations, boundaries, agreements, and compromises. An expectation is something that comes from inside you, whether you may or may not have expressed it to your spouse.

An example would be you let your spouse sleep in Saturday morning to catch up on some rest, and you expected them to wake up and greet you refreshed and excited and in such a great mood. Oh my God, honey. Thank you so much. I feel amazing what me take care of the kids for the rest of the day. And you're like massage time, but instead they woke up even more grumpy and grouchy and still really tired.

And they're snapping at you and the kids and they don't want to go to the zoo with you guys. You're disappointed. You're upset. I just let them sleep in two hours later. And they're not even in a good mood. They're ruining the day for everybody. I expected them to wake up feeling great and thankful that I had done that for a while.

I stayed up with the kids and dealt with the disaster of the house. And this is what I get. Those are expectations. That was a setup, a setup for failure for yourself, for your spouse, for your children. The whole day was in complete and utter failure because you had an expectation. It's something that you had created on your own and expected to happen.

That wasn't necessarily reality, true or realistic. Now a compromise or an agreement would be along the lines of a discussion between the two of you regarding what is expected when it comes to let's say finances, an example, there would be you and your husband agreed that you two were not going to eat out, but once a week, And this was to save up for a bill that you guys wanted to pay off and you're out with your girlfriends and they all decided to go to lunch and you go grab a bite with them and you cut into the money that you guys were putting towards that bill you were saving before.

That was not you breaking an expectation per se. That's not the kind of expectation we're talking about. That was you not keeping to an agreement or compromise that you had made with your spouse. Something that you two had discussed and you both agreed and understood would be. So these are boundaries.

They're not expectations. If you have been communicating clearly with your spouse, then you've set boundaries. You have not set expectations. There is an expectation to follow through, but it is not an expectation coming from inside to you. It is a mutual understanding. There is a difference between the two.

So talking about the expectations that come from within us. Whether it be from our hearts, just our true desires or wants our emotions, our feelings, our minds, and what we think should happen based on our personal opinions and views. I talk a lot about the glasses that we wear in my other podcasts. And this is where a lot of our expectations can distort reality.

Our glasses are created by our own life experiences, our opinions and our beliefs. And it is because we believe that something should happen a certain way. We then put that belief and expectation on another person, expecting them to react, behave, say, or do thing within the confines of what we think should be done.

Those are the kinds of expectations that hurt our marriage. Hurt ourselves. And they set us up for failure, as well as setting our spouse up for failure. There's absolutely no winning in that situation. There's no way for your spouse to know exactly how to act, what to do, what to say at every given moment.

They're gonna let you down. As long as you have those expectations lingering within you. When we set expectations on someone, basically what we're doing is we are predicting the future. And the problem with predicting the future is that we're not psychics. So we have no idea what the circumstance, situation, or events that have been created within a person's life.

To be able to predict what's going to happen accurately. So let me explain this to you with a personal experience of mine. My husband drives two hours to work each day, early, early in the morning, and lately has been working 10 hour days in the hot sun. And yes, it is very, very hot where we're at and then has about a three hour drive home.

So he's gone before I get up in the morning and I'm up pretty early and he doesn't get home until seven o'clock, eight o'clock at night. And. I know he's tired and I know he's exhausted and his job is physically grueling and my heart breaks for him. So I do everything I can to make life easy for him.

When he walks through that door. No, I'm not a perfect wife. It took me a long time to learn how to do this balancing that I'm not your mother with. I'm your wife, where my, uh, roles are. I've learned throughout marriage that you define your own roles and nobody can tell you what you should or should not be doing.

It's what feels right and good to you. And so what feels right and good to me is taking care of my husband after a really long days. Work. So I'll have his lunch ready for him and I'll have dinner warmed up and ready for him and I'll make sure that his clothes are set up for the next day. I know it sounds really, really cheesy.

I make him delicious, delicious lunches, delicious dinners, and I make sure that when he walks through that door, all he has to do is take a shower, eat the dinner. I made him and hang out with the kids for a little bit and go to bed for the next day. Well, He has been exceptionally grouchy lately. He has not been able to sleep.

He, uh, his shoulders hurting really bad, so it's keeping him up at night. It's making work a little bit harder. So I've been taking extra good care of him, making sure that he has the patches to burn on his arm and all the ibuprofen he needs and hoping that this would all make a difference for him. And it hasn't let up his mood at all.

And at times it comes out at me, which is to be expected. That's what happens in a marriage. We can't always be nice all the time where people who we slip, but I expected a little bit more. Gratitude from him. I expected him to be a little bit more upbeat and spunky and, you know, loving towards me. And, um, I'm really not quite sure what I expected.

I just know I expected more than what I got and I brought it up to him the other day and I said, you know, honey, I've really been working hard to make life easy for you when you come home. And I just really want some time with you and I'm not getting it. And he got snappy with me and a couple of hours later, he came back and he said, I have been feeling really guilty.

And that's why I snapped at you is because I all the way home think about spending time with you. But by the time I walked through that door, I barely have the energy to get in the shower and eat. And then I go to bed hoping for a good night's rest. And my shoulders bothering me all night and I can't sleep.

Our three-year-old son keeps crawling into bed with us and waking us up. And he said, I'm trying, and I'm exhausted. And I'm worn out. And I realized as he's explaining his days to me and the things that have been going on in his world, that he hasn't had the time to tell me because it's literally get up, go to work, come home, go to bed, get up, go to work, come home, go to bed.

And I'm hearing this in play and I feel awful for him. And here I was expecting him to give me an hour of his time and he didn't even have an hour for himself. See, there was no winning for my husband. There he's busting his ass at work to provide for our family. And I'm bitching about having an hour with him.

He had on his own glasses, his own crap was going on and because of his circumstances and my expectations, he couldn't have met them. He's not Superman. That was on me for getting upset with him. That was my bad. I'm not living his life. I'm not experiencing what he's experiencing. Therefore, I cannot predict what his reaction is going to be, what his communication's going to be like.

What's going through his head and to think that I can play the story out in my head, the way that I think it should go is fantasy. It's not real. It's like expecting your spouse to play out some romantic movie verbatim. It's not real reality, is it couldn't possibly go down like that. Even if they tried, we all have a life.

And our partner has a life outside of us. And with that comes its own struggles, its own problems, its own snacks. And they can't be predicted by you or me or anybody else. The only one who knows is the one that's living it. And so that's where my mistake was is because I thought I understood. I didn't.

And had my husband and I not have the communication in place to talk, honestly, with one another. I wouldn't have known that he was feeling guilty about busting his ass for the family and not having time for me. Imagine how that conversation would have went if he didn't know how to express that. To me, it would have just been back and forth arguing for days.

And that's where talking about your expectations comes into play, discussing things with your partner, so that you can understand so that you can see it from their point of view from their world, from their light. Because even though we have those expectations, there's nothing wrong with expressing that a healthy and reasonable expectation to have would be that my husband shows me that he loves me.

Right. And that he does it at times in a way that I understand it. What's unhealthy is to say that my husband doesn't love me because he didn't do X, Y, Z. What would be helpy is expressing how you feel about things. Hey, honey, it really makes me feel loved and wanted when you find time during the week for just you and I, even if it's just an hour.

That's healthy to express that expectation. It would not be healthy to enforce that expectation onto them when they're in capable of doing it. It's not healthy to express what is going on in your world so that your spouse can understand and be on the same page with you so that we can minimize the amount of broken expectations.

The communication is key here. Understanding one another is key here, talking about those expectations, talking about how we can, or can't meet those expectations. Talking about what's going on in our world, helps us dissolve those expectations and understand one another better so that we can have reasonable ideas of what our marriage should and should not look like.

Now, none of this means that you settle for an unhappy marriage. Again, there is such thing as boundaries, agreements, and compromise, and these are essential to a healthy relationship. Making sure that you're doing your part to meet those and honor them is important. This does not apply to expectations. As I talked about expectations come from within us.

They are ideas. They are stories, their fantasies, their wishes, their wants their things that we drum up inside our minds of what we think should happen. They are not things that we have talked about and discussed and agreed upon. So going back to what my grandmother said, don't look for something to be upset about.

Don't look for where they have failed. You don't look for where they haven't met your expectations. Don't look for where they have failed your boundaries. Don't look for something to be upset about. Look for the things, to be grateful and thankful about. Look for the things to be understanding about. Look at your spouse's world and what it is that they are going through.

And if you don't know, ask open up the door for communication so that you do understand, sometimes we're not going to catch ourselves falling into disappointment of expectations. And it's not until after we have said or done something as a reaction to our expectation, not being met, that we realize. That the bad is on us.

That doesn't mean that it's too late. You can still turn around and say to your spouse, you know what? I had an expectation and I reacted on that expectation. And I'm sorry. And then sit down with your spouse and talk to them about where that expectation came from and why that was there. Maybe you're not getting some of your needs met.

Maybe you're not being loved in the way that you need to be. And that's okay to talk about that's healthy that way they know for the future. What it is you need from them. And that does not mean that moving forward, they're going to be able to hit it on the nose every single time. But when they're capable, I'm sure they're going to be able to, and they're going to give them that opportunity.

Maybe the communication is lacking in your marriage and your spouse quite honestly, is blind and has no idea how. To show you love how to make you happy, what it is as you need. And they had no idea that that would be something that you'd expect from them. And maybe it's something that they'd want to provide.

And they're throwing darts in the dark, hoping that they hit the target with you. That's where the communication comes in. It's it's okay to have the expectations. It's not okay to react on them. Um, talk about those expectations. Talk about what it is you want, what it is you need. That's the healthy thing to do.

So that way you to understand one another, just as you want to understand your spouse and why they are in the place they're in, you want your spouse to understand you and why you're in the place you're in. It goes two ways. It's all about communication. You know, I talk a lot about communication, open, honest communication in my podcast.

One of the most popular ones for that topic is the foreplay before the foreplay. That one speaks a lot on how to open up to your partner and what kinds of things need to be talked about and how to do it and how to start the conversations. You know, expectations are a normal human behavior and we're always going to have them.

So don't get down on yourself for them being there just don't react to them. Don't put them on other people instead. Talk about it with your spouse. That's a safe place. Maybe not with your boss or with your children or your parents or your friends, but with your spouse, it's totally appropriate to talk about that.

Expectations are essentially your hopes, your dreams, your wishes, your wants your needs, and that's the person you should be sharing that with. I hope you all got what I wanted you to out of it. And I am just still completely floored at how this podcast came to life and how it happened. And just circling back to those expectations.

I was holding onto myself, almost made me feel, and we don't always get a chance to take back our failures. So next week is going to be a pretty interesting topic. We are going to be talking about shit talking a lot of us do it. You don't have to admit it. You don't have to turn to your partner and say, Hey, I do that, but almost all of us do it.

We talk shit about our partner to other people. Sometimes we don't even know we're doing it. I'm going to talk about the ways that we talk shit about our partner. We don't even recognize it. Other times we do it out of pure frustration and we feel guilty for it later. Sometimes we do it because we're venting and we're seeking advice and help, but I'm going to talk about all the ways that all that shit talking, even when you don't even know you're doing it is damaging your marriage and your spouse doesn't even know you're doing it.

Thank you all for joining me this week. I hope you have a fantastic week. Don't forget to subscribe to the podcast. Rate the podcast, share the podcast. You can find us on Facebook at the competent marriage, Twitter, the sea marriage show and Instagram, the competent marriage. I hope you all have a absolutely fantastic group.

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