I want you to be my best friend, my lover, my counsellor, a listener when I’m upset, my personal advisor, my soul mate, the person to satisfy my every sexual and spiritual desire, my financial advisor, my career coach… there’s more too. Are you ok with that? No? Too much? Where did you go?!
The expectations we place upon the people we choose to call our girlfriends, boyfriends, partners, husbands, wives and many other words… are both overwhelming and unrealistic on so many levels.
This post was inspired by a TEDx Talk I watched a few months ago and it really got me thinking about the expectations we place upon our ‘other halves’ when we enter into a relationship with them. Even calling them ‘other halves’ carries a huge amount of responsibility – the other half of me!? Wow. Firstly, are these expectations realistic? Secondly, why is it that we expect so much?
To answer the first part, cutting to the chase, no. The expectations are in no way realistic. We are all human (unless you’re one of those people who falls in love with objects or animals – awkward!) and in being human, we are all dealing with our own shit. Often that means we are utterly fallible. We mess up, we hurt, we break promises, we cheat, we lie. Fundamentally, we are woefully ill-equipped to live up to the expectations our partners so often place upon us. Yet modern society pedals this fantasy that the opposite can be true. You only have to read marriage vows to get an idea of the craziness I’m talking about. The weight of responsibility in those vows (which in my opinion are only a worded expectation of what most people have non-verbally in most relationships) is, when you think long and hard about it, entirely unrealistic. If it were any other contract, you’d run a mile.
I do not wish to sound like a bitter single guy whose marriage failed (promise!). I believe healthy relationships and indeed marriages exist. But from my own personal observation, the more successful ones are where both parties are far more realistic about what they can expect from their partner. They don’t delegate responsibility for their own shit to someone else. They appreciate the limitations of any partnership and have a high level of personal responsibility, where appropriate. We are all fighting battles of some kind. A good relationship (in my opinion) is one where your partner fights those battles with you, but not for you. And you take full responsibility for the fact it is your battle, not theirs. It is I guess, a kind of relational empathy.
I was in a relationship for 13 years and I am comfortable admitting that I placed far too much expectation on my partner and took far too little responsibility for my own actions and behaviour. But hindsight is wonderful. If only I’d had a partner who would have called me out on what I was doing right? No. In those words, I’m shifting responsibility. The reality is that most partners collude in each other’s behaviour. I guess it is so engrained in us to behave this way in relationships that we know no different.
The outcome of passing over so much responsibility and placing so much expectation on our partners is not pretty. Think of it this way. If I go into a relationship believing I’m running at 80% ‘wholeness’ and my partner is there to make up the other 20%, how can I possibly have level headed, adult conversations when (inevitably and very naturally) our relationship hits a rough patch due to our very human infallibility? My immediate thoughts will be one of survival “I don’t want to be 80% again and this conversation may conclude with that happening.” When we are in survival mode, we do weird things. We avoid, we manipulate, we fabricate, we brush things under the carpet. I wonder how many relationships end because of this game. Contrast that with someone going into a relationship and maintaining a view of “I’m 100% as I am, and I possess everything I need within myself to enjoy a happy life. My partner is simply the icing on the cake.” Now, how comfortable will that person be discussing relationship concerns from either side?
So why do we do it? Why do we place those expectations on others and why do we shirk so much responsibility for our own shit? I guess that is the million-dollar question. With some confidence I would say if you analysed 100 different people you’d find 100 different answers. But in the interests of me being transparent, I’ll share with you what I believe my reasons were.
Firstly, I believe I’m unlovable. It’s hardwired in my mind that there are parts of me that are so fundamentally broken and ugly that nobody would accept them. I’m not saying that for a sympathy vote and I know I’m not alone in that belief. I am working on that with both my therapist back home and my own personal practices. But what that means is that I have to seek my validation externally, because I can’t create it within myself (yet!). So there’s the first expectation – you need to love and accept me for all of me, because I can’t. Then there’s the fact that my life has been built upon other people’s opinions of me. I genuinely struggle to make decisions without consulting external sources. I’ve yet to truly trust my own internal compass. So now you can cue the “you need to be my advisor” expectation.
Finally, there is the issue of taking responsibility. When you have the low levels of self-worth that I have, you don’t need another reason to beat yourself up. I already spend more hours of each day than I’d like to saying unkind things to myself, so I shy away from taking responsibility. Because guess what? If I delegate that responsibility to someone else, if it goes wrong I don’t have to blame myself. If it were my decision alone, and it goes wrong, I’ll give myself an even harder time about it. Of course, the logic is flawed. Because I know that’s exactly what I’m doing (at least, I do now).
So I’m determined that my next relationship will be different. I’ll talk with my partner about mutual expectations. I’ll share my baggage and talk about how they can support me, but also how they can call me out if they believe I’m trying to get them to take responsibility for it (give away line being “you make me feel…”). Nope, you choose to feel and probably because of your baggage, that’s your shit.
Finally, honesty. It has to be there in any relationship. For years I wasn’t honest because I feared that if I was, my ‘100% wholeness status’ (which I clung on so hard to), would be taken away from me. The irony of course, was that in not being honest, it was anyway.
Featured image – me and my friend Jamie making shapes over Death Valley, Navada.