What are Your Expectations?
Expecting too much from a friend
Can Friendship Survive Betrayal

by Calleen Wilder

Many years ago I read that we should never have expectations of anyone because then we would never really be let down by them.  That it is our expectations that cause the problem, not their actions. 

True as this may be, I don't believe that it is do-able.  I have quite often found that we just seem to automatically have expectations about nearly everyone we meet, and usually we don't even realize it until they let us down.  Then we are shocked, dismayed, angered or saddened by their blatant disregard for what we had always felt they were. 

I have come to believe that expectations are simply built into our nature.  It seems to coincide with our opinion of a person.  If we have a high opinion of someone, we seem to naturally expect good things from them and vice versa.

My question about this unexpected behavior on their part is this; is it fair to be upset with them when they fail to live up to our expectations?  Of course it's not, but we always are.  Why?  Is it because they disappointed us?  Is it because we felt safer in our relationship with them if they behaved in a way that we felt we could predict with some degree of certainty?  Or is it simply us mirroring our own expectations of ourselves onto them?  Maybe a bit of all three.

I often find that after they have "let me down", I find myself having a hard time not beating myself up for "expecting" something from them in the first place.  Partly because when the anger does finally dissipate, I realize I have also "judged" their behavior as inappropriate.  I hate to admit that I have "judged" someone.  But I believe that we all do.  Even without our consciously realizing we do it.

Yet I have come to also realize that had they not let me down in the first place, had they done what I had "expected" them to do, it would have all gone on so smoothly that I would never have realized that I was judging them at all.  This is and of itself is quite an eye opener.

So maybe it is programmed into our life plans to have people fail to behave in a fashion we would have liked, just so we can see how narrowly we really judge our world and the people who reside in it....and that includes us.

I think that for the majority of us, we also tend to expect far too much from ourselves via this same process.  I think we need to realize that we do this somewhat automatically, and when we let ourselves down, we also need to give ourselves a break for not living up to some impossible standard that somewhere, somehow, sometime in the distant past we set for ourselves without our even being aware we had done it.

I know that for myself I am trying to learn how to just be me, without placing all these unrealistic standards upon myself.  Sure, I expect myself not to lie, cheat or steal.  I expect myself to be kind, care about people, be true to my inner convictions and try to be the best wife and mother I know how to be.  But there again, isn't that all entirely based upon personal subjective opinion and not objective truth?   

The truth of the matter is, I do occasionally lie; sometimes in order to prevent from hurting someone else and sometimes to get out of doing something I really don't want to do, again without hurting someone else.  But then again, a lie is a lie no matter what color you put on it; white or otherwise.

I'm not always as kind as I would like to see myself be, because sometimes I'm just too tired or too stressed to really care that much.  I don't cheat or steal, but please, I don't want to expect myself not to or then I probably will.  I try to hold true to my inner convictions, but here again, there are always those times that I'm much less than my convictions would probably want me to be.

In other words, none of us will ever be perfect, nor do I believe would we want to be.  I haven't really defined perfect yet, but I'm sure that too is a matter of personal definition.  Instead, I think we should enjoy our human-ness, flaws and all.  And like everyone else who we've ever felt has let us down, we need to understand that we're here to learn lessons and if we don't fall sometimes, some of us more often than others (ha), then we'll never be required to learn how to get back up. 

I do think that when someone isn't who we think they are, or perhaps that we aren't who they thought we were, that our relationships must re-adjust to the new information.  Sometimes that means ending one, sometimes that means ending just a certain part of one and sometimes that means just loving them enough to overlook their human-ness too.  But that doesn't mean we don't have the right to discern whether they are still a "positive" influence in our life, and have the right to make the choice as to whether we want to keep them in it or not.

Over the years I've had to constantly re-adjust my "expectation" bar.  Things I always thought I would never allow, I have.  Things I thought I would never do, I have done.  In fact, in all these years of what some may see as my nearly constant "lowering of the bar" (ha), I would have thought my expectation meter was nearly extinct by now....but alas, I found out recently it was not. 

There were still certain people in my life that I expected certain basic things from.  When they didn't live up to my standard of expectation for them, I found myself biting my tongue and trying to let them be what they were and not what I had always thought they were. 

I believe that very large gaps can be found in any relationship if we look for them.  I think part of my future goal is to not look for them.

Anyway, I guess my point is this; we all expect certain things from certain people.  And in many cases we never even realize we are doing this; this placing of our meter on their heads.  But at some point in time we will be shown that we have.  We all do it, we may wish we didn't, we may have expected ourselves not to, but then again, it seems wired into our human-ness.

So often in the Spiritual circles that I have traveled in, people are always trying to pretend they don't judge or place expectations on themselves and others, but we do....we all do.  I think a lot of our anger often comes from expectations we have placed on others or ourselves that we or they have failed to live up to. 

Yet I believe as we grow and evolve the real lesson in this is how we deal with our disappointment when someone didn't hold up their end of the bargain we felt we had made with them?

Do we huff and puff, do we yell and scream, do we hide and pout or do we realize that they are human too, and if we've known them for any amount of time, we have probably also let them down somewhere along the way?  That doesn't mean we have to discount how it makes us see them once the anger has subsided.  We may indeed need to completely alter our interactions with them.  But as the old saying goes "we don't have to go away mad....sometimes, we just have to go away".

Just realize and accept that we all do it, like it or not.  Once we acknowledge this, we must figure out what there is to learn from it.  Think of all the times you have been betrayed, lied to and let down by other people.  Tough, tough times weren't they?  But I bet you learned a lot about yourself in the process.  If you can let go of your anger towards this person, your hurt and pain and try to see what you learned from the whole encounter, I'll bet you'll find yourself happy that it happened.  You may not want to go through it again, but I know you're stronger and wiser for having done so.

I simply believe that the more honest we are with ourselves about ourselves, flaws and all, the more we can learn to live healthier, happier and more open lives. We won't spend so much of our precious time and energy trying to hold our own demons at bay. 

If we can acknowledge that the perfecting and growth that we are all looking for actually lies in the falling down and getting back up portions of our lives, perhaps we won't mind the bumps and bruises we receive along the way so much.  If we will just allow ourselves to be what we are knowing that as we make mistakes, we grow, as we are let down....we learn, as we hurt....we heal, and as we accept ourselves entirely....we become ourselves...entirely.

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