Seeking opinions

[Kettricken]

I guess it depends on what kind of expectations you're talking about. I think the basic "division of labor" expectations -- mutually arrived at -- make any household run more smoothly. As long as you don't come completely unwrapped or take it as a personal affront when your partner fails to mow the lawn on occasion. Likewise, I think that when you join your lives, it's not unreasonable to expect that they will be there to run you a warm bath or make a store run for theraflu when you're sick as a dog, or vice versa.

But I suspect that you are talking more about releasing expectations of having emotional needs satisfied. I don't think it's always so easy to get there, but it would probably be a good place to arrive at.

What Fran said resonated: "Remember how it bugged you when your H kept hinting to go for a picnic. What bugged you was him having an expectation of you. It ruined what had been a spontaneous gift and turned it into something he expected you to live up to." What was a push-your-boundaries generous gesture wound up feeling like ... I don't know ... "Loved the cookies, woman, now go bake me a cake?" Not sure he meant it that way ... if I put myself in his place, I can imagine he might have been trying to say, "God that was great .... please please please do it again?" But maybe you felt like there was insufficient appreciation and excessive expectation (there's that word again). Dunno, just rambling at this point....

This discussion reminds me of Esther Perel's view of expectations in modern marriages:

"We have invested marriage with an enormous amount of differing needs. We still want what we used to have: security, respectability, reproduction, social status, companionship. And now we want confidants, best friends and passionate lovers to boot. It's not always so easy to experience excitement and security in the same place. People who have multiple nurturing relationships with friends and family often do better. Maybe marriage, or any committed relationship for that matter, isn't for everything."

That is an awful lot of weight to put on one relationship, and the fewer intimate relationships we enjoy with others, the higher the expectations become for our marriages, and the less willing we are to roll with the imperfections and out-of-synch periods.