I don't have a lot of time to post as it's so late here, but I wanted to stop in and say hello, and thanks for visiting me. I need to catch up on your thread!
For me, having hope means looking into the future (whether an hour forward or years forward) and thinking something might happen, but knowing it might not. Nevertheless, you wish it would happen and are grateful if it does.
Expectations mean looking into the future and wanting something to happen. You want that thing to happen and focus on it such that if it doesn't happen you feel hurt and disappointed. Your happiness is tied to whether or not that thing happens.
Hope means acting positively and in a goal-oriented way, evaluating what you can do and taking steps towards it. Expectations, for me, mean operating from a place of fear in case the thing I want doesn't happen.
I think you would be well within your rights to hope that H comes back, and if he does to expect that he would stop seeing MOW. In this case, I'd see the expectation as a boundary you'd set. So, if H comes back (as you hope), he will do so on the condition that he no longer contacts MOW. Fair enough. When they're ready to come back, I think you have to be clear about the conditions under which they're coming back.....
