Our expectations weren't met, both male and female...in almost all of these sitches.
And you know about "expectations"...her idea of what her life should be and feel like doesn't match reality or realistic for that matter. But it hurts.
... yup, it does, we all feel that way sometimes I think
@robx: we don't appreciate things that are commonplace. What gets more attention is the infrequent & almost non-existent things.
In a completely non-relationship analogy (maybe useful for @Coach+@Greek's young-couples-counseling as a result) -- this is why "the news" is always "bad news."
Why does the Mainstream Media always focus on bad things? goes the meme.
Because no one's going to turn on the television and hear Katie-Dan-Keith-Sean-BillO-Rachel-etc. say, "It's Saturday, October 3, and the sun rose again today; the Earth didn't spin off of its axis; children played outside; and the night fell. And that's the news."
The news is, by definition, new -- exceptional.
Just gets to the point -- we are animals of surprisingly selective attention. This is why camouflage works, among other things.
@Thinker: I have spent years getting criticized for not being "supportive enough", but not once in the M have my W ever said "Thank you for working so hard to earn enough to support our family". I've started to get a bit bitter about it.
I wonder about this in terms of my own (former) sitch. Are we supposed to express appreciation to those with whom we are bound when they are "doing their job"? It's not a loaded question -- don't read it that way, please. I mean, WAW and I agreed that I would be the "woman" and she would be the "man" (in terms of gender roles) because I'm far-and-away the "better" (her words) parent, cook, and housekeeper [and for Chrissakes let's not start that Deida/gender differentiation convo again -- just go with it for now]. So is it reasonable for me to Expect (that word again!) Mrs. SP to say "thank you for doing what you agreed you would do"?
At the risk (to the possible benefit?) of putting our esteemed colleague O'Dog to sleep, I've done some reading of late on the question of Expectations and relationships. And while I think some of this will be of interest only to the Usual Suspects, there's interesting material here for those who want to unpack things a bit more deeply or who, for example, hope to be future couples' counselors at, say, Retro or in their churches and etc.
I found (too late, alas) some interesting research from the early 1980s by Eidelson and Epstein, who developed a test instrument known as the Relationship Beliefs Inventory, which measures what "you" (i.e., "one") believe about relationships -- what they're supposed to look like, be like, etc. They produced some interesting papers on the results of that instrument, along with another called the Marital Adjustment Test, which measures -- no-brainer -- how well you (one) adapts the pre-existing beliefs and expectations to the actual institution.
They then elaborated their research to use the tests on couples going to marriage counseling on the road to divorce.
In this paper, "Unrealistic beliefs of clinical couples: Their relationship to expectations, goals and satisfaction" (American Journal of Family Therapy, vol. 9, no. 4 (Winter 1981)), they found in an analysis of 47 couples seeking therapy in lieu of marriage that the probability of successful therapy (i.e., prevention of divorce) was negatively associated with "couples' unrealistic beliefs, particularly those regarding relationships."
In English, couples bring their preexisting beliefs and expectations to therapy with them -- even though they have empirical evidence that marriage isn't "what they expected" -- and continue to filter therapy through the lens of those unrealistic beliefs.
So whatever benefit the therapy might offer -- for example, a venue for Wife communicating that "I was unhappy you didn't express gratitude for my hard work around the house" (this was 1981, after all) -- if Husband believed that the expression of gratitude was unnecessary because housekeeping is "woman's work," then there was no therapeutic value-added in the expression -- it simply became one more stressor in the outside-the-therapy-room relationship.
Likewise, if one partner (i.e., Smiley's Person for years) denied that therapy was a good idea or could be beneficial, then for that partner it provided no benefits.
So what does that mean here? It means, among other things IMO, that there needs to be clearly defined discussions of couples' expectations before marriage and, probably, that married couples need to make recurring discussions of expectations (since these presumably evolve as one's status, age, living situation evolves) throughout the marriage.
This ought to be common-sense -- we do it in business all the time, don't we? Let's get the team together for a meeting and see where we're at on the McGillicutty Account.
But we seem -- societally, I mean -- to believe someone that marriage is supposed to be "easy" (by which I mean we know that it's hard but because it's "natural" or "ordained by God" or the "natural order of things" or any of the other terms that get thrown around in the marriage-equality debates we ought to be able to "just do it") we seem to assume that it is also self-sustaining.
Unfortunately we tend to un-learn this when it is largely too late.
What's needed, perhaps, is less romance and more board-of-directors meetings....
How do we know when our Expectations are recognized (this is different from being met) by our partner?
We don't. Which is bad. What makes it worse is that our partners in fact don't seem to do a very good job of "seeing" our Expectations.
In re: @Thinker's tiredness and @Greek's evaluation of Mrs. SP (both upthread):
Dana V. Hiller and William W. Philliber, "The Division of Labor in Contemporary Marriage: Expectations, Perceptions and Performance," Social Problems, vol. 33, no. 3 (Feb 1986).
[A bit dated, but the pattern is probably not all that variable.]
Abstract: "In this paper we examine the marital role expectations and perceptions of spouses' role expectations with respect to childcare, housework, money management, and earning income in a sample of 489 married couples. We analyze the degree of agreement between spouses about expectations, accuracy of perceptions about a partner's expectations, the differences between expectations and behaviors, and the effects of expectations and perceptions of expectations on role performance. Results indicate that: (1) marriage partners do not want to give up their own traditional gender roles even though they are willing to participate in the traditional roles of the oppose sex; (2) spouses accurately perceive their partners' expectations about half the time, and husbands are more accurate than wives; (3) spouses think they carry more responsibility for household duties than their partners think they do; (4) perceptions of partner's expectations significantly influence spouses' role performances; and (5) the husband's expectations are powerful predictors of performance, indicating that male prerogatives in marital role bargaining are still quite strong." (Emphasis w/ respect to SP's sitch added)
WAW wants to be Soccer Mom and Hi-Powered Independent Woman; SP wants to be Mr. Mom and Medium-Powered Smiley's Person.
WAW assumes SP doesn't meet her expectations out of spite because he "should know" what they are; SP assumes WAW doesn't care about his expectations, since he has told her what they are and she still doesn't meet them, and so stops mentioning them.
WAW perceives herself "doing more" for the family unit than SP does; SP perceives WAW as doing roughly the same (but in different spheres) as he does.
Apparently that's what's messing everything up, at least according to an interesting ("challenging," "radical") hypothesis by a scholar of marriage and divorce.
In a 2007 paper called "The Origins of Modern Divorce" (Family Process, vol. 46, no.1), Stephanie Coontz writes:
"Contrary to conventional wisdom, the frequency of divorce in modern American society is not entirely unprecedented. Anthropologists report rates of separation and remarriage among many hunting and gathering societies, and in several horticultural groups as well, that are just as high as in modern industrial societies. Malaysia and Indonesia had the highest rates ever recorded in the first half of the 20th century, surpassing the United States' record rates of 1981.
"Nor has divorce always been an arduous process. Among the Shoshone Indians, a wife who wanted a divorce would simply place her husband's possessions outside the dwelling, which belonged to her. Among the Cewa of East Africa, the husband takes his hoe, axe, and sleeping mat when he leaves his wife's village and the divorce is complete.
"...Contrary to later practice, the early Christian church in medieval Europe allowed divorce for several reasons. Some local Church councils even had the equivalent of no-fault divorce, in which a couple was allowed to part after swearing that "communal life has become impossible between us" or that "there is no charity according to God" in the marriage.
"...The origins of our modern divorce patterns lie in the invention of the same values that eventually elevated the marital relationship above all other personal and familial commitments: the concentration of emotion, passion, personal identity, and self-validation in the couple relationship and the attenuation of emotional attachments and obligations beyond the conjugal unit.
"For any particular couple today, the immediate causes of divorce may range from factors as diverse as the personal psychological characteristics of one or both spouses to the stresses of economic hardship and community disintegration.
"But in a larger perspective, both the role of divorce in modern societies and its relatively high occurrence flow from the same development that made good marriages so much more central to people's happiness than through most of the past, and deterioration of a marital relationship so much more traumatic: the very nontraditional idea that marriage should be the most powerful commitment in people's lives."
This is purely rhetorical, but this is what I see most commonly:
I want to be a carpenter. I don't go out with a hammer, and start nailing things. I find someone to model after. I find a guy that's done. I go to carpentry school. I find out about what works and doesn't work.
I want to learn how to play golf. I can go just play, and I'm gonna suck. Or I can go to the driving range, practice my putting, read Golf magazine, test new grips, buy better clubs, etc.
Why would marriage be any different? You enter into this madly in love (or I would hope). You procreate and bring children into this world that are SOLELY relying on you to provide them with the example of the human being they should be.
Yet, we get married on a whim. We completely stop practicing as soon as the vows are said (practicing = dating, communicating, complimenting, understanding) We toss aside our mates blithely, insisting that "children adapt" and we wonder why their relationships continue sour. If purely looking at statistics, we leave a marriage, and fail at 78% of second marriages.
"In surveys conducted by the National Opinion Research Center, researchers found that white female children of divorce were 60 percent more likely to undergo divorce or separation in adulthood than a similar population from intact families. The divorce/separation rate for white male children of divorce was 35 percent higher than for white male children from intact families." (Hispanic rates were slightly better, African-American rates slightly worse)
Regardless your rate, armed with the knowledge that we are placing an incredible burden on our children, and realizing that second attempts at marriage are even LESS successful than firsts - we still dilly-dally, and the instant we've lost that loving feelin', we charge for the door. (apologies to the Righteous Brothers)
So, to I'll attempt to provide some cohesiveness to my ramblings, and basically call in my support for some analysis of relationships, and support SP's diggings. I think, honestly, it's a lack of analysis that causes marriage failures, or at least a complete reliance on "feelings". How can the relationship book industry churn out magic answers year after year after year, and people continue to be completely clueless?
If you even read the Bible, Moses had to ask God for allowance for divorce, and God only allowed it because of the "hardness of their hearts". Several thousand years ago, people were still saying, "I'm right, you're wrong, and if you don't like, there's the door"!
Now, to the one thing I believe most pertinent:
Quote:
...the concentration of emotion, passion, personal identity, and self-validation in the couple relationship and the attenuation of emotional attachments and obligations beyond the conjugal unit.
That, in my opinion, is the single biggest cause of WAS - wrapping up all of your emotional needs and expectations of fulfillment in a single fallible person. Women need women friends - guys need guys' nights out - extended family - a community or church involvement. If your personal needs are met in a variety of involvement, wouldn't that stand to reason that your relational needs are met with your partner? I firmly believe that your spouse can not possibly meet all of your relational, emotional, and situational needs.
Bear with me as I jump ship off, and pardon my self-diagnosed ADD: I sold my company I owned because my WAW wasn't being the parent she should be. I took a job with a $15,000/year pay cut where I got off work at 4pm, and could spend every weekend with my kids. I have never had a closer relationship with my kids, ever. Sure, things are tighter, but I am relaxed, content, mostly stress-free, and my kids and I go camping, fishing, and play football in the back yard. S7 and I build boats, D9 and I go on dates, and so on. This idyllic life didn't happen until after WAW left - and I stepped it up as a parent. The question I ask myself - outside of my marriage, why weren't my kids worth this BEFORE? If I had done this before, would the WAW have happened? In short, is work replacing family?
I know I'm all over the board, but thoughts? If I'm way off-base, then what is the solution?
Her focus is more on "where did the passion go" than "why the prevalance of divorce", but basically she agrees with Coontz, and I tend to think they both have something.
Interestingly, Perel also warns about the dangers of immoderate child-centrism to the romantic and sexual facets of the marriage.
"Show me a completely smooth operation and I'll show you someone who's covering mistakes. Real boats rock." -- Frank Herbert
@JonF: The question I ask myself - outside of my marriage, why weren't my kids worth this BEFORE?
With all due respect, this is a bit of a phony anecdote. That's not a personal attack on @JonF -- you see this kind of thing all over the boards, and it's always phony.
Here's why (move over a bit so O'Dog can roll over and go back to sleep):
In Time Period T, pre-Bomb, you're in Family F -- it's a strategic interaction with H, W, and the 2.5 god-fearin' Amer-ee-kan children. There's a particular dynamic. Particular roles. And joint decision-making.
In Time Period T+1, post-Bomb, post-Separation, you're in Family F' -- it's a strategic interaction of H (or W) and the 2.5 kids. And unitary decision-making.
It shouldn't be a surprise that roles, beliefs, expectations, undertakings can change.
And it's begging the question whether or not that change (i.e., @JonF's career-switch) COULD have happened in T. Mrs. @JonF might have said, "I don't support that" or "I'm too afraid given the economy" or any number of other things. Because before Separation, W had a vote; now she doesn't.
So you're isolating variables there, my man, that may not merit such isolation.
