oh no, there's nothing wrong with expectations, in a general sense. Insurance agents and brokers make "good money" on the difference between statistical confidence and our emotional confidence. In fact, confident expectations (or trust) is a cornerstone of commerce and society in general. Hope is simply projecting trust into the future.
Many who come here though, are "out of trust". In other words, they and most likely their spouses (no matter which "side" one is on) are desperately dealing with trust issues. In getting our feet back on solid ground, we do need to shut that spout and ground ourselves again. Thus, no expectations. "A beginner's mind". Seeing their spouse as (potentially) a stranger and work on rebuilding that trust on both sides.
That's not necessarily how DB explains it. It ends up being part of the process. And some are never able to get that trust back.
So I'm going to jump a few pages ahead. Let me know if this is too much of a stretch to process.
Humans have a "shame and blame" feature. It's pretty automagic. It's part of what puts us into victim mode. When we feel core shame we have a tendency to go into fight mode, as opposed to flight mode. Not sure why this happens, I guess we feel more cornered because we can't escape our feelings. So if we can't use flight, we use fight.
So extrapolate our loss of trust in another, as a loss of confidence in ourselves, and we fall into shame mode. As we are unbalanced and unsure of how to trust ourselves, we feel shame. And how can we be responsible with making ourselves feel bad? We would never do that to ourselves. So there MUST be a reason, someone else MUST be responsible. We set our targets on those most familiar to us.
OK, now... we're gonna use those concepts in DBing parlance...
Two eyes, two ears... one mouth... translates to communication...
Two fifths observation, two fifths listening... and one fifth talking...
And the ONLY way communication goes from our mouth to their ears is when they are open... but they SEE... unless they are closing their eyes whenever in your presence or the presence of your influence.
I won't have too much fun with that one, but I COULD go on and on with it.
If you WANT to trust your H, which by being here and saying you would like to save your M, then you MUST be willing to trust your H again... of allowing him to try to earn and regain that trust. If you do not begin, by believing that your H CAN change... then this is a futile exercise, right from the get go.
So... your task, if you choose to accept it, is to precisely define the tasks for your H to gain your trust. And then to communicate with him that you do NOT have confident expectations of him, but if he is willing, that he do a few things, consistently over time, to help your confidence increase.
You get to pick your battles here and define the battleground and rules of engagement.
Can we say that H getting S to school, on time and with the appropriate equipment be one of those things to work on?
What else? That he doesn't fall asleep when sitting down to a movie?
What else?
We NEED a method of measurement here. A base line. Without it, then you are a moving target which your H will NEVER be able to prove his intention to.
