PH
When a relationship is shifting from casual to serious, there comes a moment when itās necessary to discuss each personās expectations for the future. Expectations, as I define them, are the aspects of your future you strongly believe will happen (as opposed to dreams, which may or may not come true).
Expectations are reflections of your closely-held beliefs about where your life is going. Expectations, when not met, can cause a grief that often surpasses the grief of not achieving a dream. Because they are so importantāand can be so painful when not metāevery couple should get to know each otherās expectations before becoming completely committed.
The following four tips can help you get the conversation startedāor get it back on track if you stumble upon something unexpectedā¦
1. Ask Open-Ended Questions.
Many couples who are getting serious have discussed the nut-and-bolts of their future āwhere they want to live, whether or not they want to have kidsābut just as many gloss over the more subtle expectations embedded in these topics. To get at these more subtle expectations, ask open-ended questions, such as:
How would you want to raise your kid?How would you expect us to handle our finances?How do you want me to support you when youāre going through a hard time?
When you first ask these questions to your partner, youāll likely get a resounding āHuh?ā Thatās because itās often weird at first. But not only is weird healthy, weird is what youāre going for! Weird means youāre covering territory you havenāt before.
And the beauty of weird conversations is: your partner really doesnāt know what the ārightā answer is. They wonāt know what you want to hear, so theyāll have no choice but to speak their truth.
2. Put a Weight on It.
Once you start asking open-ended questions, youāll discover you and your partner have some differing expectations about the future. Hopefully the conversation wonāt unearth polar opposite opinions, but some variance is inevitable. So what should you do if your partner expects something from the future you disagree with?
Put a weight on it.
Identify how much an expectation really matters to you (and to them). Rate on a scale of 1-10 how much you really care that this expectation works out the way you envisionedā1 meaning you actually donāt care much at all, and 10 meaning itās of essential importance to you. Have your partner do the same. Then share your ratings and discuss.
Youāll find that itās actually pretty rare for both partners to find the same expectation essentially important. Consider, for example, a boyfriendās expectation that his girlfriend will quit her job after they get married, while sheād rather keep working. He may only rate this a 6 in importance because he realizes this expectation is based on his parentās example more than anything else. She may rate it a 10 because she considers her work an essential part of her identity.
By putting a weight on it, theyāve uncovered that this issue matters to her much more than it does to him, perhaps paving the way to allow her vision to take precedence.
3. Find the Overlap.
If you find that you both really do care strongly about a certain expectation, itās time to āfind the overlap.ā This means shelving the aspects about which you disagree for the moment and building upon the aspects about which you do agree. Thereās almost always some aspect of an issue that two people can agree on.
Letās say a couple is planning a wedding. He has always expected to have a rustic wedding while she has always envisioned an elegant affair. While these expectations may seem contradictory at first, if they dig in, thereās surely something they can find in common.
Maybe he pictures ārusticā to mean outside and she can see āsimple eleganceā in a starry sky. The couple has just stumbled upon the perfect Night Under the Stars themeā¦ by finding the overlap.
4. Shift to Dreams.
If you find yourselves at a major standstill with regard to expectations, shift the conversation to dreams. Expectations are about what you assume will happen in the future, but dreams are about what you would secretly love to have happen in the future.
Shifting the focus to dreams can provide great perspective: If youāve both always had a dream of sailing all seven seas, for example, and can recognize the deep emotional bond you share over this dream, it doesn't matter as much whoās expected to do the dishes, does it?
Try out these simple tips and youāll find that the conversations that flow from them are always valuable. You may discover something you definitely need to know before getting in too deep. Or youāll find more evidence that youāre a perfect fit!
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