May 2, 2011

• {Expectations}

  Sometimes I write because I want to and sometimes I write because I NEED to.
  
  This is one of those times I feel the need to write.
  
  To get some thoughts down on paper. To sort through my emotions and whirling thoughts by forming sentences and putting words down in black and white.
  
  Jeremy and I spent a good part of yesterday going around and around about a subject we have struggled with almost our entire marriage.
  
  I don’t feel like a priority to Jeremy and I think he works too much.
  
  He feels like things are fine and is wary that I am just trying to control his every move and he feels like he can never get things right for me…that I am impossible to please.
  
  So things come to a head. Once again.
  
  We talk and we talk and we get frustrated and we reassure each other of our love and we still don’t get it figured out.
  
  Its been 12 years and we still have this issue, what makes us think that this particular discussion is going to help?
  
  And yet the alternatives to talking about it do not seem good.
  
  Bitterness building up.  Withdrawal happening.  Each going our separate ways because figuring out what works for us as a team seems too hard.
  
  I have been so close to that edge of saying “If you don’t care about this as much as I do…I’m going to quit fighting.  Why should I fight for something when I feel like I am fighting a losing battle?  Alone.”
  
  I stand there on the edge of that precipice.  Looking down in the darkness.  I hang my feet over the edge and I think about jumping.  Or maybe just falling and saying “Oops…that was an accident. I never meant to make that choice. Sorry. Too late to turn back now.  And yes, you’re to blame for the choice you didn’t know I was making.”
  
  But I’ve done that before. I’ve decided to stop feeling. To stop fighting. To stop making things so damn difficult for us.
  
  It back fired. Plain and simple.
  
  You cannot deny what you are feeling.  You have to be true to yourself.  When you stuff emotions, they WILL come out one way or another.  Some time.  Some way. Your options are to either genuinely change in your heart of hearts (with God’s help) or to keep on talking about it and struggling through and hope for a breakthrough. A change.  Hope that something will give this time around.
  
  

  I prayed. In the midst of the discussion.
  
  Not a long prayer. Not a flowery prayer.
  
  More like a “God, help us figure this out” kind of prayer.
  

  
  Sometime around 8 PM Jeremy went to play X-box with Derrick, who was begging for a little Daddy time.
  
  I literally sat down at my computer and Googled “expectations in relationships.”
  
  Because somewhere in the last hour or so before that I had said to Jeremy “If I could just get rid of my expectations, everything would be OK.  If I wouldn’t expect you to spend time with me at certain times, I would just be pleasantly suprised when you do.  How does one get rid of expectations?  Are my expectations unrealistic?”
  
  

  I remembered something I had read in Ann Voskamp’s book about expectations.
  
  When I read it, I had stopped in my tracks and I had went back and re-read and sat and thought about it. Maybe God had me pause at that page, a month ago, so that it would be there to come into my mind yesterday.
  
  From the chapter titled “Go Lower”, Ann writes “My Mama, valley wise and grief traveled, she always said “Expectations kill relationships.”  And I’ve known expectations as a disease, silent killer heaping her burdens on the shoulders of a relationship until a soul bursts a pulmonary and dies.”
  
  “That’s what a child doesn’t have: this whole edifice of expectations.  Without expectations, what can topple the surprising wonder of the moment?”
  
  “Is it only when our lives are emptied that we’re surprised by how truly full our lives were?”
  
  “Instead of filling with expectations, the joy-filled expect nothing – and are filled.  This breath! This oak tree! This daisy! This work!  This sky!  These people!  This place!  This day!  Surprise!”
  
  “Again, always, and always again, eucharisteo (grace, joy and thanksgiving) precedes the miracle.”
  
  

  I sat and thought about this.  What does “euchaisteo” look like in my situation? And do I have enough faith to believe in the miracle?  What am I to be giving thanks and feeling joy about?
  
  Do I thank Him for what I do have in my husband?  For how kind and gentle he is?  That he loves me? That he cares about how I feel?  That he works hard for us?
  
  Does thanksgiving work when all you feel is frustration and sorrow?  Can thanksgiving be forced? Can it be a choice and then the feelings will follow?  Probably so.  I think I have seen that work with my own eyes.
  
  

  So I Googled…
  
  And I found something.
  
  I read with growing interest and a feeling in my heart like maybe the fault wasn’t all Jeremy’s.  Maybe I could take some responsibility here too.
  
  Because this is what it said:
  
  “Needs must be communicated. Expectations are rarely ever communicated. Needs can be cussed and discussed. You must give careful thought to what needs must be fulfilled for you to know you have a healthy love relationship.”
  
  (Jeremy and I had just been talking about this.  How I like to hint around at what I need instead of coming right out and saying it. How he does not intentionally ignore me or try to make me feel like I am not a priority, but how he needs me to tell him what I need.
  
  I struggle with this because if I hint, I can tell myself that maybe he didn’t really “get” what I was saying. It feels very vulnerable to say “I need time with you” because then if he doesn’t give that time, the hurt is double.  Now, not only do I KNOW that he understood my request, but I have to deal with the fact that he seemed to have chosen to ignore it.  A lot of days, I’m not sure that I am up to that.  So instead, we do the dance.  I hint.  I have expectations. He doesn’t know what those are. He lets me down.  I withdraw. He senses that and he feels like my love for him is based on his performance and he feels like a failure.  The dance goes on…sad and slow.)
  
  And then the article went on to say this…
  
  “The number one problem in relationships is undelivered communication. It’s the things we don’t communicate because the last time we did, it caused a confrontation, argument, anger, frustration and we want to avoid these feelings so we stuff them. The next thing you know is, your partner didn’t take out the garbage and you want a divorce and it’s not about the garbage.”
  
  And that’s when I started to wonder if there was someone spying on us and then writing articles about me.
  
  Because I totally do that.  I stuff things. I don’t want to deal with the hard conversations. I try to tell myself it really didn’t bother me.
  
  I think to myself “Last time I tried to talk about that, I made Jeremy feel bad. Or, last time I brought that up, we both just felt frustrated and nothing got solved.”  So I stuff.  And then Jeremy calls me and says “Hey, I’m going to help our pastor for a few minutes, I might be home a little late” and I am right there. On the edge. Angry, upset and frustrated.  Because he’s 10 minutes late?  
  
  I am starting to think my way of dealing with things is not working.
  
  And then it the article said this:
  
  “In my opinion, the number two problem in relationships revolves around unfulfilled expectations.
  So, how do you sidestep the disappointment that always comes from unfulfilled expectations? Who wins the “expectations versus needs” dilemma? Needs, of course! You focus on your needs and make a commitment to never have any undelivered communication about them. Talk about what you need with your partner. Express your needs with love.
  
  Unfulfilled expectations always cause problems.
  
  We often call things that happen that cause disappointment, problems. To avoid disappointment or problems. . . as best you can, have no expectations, good or bad. When you have expectations there are never any surprises because the outcome is almost always predictable.
  Disappointment follows unfulfilled expectations. The predicaments that follow are predictable. If your relationship is not full of surprises, it is most likely very boring and may border on being unhealthy. Having healthy needs is a natural and creative attitude to embrace.
  
  It is important to allow your love partner the freedom to fulfill your needs in their own best way.”
  (If you want to read the complete article, go HERE.)
  
  Its like they ripped a page right out of my book.
  
  The light started to dawn and I realized that maybe God is the one who put that “Hey, Google ‘expectations in relationships’” thought into my mind.
  
  I remembered, too, a chapter in the book “The Surrendered Wife” that I had read a few different times over the years. I went back and read that this morning and now I’ve got the same thought coming from 3 different sources.  Like my friend Cindy says, sometimes we need to get the same info from three different places before it strikes us that maybe we are supposed to be picking up on something here!
  
  I can be a little slow like that.

  
  
  This morning I called Jeremy.
  
  And I apologized.  I apologized for the hurt that I have caused in our marriage by not being straight forward about my needs and by having so many expectations.
  
  I apologized for the hurt that it causes him when I don’t trust his intentions and when he is trying his best to make me a priority and sincerely loves me and I basically don’t even notice what he DOES do because it is not meeting my own preconceived expectations.

  
  
  I still feel all muddled. I am not sure where we go from here.
  
  You fall into certain patterns in a relationship and it is hard to change them.  
  
  What does correcting this in our marriage look like?
  
  I don’t really know.  
  
  We just need to take it one day at a time. One situation at a time.  
  
  And we both need to trust the other one that we will figure it out. Together.
  
  “Expectations kill relationships.”
  
  Somehow I need to remember that.
  
  
  **************************************************
  
  My daily Moment:
  
  Nikki and I visited the “baby store” today.  It is this cool store in our little town that sells only baby things. Nikki had been asking to go.  (Well, really, I found out that when she was asking to go to the “baby store” she was actually talking about the pre-school that is kitty-korner from the ACTUAL baby store, but when I told her that you can only go there if your Mom pays for you to go, she was fine with going to the “Coo Baby” store with me.)
  
  We walked around together. We touched things.  We oohed and ahhed over the cuteness and the softness of things.
  
  She got a book and went and sat on a little chair to look at it. I picked up one book and then another and leafed through them.
  
  Mostly board books.  Books you would look at with a baby or a small child.
  
  The one titled “Mommy, do you love me?” caught my eye.
  
  I paged through it.  Faster at first, then more slowly.
  
  I read the words on the pages and looked at the faces of the little babies pictured on each page.
  
  It starts out “Mommy, I’ve been thinking…”
  
  “When I’m hungry, will you feed me?”
  
  another page:
  
  “When I’m afraid, will you comfort me?”
  
  next one…
  
  “When I’m sad, will you make me laugh?”
  
  and another…
  
  “When I’m tired, will you rock me to sleep?”
  
  “When I’m lonely, will you be my friend?”
  
  And it struck me…standing there looking at that book.
  
  We don’t change much, do we?
  
  This book is for babies, but it could be for me.
  
  I’m 32 and I’m still asking the same questions.
  
  Of my husband.  Of God.
  
  Can I trust you?  Will you be there for me?  
  
  Will you meet my needs?  Or will you run when things get difficult?
  
  We ask that question in a 1,000 different ways throughout our lives.  We try to camoflague it in much more sophisticated sounding ways.
  
  But that’s all we really want to know.
  
  When I’m _____________, will you ______________?
  
  Can I count on you?
  
  And its like God just spoke to me there and said “I will, baby.  I will be there. I will comfort you. I will wipe your tears.”
  
  “Other people may let you down.  Your husband may not always know what you want or what you need.  He may mess up even when you do clearly communicate.  But I won’t. You can rest in me. When people let you down, I’m still here.”
  
  “You can ask the questions, my child, but I already know the answers.  I’m not going anywhere.”
  
  That was my Moment today and I’m clinging to it for dear life.

  • 3:23 pm
  • 17 Comments