EXPECTATION

Expectation

 

 

I was once again in group this past week and got something from something a patient was saying.  Don’t tell them, but I often feel I get just as much from the experience than I am giving!

            We were talking about character defects and naming ones that stood in our way.  Once patient brought up that he has expectations of others that are unrealistic.  He was talking about how he harbors a resentment toward a family member because they don’t offer to help him in a way that he wants them to.  The group countered and asked if he had ever nicely confronted this family member and asked them for the help that he felt he needed and or deserved.  He stated that he had not and that he felt they should know to offer without him telling them.

            This led me to think not only about expectations but also about communication.  People don’t read minds, they never have and they never will.  If you have a need, want or require help, then ask.  You might be amazed at how people with respond in the positive.  Relationships almost always run more smoothly when you are straight and frank with others about what you need and want.  People want to know how to please others.

            I think back to how I expected life to be and how I used to be disappointed when it didn’t magically settle into a Disney version of reality.  I remember being frustrated with poor Frank when he did not intrinsically know what I wanted all the time, when I had in fact never told him.  I think we do our partners a disservice when we fall back on some “Twilight” version of what relationships are supposed to look like, where partners inherently know us and cater to our whims without a thought.

            The fact is that today, my life looks NOTHING like I thought it was going to.  NOTHING.  I was never going to lose a child.  I was never going to have a husband suffer through cancer.  I was never going to be divorced.  I was never going to have bought a house alone.  I was never going to go to grad school.  I was never going to write.  I was never going to write a book (its coming I promise).  I was never going to go to grad school and change careers and I was never going to be in recovery.  But here I am and I am happier than I would have imagined as well.

            What changed?  I let go of expectations.  I started telling people what I needed when I needed it and stopped thinking they could read my distorted mind.  I stopped thinking ahead and placing my life into boxes of fantasy.  I stopped looking at my life through anyone else’s lens but my own.  I started to embrace the here and now and accepting the perfectly flawed reality of my situation.

            In recovery speak there are two quotes I love that I believe are anonymous (they are attributed to too many people to be anything but):

            “Expectations are resentments waiting to happen.”

            “Hanging onto resentment is like taking rat poison and expecting the other person to die.”

            I think it is important to accept the divine reality of any given moment, not placing any undue weight on outcomes beyond our control.  What is in our control is to tell people what we want and need and let them take it from there.  If they respond in the positive, then great, if they don’t, they are a dry well.  But to create expectations is to set ourselves up for future resentments which take us down a dangerous path in recovery.