The DHX: The Doughtie Houses Exchange

By Katherine Shirek Doughtie

There’s a word that popped out at me in one of the comments recently, and I realized that I had not yet shared one of my favorite phrases with this community:

Expectations are premeditated resentments.

When I first heard this phrase it immediately struck home. Most problems within relationships, I firmly believe, arise out of unmet expectations. One person has needs, hopes, fears and expects that the other person will be able to fix some of them. The other person, being human, may or may not be able to do that. Conflict ensues. We’ve all been there.

Expectations work the other way too. How many times have we waited for a friend at Starbucks, thinking “I knew Mary would be late. She’s always late. She does it just because she doesn’t value my time as much as her own…” And before you know it, this extrapolation you’ve made is serving to make you angry about something that doesn’t even exist.

This idea of “premeditated resentments” really nails the problem. It’s not just that some expectations are problematic. All expectations are resentments waiting to happen. The second you decide that the other person is going to act in a certain way, you are opening yourself up to disappointment and anger, based on nothing but your own pre-conceived construct.

Some of these expectations are more obvious than others. When I meet a guy and concoct scenarios that include him being the one factor that is going to make me happy for the rest of my life, I’m setting myself up for some course corrections down the road. This one is so seventh grade it makes me throw up a little bit in my mouth, but I still find myself doing it on a regular basis. Luckily — as far as expectations go — it’s big, stupid and lumbering, so it’s not that hard to shoot it down.

But what about little insidious expectations, like “well, since we slept together last night, of course he’s going to call me today.” That seems so sweet and innocuous, right? I can hear myself saying “that’s not an expectation, Kathy, that’s just common courtesy, and if he doesn’t call then maybe I didn’t read the situation right, maybe he doesn’t like me, what if I was too fat, what if he is waiting to dump me but doesn’t know how, that bastard, he used me and then left me, I’m going to show him…” and I am so off to the races with all the negativity and fear.

The problem occurs because we can’t control anything in this life and it makes us crazy. We want to know everything and we desperately want to control everything because, in truth, it’s all way too big and overwhelming for us to deal with in even a really small way. Jill hoards earthquake supplies. I clean my house religiously every Saturday. We do all these rituals to give ourselves a semblance of safety and security. And our little expectations are part of that. We really desperately want to know what the future holds, so we spin out stories like rope bridges across the roaring chasms. We may not have to use them, but just knowing they’re there gives us a sense that tomorrow may be survivable.

I think we all walk around fingering our negative fears like little worry beads, hoping that by repeating our litanies we can avoid getting clobbered by the unexpected. But here’s what really happens with those worry beads: 1) If the bad stuff I am so sure is going to happen happens I get to be right, woo hoo, 2) if the bad stuff doesn’t happen I get to be slightly surprised and relieved (freeing myself to worry about something else bad that could happen), and 3) either way I’m a walking mass of worry and negativity. In so many ways this is just so much worse than letting the bad shit happen when it will and dealing with it.

I’ve been the victim of my mother’s expectations my whole life. One mother’s day I had taken her out to brunch and given her some flowers and she lambasted me the next day because I hadn’t given her candy as well. She recently Fed Ex’d an expensive piece of her own jewelry as a present to a friend on the east coast who missed the delivery guy twice in a row. My mom read this as a rejection of her generosity and friendship, and demanded she return the ring. She had set up so many assumptions about the reasons her friend missed the delivery, that the friendship has seriously deteriorated since. (I think the current story about the “refusal of the ring” is that the friend’s new husband has turned her against my mom.)

But we wonder about other people’s motivations a lot. It’s only human. Especially when the other person is just plain acting off the wall, or incomprehensibly mean. I’m not saying that people can’t be evil or cruel; we all know that we can be. I also know that when people have thought me to be behaving in a malicious fashion, my intent was usually radically different from what they thought. I may have said something that hurt them deeply… but didn’t mean it in the least. I was completely guilty of being a lameass who said something poorly or teased inappropriately, but I wasn’t in any intending to hurt in the way I ended up hurting.

So, without spinning out scenarios, how do we know what the other person is feeling/saying/doing?

First, I suggest, consider asking them. I know this is hard but reality is just so much easier than being all mental about the situation. If you do have the courage (or the relationship in place) to be able to talk, I suggest phrasing your concern as an “I message” rather than an accusation. The “I message” is what your feelings are when this thing happens, stated as a flat, non-accusatory statement. A good “I message” would be: “I feel invisible when you drop off the kids and don’t say hi.” (Not: “I feel like you’re an asshole when you don’t have the common courtesy to say hi like a normal human being.”)

Second, consider how you would act in the situation and what your life is like. That’s a good jumping off point for understanding what other people’s lives are like. My life, I know, is really a series of point-to-point maneuvers trying to get the people in my life taken care of and my bills paid, interspersed with endless loads of laundry. That, plus enough personal maintenance (like exercise and yoga) to keep from losing my marbles, is how I spend my time.

I do not spend time thinking about how to make other people miserable, or calculating how my actions will hurt them, or planning on not being around for Fed Ex deliveries so I can reject my friends’ presents. I live my life kind of bumbling around, looking forward to crawling into bed with a book at the end of each day. I do my best. And, by extrapolation, I have to assume that other people are just doing their best as well.

Third, consider compassion.

Fourth, take care of yourself until you feel good enough to just let it go.

Expectations are premeditated resentments.

Whenever we project into the future, we’re almost certainly bound to be wrong. Every time I expect some behavior from someone else, I’m opening myself up to some kind of disappointment. Every time I figure out the next step, I’m limiting my enjoyment of the unfolding of the mystery. Being bound by time and space, we can’t really see into the future … but we fake it anyway by conocting our stories. And, in so many ways, that just ends up biting us in the ass.

We have to accept the possibility that life will be gentler than our worst fears. So my goal for today is to not put forth any expectation into the future. I am not going to open myself up to all the resentments that will invariably come when I predict incorrectly. Instead I will open myself up to the unknown. I will do my best to greet the future with open arms, a receptive heart and a mind that does not try to assuage its fear by figuring out the structure of the story in advance.