This morning I had the pleasure of chatting with a very good friend from Milan. We recounted the latest news and talked about the easy, and not-so-easy, moments of our lives. Among the latter, she mentioned her frustration due to the workload at home: the mental load of having to take care of different household chores, of organizing and doing them. She also expressed her frustration vis-à-vis her husband (who had joined in the conversation!). According to my friend, he did not have any initiative where housework was concerned. This added to her frustration and to the impression of having all the household chores on her shoulders.
I have the feeling that I have already heard about this problem, which you probably have to face on a daily basis… I think that if we gathered statistics on the main causes of husband-wife conflicts, both partners would probably mention this problem as one of their main concerns! I can assure you that both sides take it very badly: one side has unsatisfied expectations (“he should think about it himself, have some initiative”, said my friend, while the other side feels that he/she is doing everything badly and can never satisfy his/her partner (“even when I do what she asks for, she is never satisfied!” complained her husband).
This very same problem comes up at the office: we expect our co-workers to have some initiative as a proof of their being motivated and of caring for their job. We expect our boss to appreciate our good work and to reward us with a promotion and/or a salary raise. In short, both at work and at home we have expectations that usually lead to disappointment.
We are all convinced that we have the right to have expectations: my friend had every right to want to share the household chores with her husband, a manager has the right to expect his co-workers to do a good job and, when I do a good job, I have the right to expect a promotion/salary raise.
Yes, you are right, but…
First of all, I want to stress that, if you have expectations, you have every right to have them!
That being said, I suggest that we spend a moment to look into three universal rules:
1/The gratification that we can draw from an expectation is inversely proportional to the expectation itself: the more we expect someone to do something, the more we risk disappointment both as far as our expectations are concerned and the gratification we may derive from the results achieved. A typical case is my friend’s: her husband does the household chores she asks him to do, but, even though his work is perfect, she is not satisfied. She says: “Yes, but I would like him to take the initiative without my having to ask him to do this and that.”
2/ Here is the second law of expectations: they are self-centered. Indeed, expectations only take a single point of view into account: the point of view of the person who has the expectations! Each of us has different psychological needs, arising from multiple factors: the way we deal with our present situation, our life experience with the other person (has he/she already disappointed our expectations in the past?), the load of frustrations, our main concerns at a given moment…
3/The third and last law of expectations is the following: our emotional level with respect to our expectations and the person who is the object of our expectations is inversely proportional to our capacity to ask for something we need. It often happens that the more we expect something, the less we ask for it. And often, the closer we are to the person from whom we expect something, the less we are willing to ask for it, since “he/she should understand, for goodness’ sake!”
And the solution?
The solution depends on your objective:
1/ If your objective is being right at all costs, you will probably be disappointed more often than not: having the right to expect something does not necessarily mean that you will achieve a satisfactory result.
My friend said: “But I AM RIGHT! Why should I ask? He should understand my needs, I shouldn’t have to ask each time!”
I then asked her two simple questions:
- “If you don’t ask, do you get what you want?” “NO!” was her answer.
- Would you rather be right or obtain the desired results, namely his doing what you ask him to do?
Her answer: I need him to help me, therefore I would rather have him do what I ask him…
2/ Then I asked her another question: in light of your answers, would you rather continue to have expectations that will never be satisfied or else ask for what you need? She answered that she’d rather ask, even though she thought that it was unfair.
3/ The last question I asked her: where would you rather direct your energy, to thinking that you have the right to ask or to asking and being grateful to your husband for perfectly accomplishing what you ask him?
Our need for recognition is enormous and engenders expectations, but these expectations often lead to unhappiness. In my personal and professional life, I have learned with great effort and lots of work that it is much more gratifying to ask and be grateful to a person for doing what I need, rather than spending my energy in often useless and frustrating expectations.
How about you? What is the attitude you prefer? What is your choice? Would you rather be disappointed or ask?