How Not to Screw Up Yourself, Others, and Your Children.
How Expectations & Lack of Boundaries Screw up Relationships.
“You cannot have expectations of others without their agreement.” — A Marriage and Family Therapist, whose name rhymes with techy.
People with expectations live in a fantasy world created by their busy-body, chattering thoughts — oh, the possibilities for my life, their mind says. In their brain theater, they concoct edicts, beliefs, values, and ideas that may later turn into expectations for themselves and others they know: “Wouldn’t it be nice to have/get/receive/achieve (fill in the blank with your favorite goals, hopes, and desires)?” We create expectations for ourselves, our friends, family, co-workers, strangers, posters on social media, and everywhere else, making ourselves and everyone else miserable.
Expectations of yourself.
It’s okay (sort of) to have expectations of yourself, but they must be reasonable and flexible. My voice might tell me it’d be best to lose 20 pounds, but I will be kind and gentle with myself if I don’t. The inner voice known as the judge and taskmaster is unlike the benevolent parent voice we should listen to. Instead, it is a demanding inner bully that too many mistake for the voice of themself, and it is not. It is a toxic and harmful manifestation of your upbringing, voices from your past, the ego, and your toxic shame from childhood trauma, and with an obnoxious persistence, judges and scrutinizes your daily deeds and performance. It hammers you constantly about doing this, finishing that, you failed at this, you’re not measuring up to what your family wanted, what you promised yourself, you don’t look the way you should, and it reminds you in constant comparisons to others where you are falling short.
By the way, the more you listen to it and agree with it, the louder it gets. I have learned to call mine out and run it off into the back of my brain, where it belongs. I rarely hear it anymore.
I had a client who was a physician and was hellbent on making as much money as he could in a short period. For example, he told himself he had to make $500k in six months. He did shift work, so he had to do three times as many shifts as the average doctor in his group. He worked constantly, needless to say, with a wife and three very small children at home, holding up the home front. His goals involved paying off his enormous student debt in one year, saving one million dollars in 18 months, and getting himself to this place in his mind where he felt financially safe. He had some of the loftiest expectations of himself I have ever seen.
About a year into his super-money plan, he had an affair with someone at work, his wife found out, and they came to me. This was predictable, I said. He was out of balance, not being true to himself or his family, and his shadow part of his personality decided to grab some fun come hell or high water, but self-destructively, of course. He was contrite and agreed to change his life by promising to cut back to a regular schedule, to readjust his goals, and said he would do anything to save his family. But when push came to shove, like an alcoholic wanting one more drink, he would say, “If I can just do one other shift, we could do x. Just one more shift a week for six months.” When his wife balked, he reminded her of her expensive lifestyle to shame her. I have never seen anything like it. When I told him he was an addict and couldn’t quit his addiction to working and making money, he fired me. The truth hurts, yes, but when an addict is hell-bent on continuing their addiction, they will knock any obstacles out of their way. He ended up ghosting me rather than having a conversation about it, and if that marriage makes it, I will be astonished. I will also be surprised if he ever slows down.
When someone says they are behind in their goals, not where they wanted to be in life, that life is passing them by, or that it didn’t turn out the way they wanted, I know they are listening to what their inner judge and taskmaster have been saying to them. It’s pretty devastating for many who have tried to follow that voice their whole life through, only to find it was from the dark side all along, and meant to stop them from being powerful, to make them miserable, and destroy their lives. Our authentic voice has our best interest at heart, and lovingly and compassionately guides us to our purpose. Our healthy voice would never slave drive us into achievement and unhealthy behaviors.
I suggest that people with high expectations of themselves be flexible and humane in what they hope to achieve. Beating yourself up and telling yourself you’re a failure because you don’t hit every bar or goal when you said you would, or at all, is a terrible way to live. We all must be able to turn and go with life’s unexpected events, twists, and turns if we want to be content. Our energy levels differ from hour to hour; we need to listen to what our body and mind can do at any given time, and tweak accordingly.
Sometimes, what we want for ourselves does not match what the universe has in mind. You’ll know it because the doors you want to open will not open, no matter how hard you try. Be open to different paths as they come along; sometimes, they are better than the ones you chose for yourself.
Expectations of others
The problem in relationships is that some of these fantasies of what is possible require another person to do the things the other imagines — whether for them, with them, or to them. “Wouldn’t it be nice if my spouse were a gourmet cook and a wild horse in the bedroom wearing a French maid’s outfit, while homeschooling the children and making a six-figure income,” they might say to themselves. “Or I need sex one to two times a day, every day, for life. If my partner doesn’t meet my expectations, it’s a deal-breaker!” The sky is the limit of what a person’s brain can imagine for themselves.
I sometimes fantasize about owning an all-expenses-paid fancy yacht and sailing through warm tropical climates with the breeze blowing through my hair. Still, at least I am based in reality enough to know that it is a pleasant dream, and life will probably not bring me that this time. I do not expect my husband or myself to get that for me. I don’t feel like a failure because of this, I accept it, and feel just fine with what I have.
On a more realistic note, I love and appreciate romance, but my husband doesn’t know how to do that. I wish he did, we have talked about it extensively, but I have concluded that I cannot expect it, and must learn to live without it and be content. As I have matured and learned all I can about being healthy in relationships over the years, I have learned to focus on what he can give, not what he can’t. No one person can meet every need on our list, and if we choose monogamy, we have to accept who they are. Yet, I have had numerous clients who divorce their spouses over something like this, or other issues that aren’t necessarily toxic, but something their brain has told them they must have or else.
You can put expectations on people all day long, but they owe you zero. No one is obligated to do anything for you unless they want to, and what they want is just as important as what you want. We cannot unilaterally put expectations on our spouse or anyone because it doesn’t work and makes others miserable. We may request that they do something if it’s reasonable, and we hope they agree. If they do, then you may now have an expectation. Otherwise, you must learn to care for yourself when your needs are unmet. The idea of codependence is that people put their well-being in others’ hands and tell themselves they cannot be happy unless the person does x, y, or z. It is a fool’s game to make your contentment dependent on what another does or doesn’t do. You and you alone are responsible for your peace and contentment.
Expectations in marriage crises.
A marriage crisis is a unique and crazy phenomenon. In it, the person thinking of leaving, the Decider, is about to touch the marital detonator button at any moment, and the situation is volatile and fragile. The person leaning into the marriage (the Leaning-in partner) and wanting to save it often expects to be treated fairly and accommodated equally as their leaning-out partner, the Decider and protests loudly when I explain that right now, until the situation is stabilized, we must focus on what the Decider needs and wants exclusively.
The thinking behind this is that we want the Decider to get space and whatever else they need in the short term so their nervous system can calm down and we can eventually have adult conversations and decide what to do next. The leaning-in partner often thinks it unfair that they have to do most of the suffering and sacrifice, and it is. The problem is, I have just learned over time of managing marital crises that doing it this way is the only thing that slows down the divorce decision-making process, and may offer a chance at getting the Decider to turn back around and want to work on the marriage. Forcing your demands on someone who is about to divorce you is counterproductive and bad timing, to say the least.
“I will not tolerate not getting to tell Royce what changes I want him to make,” said Libra, who is on the brink of getting divorced from her husband of 10 years. Why does he get to tell me all the changes I have to make, but I don’t get to do the same?”
“Because you are in a marriage crisis,” I say. “He is not open right now, and your demands will weigh against you. He has zero motivation to work on the marriage, and you must give him space while working on yourself. If we can get him to consider being open again, you will get to make your requests, but this is not the time.”
Libra wanted and demanded affection and attention; she wanted more focus on the relationship, but like most Deciders, that was the last thing Royce felt like giving. Wake up; sometimes, in marriage, one person has to do all the heavy lifting.
The expectation of equality in marriage crises or even solid marriages is a pipe dream, anyway. Just focus on what you can do to enhance your spouse’s life, and stop weighing things on a scale to ensure they’re fair. If you’re sitting around seething that your spouse doesn’t treat you like their pet cat, you are putting expectations on them without their knowledge, which is immature. Ask them for more of what you want or need, and you will either get it or not. If it has to do with affection, ask yourself what you are doing that would make them think of being affectionate with you. I can’t count the times prickly human porcupines whose hobby is criticizing their spouse gripe about not getting warmth or regular cuddly coos from their partner. Really? Make yourself loveable, why don’t ya?
The crux of expectations.
Having an expectation is a one-person contract you make with yourself. The bottom line is that it’s a “I must have this or I will be discontent” stance that wrecks lives and relationships. What my dad expected of my mother was a form of indentured slavery, including outrageous sexual demands. When I asked her how she could cow-tow to such an ass she told me, “If you don’t give a man what he wants, he’ll find someone who will.” Utterly dependent on a man, this stance led her to spend her life jumping around trying to please my dad while being miserable herself, and throwing her own kids under the bus to keep doing it. Whatever she did didn’t matter much; he spoke terribly about her and cheated on her with abandon, but they did stay married for 62 miserable years, which is how I know that just because a couple has been married a long time says nothing about whether it was a happy marriage or not. It is a good example of how good a plan it is to race around trying to please others, expecting to get something in return. Believe me, giving someone your all and trying to check off all the boxes on their want list doesn’t engender loyalty or indebtedness, just contempt.
No one can expect anything from you without your permission. And whatever expectations you have of others are meaningless without their agreement. Unilateral expectations toward another reveal a sense of entitlement, rigidity, control, immaturity, and ridiculousness. Yes, expectors are dysfunctional as all get out, don’t forget that. We will have an interesting conversation when the subject comes up in the therapy room. I remember many a facial expression immediately after delivering the news that their expressed or unexpressed expectation of their spouse was of no value unless they had mutual agreement. The best way to get what you want or need from someone else is to give them what they want and need with a warm and generous heart. Is it any surprise that when you have two healthy individuals who put a lot into their relationship, they will each get a lot back in return?
Destroying children with expectations.
It is usual and acceptable for parents to have reasonable expectations of their children and set limits, mostly around health, safety, and learning to get along with others. Still, most parents don’t know what reasonable expectations are. So they blow it, creating a miserable, traumatized child who soon concludes there is something wrong with them because they can’t meet their family’s expectations of them. This is how most of us get initially traumatized in childhood.
I once had a couple come in to talk about their only child, a son, named Garrison. They were having a hard time with him because he was balking during some of his sports and extracurricular activities, and resisting doing them, telling them he just wanted to drop out altogether. They were unsure of how to handle it.
We talked for a while, and then, the bottom line problem appeared: “We have told Garrison that if he doesn’t do his best in his activities, he will be punished at home. We expect him always to do his best, and he knows this.”
When I asked for an example, they said that he was a third baseman on his baseball team, and they saw him staring off into space and not paying attention. So when they got home, they took his favorite video game away and severely limited his device screen time.
“Man,” I said, “That’s brutal. It’s no wonder he wants to drop out of sports. You’ve taken the fun out of it for him. I’d drop out, too, if I thought I was being judged and graded like that and stood to be punished like that. Sports are supposed to be fun, Mom and Dad, and you’ve removed any chance of that.”
Perfection is not reachable by anyone, and no human can do the absolute highest of what they’re capable of every day, or even most days. We have to understand that expecting our children to be excellent every day, on a regular basis, will have negative consequences, and it will be damaging beyond our comprehension. I prefer parents not to have a measuring bar, and instead encourage and nurture them to enjoy life and explore who they are. Instead of whether your child is doing all they can to be the best at whatever you want them to be good at, which injures them emotionally, let them turn their focus to whatever their curiosity leads them to, and encourage them to dive into those things. In any given day, we need to pay attention to ourselves and conclude when we have had enough for the hour, the day, the week, or the month.
When I was a kid, the expectations of children were to be seen and not heard, to act like adults in public, meaning no nonsense, to respect your elders, do what you’re told, and to say “Yes, sir,” and “Yes, ma’am.” Children of the South who didn’t say “Yes, sir,” and “Yes, ma’am,” were scolded and punished and considered to be ill-bred, poorly raised, worthless, trash. We weren’t allowed to leave the dinner table without permission, and were trained like monkeys to follow what our father expected. At my house, when you broke a rule, you were whipped on your bare legs with a belt. There were very few clear limits. The main criteria was, if you pissed dad off for any reason, you’d get the belt. Some days he was more tolerant than others, but we lived in fear of him 100 percent of the time.
A child’s behavior is like that of a wild animal by nature. Trying to domesticate them and get them to conform and act like adult children when their brains are wired for them to be impulsive, curious, explorers is an exercise in frustration. Children get scolded and reprimanded for being themselves, so they soon learn what their family and culture expect them and rightly decide they cannot measure up, and that what they are is unacceptable. The more rigid and rule-bound parents are, the more a child will be traumatized. Once toxic shame enters the picture, and the child decides they aren’t good enough for the world’s expectations, most children will surrender to it and shift into a conforming song and dance for the rest of their lives. What I mean by that is, they stop being themselves as they were before, their authentic, childlike state will be cast aside, and they will become a version of what their family and culture expect them to be. This new persona is phony and an act, but it is what a child decides they need to do to fit in and be accepted. Children’s lives will never be the same when that decision is made.
If you have seen the perfectionists, pleasers, overachievers, martyrs, caretakers, and sand, I am sure you have them; these are the most common personas I see. For all of us who have taken some or all of those on, they are an exhausting, draining adaptation designed to be accepted and meet others’ expectations. None of our children will ever be truly at peace until they dismantle these false personas; very few ever do. As a recovering pleaser, who threw herself under the bus for many years so others could be happy, and who felt she wasn’t smart enough to go to graduate school, so she didn’t until she started unraveling the false persona in her 40s, I understand the dynamic well.
These days, I explain to parents who each want to be a loving parent, but unwittingly fall short, that a family is like a grove of trees. Mom is a pine, Dad is a magnolia, the first child is an oak, and the second child is a crepe myrtle. Each one requires completely different care. A parent’s job is to figure out what kind of tree their child is and nurture it to be who they were born to be. Try to stop that, and your child will suffer the rest of their life.
As I have written many times, my family valued beauty, being thin, and having prominent and influential friends. I would get a standing ovation from them when I looked my best and hung around with millionaires, billionaires, high-ranking politicians, doctors, lawyers, and Indian chiefs. If I veered off path, I would experience coldness, rejection, and sometimes, estrangement. Like the trained monkey I mentioned before, I caught on to what was expected early on and went along with it until I was about 42, then realized what I was doing and how miserable it was making me, and began to shed the persona and be true to myself.
I set healthy boundaries with my family and started developing healthy relationships with all sorts of people who liked me as is. My family members, mostly my siblings, washed their hands of me. In retrospect, I was a blaring example of eschewing their shallowness, vanity, and egomaniac ways, and looking at me go the other way reminded them of their choices. There was a fork in the road for me and them, and I could continue conforming or finally be true to myself, and I took the latter. They could have accepted my change and growth, but chose not to.
I work only with adults, and I can’t tell you how difficult it is for adult children to consider the possibility of breaking out of their conformity and the continuing expectations of their family, to set appropriate boundaries and live true to themselves. For most, it is frightening to consider, and they fear losing their family’s love, acceptance, and approval, as if the only reason they are loved and approved of is conditional on being the type of tree their family wants them to be. In a healthy family, unconditional love is freely offered and negative judgment is nowhere to be found as a young adult finds their way in the world, tastes life, and figures out what fits their personality and nature.
Some clients of young adults often work feverishly to get their children into fancy universities as if their lives depended on it. They pull strings, call in favors, and try to orchestrate a good-enough future with the positive outcome their mind has imagined must take place. To let things unfold organically and let the child end up where they end up is unthinkable and a disregard of parental duty in their minds. However, the underlying message that the child sees and understands is that you are not free to be a crepe myrtle, and only being the type of tree your parent thinks is good enough is acceptable. Arrogant and grandiose parents make clear that only specific outcomes are good enough or will be accepted. The toxic parent now casts the die. Follow my vision for how to live your life, forget your own feelings, needs, and wants, follow the bigger picture I have for you, or face negative scrutiny, judgment, and the feeling from your parent that you didn’t measure up.
I have friends who post passive-aggressive junk online about how sad they are that person x can’t, or more likely won’t, be the person they need them to be. They are often about their adult children who won’t be in their lives as much as they want, probably for good reason. They lament their plight of loving but not being loved or accepted in return. I’d bet you almost anything these people had and still have expectations, probably unhealthy ones, of those people the others chose not to meet. The mere fact that the person is posting the passive-aggressive memes tells me they are dysfunctional — yes, they play victim, yes, they go public with their victimhood, and yes, they are being manipulative and trying to cause someone to feel guilty about setting a healthy boundary for themselves. The more they do it, the more the person reading it will feel compelled to stay away. Why people do it when it never works is a mystery to me, but I do see their friends rush to support them, so maybe that’s what it is.
The only healthy way of being is to let people be who they are, live as they desire, and set their own boundaries of personal space, career, and marriage choice. I do understand that some people will just never be able to see that their expectations, control, judgment, harsh reactions, and manipulation are what they are, toxic. Most tell me they are being misunderstood, mischaracterized, and just trying to love or help someone who chooses to reject their help. (Mind you, the assistance was not requested). My response is, at least try to see where your actions may be unwelcomed by others and accept it, and learn to live with the boundaries others set, whether you agree with them or not, and when doing that, don’t judge the person for it. Let people be who and what they are, live their own lives, and accept their conditions and boundaries, as it is the only way to be healthy.
The audacity of trying to inflict your beliefs, values, and fantasies on others.
Expectations are the most ridiculous things; most everyone hates them, yet so many people are filled with them. The bad news is that it is arrogant and immature to put expectations on other adults (18 or over) without their agreement. If you set expectations, you are trying to control them, so take a look in the mirror. Is it your way or the highway? Really? Must you win the power struggle and control others for your benefit? Or can you bend, flex, and empathize with how your partner, friend, child, sibling, co-worker, or parent chooses to live their life? Remember, they are a different type of tree than you are. Not everyone thrives in the situation you would. You can’t possibly know what’s best for anyone else.
The only way for anyone to live is authentically, as we are, and let others do the same. Leave other adults alone, and work on getting functional yourself. Once you perfect that, you can speak with authority, but not to control others. If you need or want something from someone, you may make a request. They have the right to deny the request with no negative repercussions. Learn to accept boundaries, back off, stop punishing people for boundary setting, settle down, and go about your business, not other people’s business.
If you are a person loaded with expectations and control issues, why not get some trauma therapy? It will make a huge difference, and offer relief from your obsession with looking outward at what others are doing, or what they might do for you, rather than inward, at yourself. Without their agreement, expecting anything from any adult, including your children, is never okay. Human beings thrive in freedom. Got it?
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If you want a signed book delivered straight from Becky, visit her website store here. Becky Whetstone, Ph.D., is a licensed Marriage and Family Therapist in Arkansas and Texas* and is known as America’s Marriage Crisis Manager®.
She is a former features writer and columnist for the San Antonio Express-News and is the author of “I (Think) I Want Out: What To Do When One Of You Wants Out,” published by HCI Books, distributed by Simon and Schuster.
She has worked with thousands of couples to save their marriages. She can work with you, too, as a life coach — she is a licensed therapist in Texas and Arkansas. She also has a YouTube Channel called Marriage Crisis Manager where she talks about relationships. She has a telehealth private practice as a therapist and life coach via Zoom.
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