Unrealistic Relationship Expectations? Learn the Realistic Alternative!

What do you, Cinderella, and Prince Charming have in common, aside from being a great catch professionally and personally?

If you’re like most people, you and these storybook characters share some unrealistic relationship expectations. Fast-forward to five years after the hero and heroine ride off into the sunset, and I bet we’ll see that things are not so great, because these stories are built on unrealistic expectations.

Have you had a professional or personal relationship in which you thought the two of you “got” each other, but now you’re in that familiar place of feeling disappointed and unhappy?

Let’s look at how some common unrealistic expectations can get in the way of having more satisfying professional and personal relationships. I’ll walk you through the professional and personal versions of three of them. Warning: They’re going to sound silly, and though you may not know that you have them, they’re often operating just below the level of your awareness.

Here are three common unrealistic relationship expectations:

• There is happily-ever-after
• I’m 100% responsible for everything that goes well or fails in the things I’m involved in
• You know what I want without being told.

I’ll go into each of these in more detail and then explain the realistic alternative for each.

Unrealistic relationship expectations:

Happily-ever-after

Professional happily-ever-after

A professional version of happily-ever-after is that my good work and pleasant personality ensure that you (boss, assistant, client) will be in a good mood. Or that if I’m in the right job, I will get the results I want, whether that’s closing the deal, winning the account, getting the raise and/or promotion that I’m working toward, or having my ideas implemented.

What about the other person’s personal or professional problems?

What about the economy?

Personal happily-ever-after

Some personal versions of happily-ever-after are that a relationship and/or child will make me happy; that the infatuation of a new relationship will last throughout the life of the relationship; that a healthy relationship shouldn’t take work.

If you don’t know how to be happy on your own, a partner and/or child will not deliver happiness.

The bloom of a new relationship fades in about six months, and then you can start to see what’s underneath.

Is it satisfying?

Do you enjoy your partner?

Do you want to continue getting to know him or her?

The fact that the bloom fades is just reality. Better to know and accept that, than to keep chasing a series of infatuations, always winding up disappointed after about six months!

Which brings us to the fact that healthy relationships don’t just magically happen and sustain themselves; they take work.

Realistic alternative

The realistic alternative is that there is no happily-ever-after.

There will be bumps along the way, professionally and personally—this is the nature of life!—and we have to each take responsibility for our own happiness and how we deal with problems that arise.

Unrealistic relationship expectations:

I’m 100% responsible for whatever goes on, good or bad

Professional 100%

Do you know someone who goes to work looking to feel appreciated, or even loved? Talk about a set-up for disappointment!

If your self-esteem is healthy, it’s not dependent on someone else’s opinion of you or your work, so you go to work to do a good job and earn money—not to be loved and appreciated.

Yes, you hope to win the account, get the raise or promotion, create positive change, whatever, but you’re not on “cloud nine” and taking all the credit if that happens or devastated and shouldering all the blame if it doesn’t.

You feel good about yourself because you did your best in the situation. You understand that you are only responsible for your part, not the success or failure of the whole thing.

Everyone else brings their own strengths and weaknesses to the account meeting, presentation, strategy session, rather than it being all about you, your win or loss, your elation or humiliation.

Personal 100%

There are a number of ways this can play out in the realm of personal relationships.

An only child whose parents made her the center of their world may expect to be the center of her partner’s world and may take it as a humiliation if her partner doesn’t hang on her every word, as her parents did.

Or a child whose needs were ignored by parents becomes an adult who is enraged when the partner isn’t giving him or her enough attention—and no amount is enough.

Or a person may stay in an unsatisfying relationship because he feels 100% responsible for the quality of the relationship and believes that if he just tries harder, he can single-handedly make it better.

But what about the partner’s relationship responsibility?

Realistic alternative

The realistic alternative is that we’re not wonderful and we’re not losers!

We’re all somewhere in-between: different, but not higher or lower, better or worse. Again, we’re all responsible for regulating our self-esteem, rather than looking to other people to make us feel good or bad about ourselves.

Unrealistic relationship expectations:

You know what I want without being told

Professional mind-reading

No one is a mind-reader, even (and especially) people who claim to be!

In the world of work, no one is going to know that you need additional support unless you tell them.

No one is going to magically know your work ethic, deadline, punctuality, and work-life balance expectations unless you voice them.

No one is going to know your timetable for a raise or promotion, including how large a raise and exactly what title, unless you put it out there.

Personal mind-reading

In your personal relationship, your partner isn’t going to just know whether or not you want to have sex or have kids without being told. Just as you’re not going to know where your partner wants to live, how he or she would like to divide the household responsibilities, or how much time together and which activity level is optimal to him or her without being told.

How much time with your respective families?

What type of vacations?

Financial and personal goals and strategies for reaching them?

Work-life balance?

Partners aren’t going to magically know these things and agree on them.

Realistic alternative

The realistic alternative is that we have to use our words and talk with the people in our lives about what’s important to us, in professional and personal settings.

Your colleague/boss/supervisee won’t know what you need and want from them unless you discuss it with them.

Your partner won’t know what’s important to you without the two of you having many discussions.

And the time to have many of those discussions is before you take the job, hire the applicant, or decide to make a life together!

Unrealistic relationship expectations are a big part of professional and personal disappointments. Learning to think realistically and set realistic expectations are part of the foundation of satisfying relationships and a satisfying life. If you have a pattern of relationship disappointments, therapy can help you leave the unrealistic expectations where they belong: in the land of fairytales.

If you’d like to learn more, reach out to me here. I look forward to speaking with you.