How To Realistically Assess Romantic Expectations
Q. Can you share your thoughts on how women can objectively assess if the expectations they have in a relationship is realistic or too high? Often women find themselves in a situation where they start wondering whether they are being clingy and needy or whether the man they are dating is just emotionally unavailable.
A. If only there were a manual that could tell us step-by-step how to manage romantic relationships effectively. Since there isn’t one, we need to depend on ourselves and the advice of trusted others. Nowhere is this wisdom more needed than in helping us figure out whether we’re expecting too much or little from a romantic partner.
Here are some ideas on how to gauge what’s going on.
Learn from experience
In order to get an idea of what realistic expectations are, you’ll want to examine and reflect on your previous relationships.
- Did you feel that your needs were met well or poorly?
- Did there seem to be a balance between meeting your needs and those of your partner?
- What kinds of patterns regarding getting needs met have you established over the course of dating or mating?
By learning from experience, I don’t mean that if you had problems when you were too laid back about asking for your needs to be met in a previous relationship, that you should go to the opposite extreme now and insist that your partner meet every desire you have, no questions asked.
Or that if you were seen as pushy and controlling, to now make no demands on your partner. Try to be objective when you look back over your romances and understand what went on in terms of finding a balance between keeping two people happy most of the time.
Seek feedback from friends
Friends and family can be a wonderful assessment tool, but only if they are mentally healthy and relatively unbiased and objective. If you ask a friend who hates to be alone whether or not you have realistic expectations, this person might point out that your partner doesn’t make enough time for you.
Or if you ask your sister who has vowed never to marry because she likes doing things her way, her opinion might be slanted toward thinking your partner wants to spend too much time with you.
Remember that whoever you ask is likely to see your relationship through the lens of their relationships and expectations. Factor that in when you’re getting their opinions. If you have friends who can be unbiased about your relationships, listen closely to what they have to say, especially if it’s advice they’ve given you before, such as that you need to give a partner space or, alternately, that you tend to be a pushover and not ask for enough.
Read books about healthy relationships
Self-help books can be enormously helpful when you’re trying to figure out whether your expectations are realistic. This is true, in part, because they are written by experts who can be objective about finding a healthy balance of needs in a relationship. They also often contain vignettes illustrating particular situations in which you might recognize yourself. You might read about someone who expects a partner to meet his or her every emotional need and see yourself.
Or, you might read about someone who is overly focused on a partner and ignores his or her own desire and have an ah-ha realization that you are the same way.
Another reason that these books are helpful is that they tell you how to determine how emotionally and psychologically healthy you are as a person. Read them with an open mind and without self-judgment. If you’ve never been in an emotionally healthy relationship or seen one modeled, including regarding your parents, you may have no clue what is appropriate and what isn’t. Reading about what is healthy will help you set goals to be a better partner for whomever you are with.
Be honest with yourself
Romantic relationships can help us take an unflinching look at ourselves to appreciate our strengths and identify our challenges. Always view yourself without criticism and with self-compassion and try to gain perspective by imagining what other people would say about your ability to be a healthy partner in a relationship.
If you decide that you are awfully clingy, explore how you might have learned to be this way so that you understand the roots of this behavior. If you recognize that you’re highly ambivalent about intimacy and tend to pick unavailable partners, seek to understand why you might have turned out this way. The key is to give yourself an honest appraisal.
You will also want to examine your partner’s history.
- What were the best things about your partner’s previous relationships?
- What ended these relationships?
- What patterns do you see that might mean that the person you love is emotionally available or unavailable?
For instance, if your partner complains that every women seems to want too much, that’s a hint about your partner, not you. On the other hand, if your partner describes seemingly balanced and emotionally equal romantic partnerships that didn’t work out for reasons other than struggles about needs, you might have picked yourself a winner.
Trust both your gut instincts and your more intellectually based assessments.
Be careful not to choose one over the other. Give yourself time to make an effective evaluation, but don’t make excuses and find yourself in a three-year relationship in which you frequently feel that your needs aren’t met. Ask yourself if you’re happy and abide by your answer whether it’s the one you’d hope for or not.
If you’re not feeling heard and your requests for whatever you want in the relationship are reasonable, the final resort is to go to a therapist alone or with your partner and sort everything out. A therapist will help you see things more clearly and give you an answer about whether or not your expectations are appropriate or not.
About Karen Koenig
She is a co-founder of the Greater Boston Collaborative for Body Image and Eating Disorders and a former member of the Professional Advisory Committee of the Multi-service Eating Disorder Association of Massachusetts. To learn more about her, visit her website at www.karenrkoenig.com.