Making Realistic Expectations With Your Partner

Being in a relationship of any kind is never 100% perfect - for anyone. As much as social media can portray the perfect life or amazing partnership, it just isn’t realistic. At least not all of the time. Hopefully, there are many perfect moments and awesome adventures in your relationship, but we all need to make realistic expectations. I've found it extremely hard to figure out what my expectations even should be.

On one hand, there are the expectations that make you think, “Well I would do this, so they should too.” This is one of the hardest mindsets for me to separate from. I’m a completely different type of person than my husband. I’m a planner, a list maker, an ON TIME OR DIE kind of girl (lol, dramatic, I know). My husband could literally go with the flow every day of the year. Expecting him to do things exactly how I do them is just absurd. Even though I KNOW this... It is still hard to remember that I can’t expect certain things from him.

On the other hand, there are things that you know they can or should do, they just choose not to. That can get extremely frustrating and annoying. Should we get upset over those times? Should we really expect them to perform at a certain standard 24/7? I could say all day that I would live up to every single one of my husband's expectations, but there is just no way!

The more we expect of someone the more they can let us down. Now, this is not to say that we shouldn’t have any expectations of our partners. We just have to try and find a good balance. When I find myself super upset at something he’s doing, there is no turning back. After I’ve calmed down or maybe even the next day or week, I try to reflect on why I was upset. Was it reasonable? Can I maybe reflect on myself and my expectations to try and react differently the next time?

When I became pregnant, I adjusted my thought process. I really wanted to know what my husband expected of me while I was on maternity leave. We talked about it several times. I don’t think a lot of people think about this when they get pregnant. Honestly, I tried really hard to get things done around the house while caring for the baby every day. It was extremely hard, but because I knew what he expected I could at least talk about it when I couldn’t live up to those expectations.

This is not an easy task for anyone. Talking about your expectations will not give you a perfect relationship. I expect my partner to be a great husband and a great dad. There is always room to grow in every relationship and if we don’t expect perfection, it will be a lot easier.

- Keeley S.