Unreasonable expectations in relationships learn to accept people. Unjustified expectations or a proven way to ruin the life of yourself and your loved one

Sooner or later, you realize that your own values ​​do not coincide with the values ​​of others. Many have heard the phrase - "you deserve the best." Such people judge based on their own interests and try to impose their views, instead of respecting the choices of others.

Other people, on the other hand, will make you believe that you are a failure, even if you are not. These personality types have a specific purpose: to control those around them according to their strict values. It doesn't matter what you do.

You can never fully meet the expectations of others. The only expectations that need to be met are your own. And instead of worrying and suffering because of unjustified expectations, begin to free yourself from other people's values ​​and priorities imposed on you.

Three steps to freedom

Understanding the reasons why people pin their hopes and hopes on others, dictate how to live, and even control will help get rid of the feeling of guilt for unjustified expectations.

So what makes people place their expectations on others?

Fear sometimes leads people to humiliate each other in order to maintain control over them. People use various restrictions on the freedom and independence of loved ones for fear of losing control over them, for fear of being unnecessary in the end.

Raising in a family where there is no example of healthy relationships and no one to teach respect leads to a deficit in personal and emotional qualities.

Selfishness. Some people feel the need to control everything around them and dominate everything in order to increase their own importance.

What makes me happy is good for me

Absolutely every person is free. Nobody has the right to tell us what to do to be happy.

If what you do or say makes you happy, nothing else matters. Your choice is a testament to who you are and every step you take is only your path to the future and nobody else's.

“If a person has not met your expectations, this is not his fault. These are your expectations! " Others criticize or do not accept your choice, and you feel that you do not live up to other people's expectations, remember - this is their problem. Not yours. Only you understand your own needs.

Life in an effort to satisfy the needs of others and thereby justify other people's expectations will not represent anything. Life is too short to meet the expectations of others.

Don't be afraid to make a mistake. You have every right to both mistakes and disappointments. After all, this is your life. Creating your own happiness requires responsibility, self-awareness and struggle for your choices.

Nothing helps like the thought that life is one, to spend time meeting other people's expectations. You are a priority for yourself. If what you are doing is not important to others, accept their opinion and do not worry.

Know that what you are doing is beautiful only because you are doing it your way, for yourself and your values. Don't let anyone ruin your life.

When you cry from resentment, it is most often the tears of the victim. The feeling of sacrifice means that you still hope that whoever owes you will someday give it. You have the illusion that people will change and do what you want them to do. Or that you can get what you want through manipulation. And that one has only to push, explain, reach out, fulfill all the requirements, and everything will become as it should. And while hope is alive, oddly enough nothing happens.

Of course, there are situations in which hope is very important. For example, if you need to live, endure, wait. However, there are processes in life in which hope prevents transformation. It prevents you from meeting with hopelessness. Crying tears of futility. Tears that there are things that will never be yours. And that you have dreams that will never come true. Never ever.

Events that will never happen. And people who never understand will not accept. And they won't give you what you need. And not even because they do not want to, but simply because they are not capable. Because they are just people with their own questions and internal blocks.

And if you remain in a feeling of resentment, then it is very strongly tied to those with whom you are offended. Almost tightly. It is actually difficult to separate from someone you treat badly. You can quarrel, part, not call or write. Go to another continent. Be glad that you no longer communicate. But is this really a separation, when every day you remember a person, and rejoice that you are not with him? This is the illusion of separateness. Defense against non-existent monsters, masks of which are worn by real mortals. Even death does not help with a strong resentment. Resentment of the dead is a useless but very common occurrence.

And tears to futility and a meeting with hopelessness are not so simple, but finite. They sow their volume and sorrow has a bottom.

Years go by with resentment, but nothing changes. Therefore, at some point, it is worth starting to mourn the impossibility and meet with hopelessness, which you can also cry, live and go through, making your way through your pride to humility. Besides, not everything is impossible.

Much is possible, but not everything. And some, very desirable, is completely impossible. It will never happen, it will not happen, it will not happen. Not given. Simply no.

An emotionally cold father will never give warmth. A mother who cannot even protect herself will not protect you either. A husband will not care like a mother. The family will not accept all of your decisions. Children will throw socks around the apartment, even if you can't stand it. It will still be just like that. And it remains to come to terms with it.

And then humility opens up other possibilities. New paths. Accepting others as they are.

Finally, you stop knocking on closed doors and looking around in search of open ones. And it turns out that there are those in abundance.

You stop blaming your parents for your misfortunes and begin to grow yourself up to an adult on your own. You lag behind your husband, who is not generous enough, and you learn to earn money. You stop being a good girl for your mother, who will not accept it anyway, and allow yourself to live your life. You stop pressing children and you start to admire their stability and vitality. You end up resenting your wife for not caring about you in any special way, and you learn to take care of yourself. You stop trying to correct your imperfect past and begin to notice how, without the help of offenders, you independently reproduce it in the present.

And if you cannot cope on your own, you are looking for spiritual teachers or a therapist with whom you already play by the rules, without resentment and manipulation.

You ask yourself difficult questions about why you are in one relationship or another. Is it not so that you can place the burden of caring for yourself on others instead of finally taking it for yourself? Isn't it in order to scatter parts of your personality all over the world without collecting them together?

And then a completely different path begins. Another level of awareness and other results.

Resentment has one result - being stuck in the moment. Despair, humility and responsibility have something completely different. And everyone makes the choice himself.

Recently I came across an excerpt from the 1965 film "Our House" with the participation of A. Papanov. A teacher came to the parents' house with a complaint about her youngest son. Children wrote an essay on the topic: "Who do you want to be", and Seryozha wrote that from childhood he dreamed of becoming a hairdresser. The following dialogue took place:

Parents: "So our Seryozha turned out to be the worst?"

Teacher: "Children tend to dream, now everyone dreams of space, someone wanted to become astronauts, polar explorers, geologists, and your son has some kind of sober attitude."

Parents: “Tell me, please, who should he want to be? You tell him, and we will already inspire him to write as it should. We will definitely take action. "

And then there was an explanatory conversation, in which A. Papanov asked his son "next time to write in an essay how it should be, so that the teacher does not ruffle the mother's nerves."

Tell me, is this a familiar situation for you, when your parents said that they know better who you should be and what is better to do?
Have you tried to meet their expectations?
Often, when a child does not live up to expectations, parents experience frustration, guilt, anger, shame, and resentment. But the main thing is that this feeling of guilt is not in front of the child for the fact that they have placed so many expectations on him; they feel ashamed in front of their relatives and friends for the fact that their child does not correspond to the ideal.
What happens to you if your husbands / wives, relatives, supervisors, friends do not live up to our expectations?
For example, for a long time you lived with the idea of ​​a person, but he did not act as you expected of him. There are situations when a person did not know what was expected of him (From the series: “He should have guessed”).
You are suffering, offended, angry, upset, you can harbor resentment, you may even be “let go” for a while, but then everything starts anew again: expectations-anger-resentment ... Unjustified hopes can lead to despondency and depression. Especially when you in a harsh manner insisted that it should be just the way you wanted and nothing else, and that they should behave only according to your rules invented for them. Your picture did not match between expectation and reality.
By the way, disappointment from unjustified expectations can also come from ourselves, when we drive ourselves into the framework, we suffer, because we see that we are not what we would like. We are not familiar with the real ones, tk. often wanted to be like someone, or did not want to, but they pushed us to this, we could come up with some kind of image for ourselves and tried to correspond to it all our lives.
Why is this happening? The fact is that disappointment does not occur in a person, because he remained the same as he was, but it happens in your illusions about this person, what he should be, while it is difficult for you to see the person himself with his true needs and desires, because you are now in your house out of resentment. Resentment is the result of unjustified expectations.
Very often, the one who does not live up to expectations experiences guilt and shame that he is “not like that”.

What to do in this situation?
Oddly enough, learn to accept the fact that no one should meet our expectations, stop constantly demanding something from others, from the world. Then there is a chance to receive an unexpected gift from life.
Surely, many of you are familiar with the "Gestalt Prayer", which was written by psychotherapist Frederick Perls. I like it so much that I will allow myself to publish it on the page again:

“I am doing my job, and you are doing your job.
I do not live in this world to live up to your expectations.
And you don't live in this world to live up to my expectations.
You are you.
And I am me.
And if we happen to meet each other, that's great.
If not, then nothing can be done. "

All expectations come from childhood. Therefore, there is so much pain, resentment and disappointment in them. And most importantly, all these expectations are unrealized.

Someone lacked (for objective reasons) care, someone - attention, someone - the recognition that it is unique and valuable. Someone was not hugged, they did not say words of love, someone was not supported at all.

We grow up, and these needs remain unsatisfied, and they sit in us like thorns, and we do not even know about their existence, we do not even know that we can help ourselves. We expect loved ones to solve these problems and soothe our pain.

We fall into dependent relationships, we try to earn love, we adjust, we wait, we demand, we are disappointed. And so in a circle.

We fall into the trap of expectations.

What to do?

This is probably the hardest piece of advice I've ever given you:

You need to come to terms with the fact that your unmet needs will never be met the way you expect them to. There will no longer be a loving mom and strong dad who can do this. Justice will not prevail.

Indeed, in fact, when we expect from others a special attitude towards ourselves,
satisfaction of needs, then we expect this from them, as from parents.

Can they do it? Even if they really want to, even if they love us very much ... they will not be able to do it.

But at the same time, they can give us something else. And if you deal with expectations, then this other will be no less valuable.

Here's your homework. Understand your expectations: what do I expect from the people I love? And what are they ready to give me in real life rather than fictional expectations?

After all, if you figure it out, how will you react when your friend does not understand you? How will you react to the fact that she has her own life and her worries, and they are more important to her than your life?

How will you react when your husband has not guessed what you want? When you crave warmth, understanding and care, as in childhood, and he closes down in response and even gets angry?

For this very reason, many women avoid contact with men, do not have girlfriends. Because they understand that they will not get what they expect from them. To face this fact again is to experience pain again. And it turns out that refusal to communicate is protection.

In this case, removing the protection means giving up childhood expectations and learning to interact with others from an adult state. And the main thing is to understand that people are ready to give us much more - communication, a different view of the world, new knowledge, their uniqueness. Complete this list yourself.

I have noticed that many women do with the wrong expectations. This includes wanting to change your life, get support and attention, get rid of pain, and be happy once and for all.

These are again expectations that, most likely, will not be met.

ATTENTION! The material is protected by copyright law. Any use of this material (publication, quoting, reprinting) is NOT PERMITTED without the written consent of the author. For questions about the publication of this material, please contact: [email protected]

Tatiana Dzutseva.

In contact with

By filling out the form on our website - you agree to our privacy policy. You also agree that we have the right to disclose your personal data in the following cases:

In all other cases, before transferring information about you to third parties, our Company undertakes to obtain your explicit consent. For example, our Company may implement a joint proposal or competition with a third party, then we will ask you for permission to share your personal information with a third party.

We cooperate with other companies that perform business support functions on our behalf, in connection with which your personal information may be partially disclosed. We require such companies to use the information only for the purpose of providing contractual services; they are prohibited from transferring this information to other parties in situations other than cases when it is caused by the need to provide the specified services. Examples of business support functions: order fulfillment, order fulfillment, awarding of prizes and bonuses, customer surveys and management information systems... We also disclose aggregated, non-personal information when selecting service providers.

A subsidiary or joint venture is understood to mean an organization in which the Company owns at least 50% of its equity participation. When transferring your information to a partner in a subsidiary or joint venture, our Company requires not to disclose this information to other parties for marketing purposes and not to use your information in any way that contradicts your choice. If you have indicated that you do not want to receive any marketing materials from our Company, then we will not share your information with our partners in subsidiaries and joint ventures for marketing purposes.

Our Company can share information with partner companies, together with which it implements special offers and promotional activities on jointly positioned pages of our website. When requesting personal data on such pages, you will receive a warning about the transfer of information. The partner uses any information you provide in accordance with his own privacy notice, which you can read before providing information about yourself.

Our Company reserves the right to transfer your personal data in connection with the full or partial sale or transfer of our company or its assets. When selling or transferring a business, our Company will provide you with the opportunity to refuse to transfer information about yourself. In some cases, this may mean that new organization will not be able to continue to provide you with services or products previously provided by our Company.

Our Company may disclose without your consent personal information to third parties for any of the following reasons: to avoid violations of the law, regulations or court orders; participation in government investigations; assistance in preventing fraud; as well as strengthening or protecting the rights of the Company or its subsidiaries. All personal information that you provided for registration on our website can be changed at any time or completely removed from our database at your request. To do this, you need to contact us in any way convenient for you, using the contact information posted in a special section of our website. If you want to opt out of receiving letters from our regular mailing list, you can do this at any time using a special link that is placed at the end of each letter.