So, a lady posted on social media that a random guy she met sent her N100k for transport to an address, telling her to dress well. When she got to the address, she discovered it was a guesthouse and after having lunch the guy repeatedly asked her for sex. Her refusal to sleep with him, got him very angry and he ensured that the guesthouse was locked up so she couldn’t leave without his consent, called her derogatory names, stating she wanted to defraud him as she should have known that sex was included in the bargain and demanded a full refund of his money. She refunded his money amidst threats and then proceeded to call him out.
The reactions to her story were varied, a lot of people blamed her for going off with a stranger, asking him for money to dress up and her “naivety” in not knowing that sex was included in the bargain. A number of people, especially men also blamed the man for not being explicit about his expectations for the date, stating that he should have been upfront with the lady that he wanted to sleep with her from the get-go. I agree with most of the reactions and will add also that the fact that a woman goes on a date with a man who pays for her dress and transport does not necessarily mean she has consented to the actual act of sex.
Thinking about the story, made me wonder about the place expectations have in our various relationships, what happens when those expectations are unmet and the need to accurately and expressly communicate what our needs are, in the different relationships that we have.
Expectations are defined as believing that something is going to happen or that something should be a certain way and it arises in every relationship, be it spousal, parent/children, work, friendships, acquaintances and even with our creator. There is nothing bad about having expectations, after all, we all enter and/or have relationships to benefit from them. There is something called reciprocity and it means that there is an expectation that you will receive in like sum what you give. The truth however, is that not all our expectations in the relationships we have will be met, either because they are unrealistic, unreasonable, or because they do not mean as much as they do to us with the other people in the relationships or are beyond their capacity to achieve, plus the fact that human beings (us inclusive) are unpredictable and are known not to act in ways expected of us.
Expectations are the bane of many relationships, even the relationship we have with our creator. We are wired through our experiences, exposure, backgrounds and assumptions to believe that things should happen in a certain way or at a certain time and when they don’t happen the way we think they ought to, it affects the relationship mostly for the worse. A good example is when we think because we are good, prayerful, believe and serve God faithfully that no evil shall befall us.
The word “unmet” is defined as “not satisfied or achieved” and so unmet expectations means unsatisfied or unachieved expectations. It’s interesting to note that we mourn unmet expectations which really are the loss of what we haven’t experienced yet but had hoped to experience and the degree to which we mourn these expectations will depend on the importance, weight and emotion we have attached to them. Even though we haven’t experienced them, the death of our expectations births in us, the powerful emotions of anger, sadness, depression, frustration and hopelessness.
When our expectations are unmet especially in situations where we cannot leave the relationship, we often resort to the following coping strategies which help us to escape the feelings without working through them.
- Being strong- we act as if we don’t really care, as if we are not pained by the unmet expectations, as if it didn’t really matter to us whether or not we got what we wanted.
- Becoming jaded- we begin to question the very thing we wanted and everyone that has gotten what we didn’t get by belittling whatever effort they put in what they got and being cynical and sarcastic.
- Distractions- putting our emotions and efforts into other things to make up for what we haven’t gotten in the other. A classic example is when wives turn all their attention and love towards their children after having been betrayed or disappointed by their husbands and men burying themselves in work or hobbies rather than going home to an unhappy and hostile marriage.
- Numbing the pain with social activities, alcohol, drugs, retail therapy, social media and even music.
Expectations are valid and give meaning to our relationships however, we must:
- Ensure we know what we want and express it to the other party so that they understand our expectations. The problem is that many times we don’t even know exactly what we want and have very vague ideas of our expectations. The key here is to first get some clarity about our expectations before entering into the relationship.
- Manage our expectations – the truth is that many of us have unrealistic expectations about ourselves, others and life in general. We have to acknowledge that we are not perfect, people will not be like us and life in general is not fair.
- Give allowances for failure – unrealistic expectations assume a level of control we don’t have in a situation. Unrealistic expectations are “heavy on the shoulders” whether it’s about themselves or others i.e. my spouse should know how I am feeling without my needing to tell them, my kids should always listen to me, says Prerna Kabra in the article Unmet expectations- the silent killer of all relationships.
- Stop the comparison – especially in today’s world when we see how others live and hear what goes on in other’s homes, it is easy to base our expectations of our lives and that of our partners on what one influencer says but we must understand that we are different, our relationships and partners are different, and we don’t always know the true picture of what we see on social media.
In it all, I believe that the balance to strive to achieve with people is to communicate in clear terms our expectations and never to assume nor expect too much from people.