Haleh Banani – Keys To Improve Your Marriage – 08 – Expectations

			What role does expectation play in marriage and I say that it plays a huge role. And there's a
dichotomy of expectation. On the one hand, there's this very unrealistic fairy tale expectation.
And, you know, children growing up with these kind of fairy tales, of you know, being swept off
their feet, and marrying someone marrying prince charming, and living happily ever after creates a
very unrealistic expectation. Also, all these love stories
		

			about being romance really leads a lot of specially females to have very unrealistic standards in
the marriage. And when they have that expectation, then they are very likely to be disappointed.
I've had clients who are 40 years old, they come into my office, and they said, I expected a fairy
tale life. And they are, they've been so affected by this, they, that it really prevents them from
appreciating and enjoying their life. Now, then there's the other extreme. The other extreme, is
when people have a real negative, pessimistic view on marriage, and as a result of maybe divorce,
maybe seeing their parents fighting, maybe seeing everyone around them getting married and getting
		

			divorced. And so they start seeing marriage as an imprisonment, they feel that it takes away their
freedom, and it's a pain. And sometimes you see women, when they get together, they sit there, and
they're bashing their husbands and complaining. And this is a really negative view of marriage and
the expectation. So if you have that expectation, you're going into the marriage, thinking that you
are imprisoned, how's that gonna affect you? How are you going to feel about being imprisoned until
you die, this is a terrible negative view to have. So what's really important is to balance it, no,
balance your views, where you're not too unrealistic, and expecting a fairy tale and you're not
		

			completely pessimistic thinking that you're doomed to fail, you need to have a very like a realistic
estimate expectation of marriage, and you get what you put into it. I mean, just like with your
prayer, when you are concentrating when you are working on your heart, and you're going in for the
sujood, and your prayer is like whatever you put into it, then you see the results of the
spirituality, in the same way with marriage is whatever you put into the marriage, if you're not
investing time, if you are not being emotionally present, physically present, for your spouse,
psychologically there to support to have that sort of companionship, then you can expect to get
		

			anything out of it. So whatever you put into it, that's what you're going to get out of it. There
are individuals who put their heart and soul into it, and they will see the results, they will see
that their spouse is content and happy and you have a good working relationship, it can be achieved.
But it just takes effort. Just like when you go to the gym, the person who's there with a three
pound dumbbell, they're not going to see any result because they're not really putting forth true
effort. It's only those individuals who are pushing themselves and doing something that's very
difficult and very hard and strenuous. But they're, they're persistent at it, that's when they see
		

			the results. The same thing with marriage, if you are persistent. And if you put forth effort, and
you're willing to go the distance, and you're consistent, then you will see results in Sharla. The
last point I want to make as far as expectation and this is advice from my mother right before I got
married is lower your expectation, it's really important to always Lower, lower, lower lower should
say just have zero expectation. And that way, you're always pleasantly surprised. And this has
guided me so much in dealing with people and dealing with my in laws with my husband, that whenever
I'm about to have a lot of expectation like oh, I would like them to do this or do that. I just
		

			start lowering it and orient knowing it. And then I'm pleasantly surprised. And if we get ourselves
if we train ourselves to do that, then we set ourselves up for happiness, rather than set ourselves
up for disappointment. So I hope that we can all reflect on what kind of expectations we have. Are
they realistic? Are they too negative? Do we need to adjust our expectation and then we need to
lower it lower the expectations so that we're not having unrealistic demands from our spouse and
		

			And once we do that, then we can have a more compatible relationship we can have a more harmonious
relationship.