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.