Tammy and John have been dating pretty seriously for several months. They don’t live together but they spend many weekends together and occasionally spend the night together during the week. They are each divorced with children from a previous marriage. John is an only child and feels lonely when he is the only one in the house. He likes having his children with him and enjoys having friends over. Tammy is from a big family and sometimes feels overwhelmed by lots of people and enjoys her time alone.
After a several day period of Tammy choosing to be alone, she called John on a Friday and let him know that she would be coming over to see him that evening. John was pleased and looking forward to seeing her but didn’t mention that he would have his two children with him and that his buddy, Frank, would also be there.
When Tammy arrived Friday evening John could see that she was put off by the presence of others in the house. He tried to engage her but was also responsive to the demands of his children and the game that he and Frank were watching on TV.
After about an hour, Tammy became very agitated and declared that she was leaving. She was clearly angry. John responded by being loud and demanding and demeaning and stated that, if that was the way she wanted to be, she could just go and take all of her stuff, too.
Saturday morning John was still very angry. He text messaged her (he knew she was at work) a couple of times saying mean things about her. He then realized that he was really scared about losing her. He apologized in a text message for his behavior. He called and left voice messages Saturday evening and Sunday. It was mid-week before Tammy called him back.
We sometimes use the terms expectations and standards interchangeably. I find it helpful to make a distinction between the two. I find it most helpful to have my expectations be exactly what is actually going to happen. I, of course, can’t always know what is going to happen, so I am sometimes surprised or disappointed. But the closer my expectations are to reality, the more I can accurately anticipate what my experience will be.
Tammy expected that when she got to John’s house that Friday it would be the beginning of a weekend alone with him the way so many other weekends had been. John expected that Tammy would join in the activities with Frank and his kids. They each harbored unreasonable expectations. They were both very disappointed.
Standards are the adjustable supports that hold the bar in the high jump. They can be set at different heights depending upon the ability of the high jumper. The height is set just slightly higher than the last jump that the athlete was able to make. Ideally, we want to have our standards be just a bit beyond what we are usually able to do. If they are too low, we sell ourselves short. If they are too high, we set ourselves up for continual failure.
Sometimes the standards that we set are not for our own behavior but for the behavior of others. We, in effect, tell them how they must be. We cannot, however, control their behavior. The result, then, is that when they don’t meet our standards we feel justified in abandoning our own standards in relationship to them. We start to make demands of them, they resist our demands, we get scared, and then we abandon our own standards for ourselves.
This is what John did. His standard for himself is to be considerate and calm in his relationship with Tammy. But he also set a standard for her wherein she was to be aware of and sensitive to the demands of other relationships in his life; willing to accommodate herself to his circumstances; and open to calmly discussing with him her feelings when her expectations are not being met. When she failed to meet his standards, he reacted by abandoning his own. As a consequence, he showed up in his relationship with her, not as someone who was curious about what to expect, or as someone who diligent about maintaining his own standards, but as someone who was demanding that she be who he expected her to be and punitive towards her when she was not.
Ideally then we are able to build expectations that are very close to what will actually happen, and have standards for ourselves that we maintain whether or not others meet our expectations. (See also boundaries, demands, tactics, and requests)
