THE EXPECTATION TRAP: HOW WE MISTAKE COMPLIANCE FOR LOVE
Is Love a Scorecard: Why do we deem Meeting Expectations with Love?
Nihita Shivakumar | Relationships and Society
It’s gross to admit, but each one of us have a little mental notebook in our heads, promptly noting down each and every detail about how and when your loved ones have done things for you... or not! If they do the thing, we feel loved. If they don’t, we just feel otherwise…cancelled.
In a world where people are getting used to monthly or yearly subscriptions of OTTs and other social media apps, emotions and relations too, seem to have taken up the trend. It is as if Love and Emotions have become a periodic service plan — if the delivery is late, we tend to question the whole arrangement.
Let me introduce you to a fact : Meeting someone’s expectations cannot be the same as loving someone. One is transactional. The other is unconditional. And when we confuse the two, relationships quietly start to crumble from within.
“Love isn’t about someone anticipating your every whim; it’s about caring and doting on, even when your whims are missed. Relationships are not meant to be run like call centers with customer satisfaction surveys.”
Parents & Kids:
As per many parents, “ I Fed You, Therefore You Must Achieve.”
Somewhere between kindergarten and adulthood, “I love you” turned into “Here’s your lifelong performance review.”
Lets break the ice : Parents and children have been nagging and negotiating on expectations since the dawn of time—or at least since the first teenager refused to clean their cave! Parents often expect respect, responsibility, and the occasional Thank-you (which is rarer than a unicorn!)
Children, on the other hand, expect freedom, understanding, and unlimited Wi-Fi ( 21st century tots). Parental love often begins as the purest form of unconditional force in the world. Parents are just happy that children are born safe and healthy. Over time, gradually, it starts sounding like:
· “Bring me a report card worth bragging about.”
· “Choose a career we can mention proudly at weddings.”
· “Do not, under any circumstances, get a tattoo.”
Parents expect children to learn and adapt quickly, while children want to make the most out of their childhood, play, laugh, and just roll around. Well, children are children, be it humans or elephants.. aren’t they. They are designed to be such.
When older, parents expect children to take up a certain fruitful career, completely oblivious of their child’s choices. Indian parents can, on the other hand, can go to any extent just to make sure that their child has taken the path which they deem ‘appropriate’.( There definitely are exceptions though!!)
Sounds burdensome, right? Well, this is common in the majority of the Asian households.
I wish the parents can take a break and ponder, ‘How did we come to this?’
Well, children aren’t blameless either. They expect parents to provide support without criticism or guiding advice, protection without limits, and when they get older, — no awkward questions about marriage or grandchildren. ( Well! No one likes awkward questions though..)
When either side ties love and affection with ‘performance’, it becomes some thing that can be gained… or can be lost. Emotions such as affection may not be able to withstand such situations. It begins to feel more like a business deal. And we all know, business and relationships are two very different things.
Spouses: If You Loved Me, You’d Just Know
Marriage works better when you speak up — but many couples nowadays play a lifelong game of “Guess what I’m thinking!!”
We love our spouses and adore them to the core! But , somehow, as we walk along the pathway of marriage, we tend to set some silent, unspoken rules for our partners, like, ‘remember the anniversary’, ‘ guess my mood’, ‘compliment me at precisely the right moment’ and so on...the list is infinite.
But here’s a thought: What if their love is steady, even if they forget the flowers? What if they are hung up with some deadlines to complete, anticipating a salary hike, so that your dream holiday / jewellery is affordable? What if they’re too busy fixing the leaking sink or making sure your car’s oil is changed or designing a meal plan or a study plan for the child, to notice your new haircut?
Love begets Responsibility. Love begets Duty towards family. Love begets ensuring safety of the loved ones, even without being vocal about it. ( Cringe thoughts : But honestly, it doesn’t hurt to express love, even if its just simple words.. and it does feel heavenly! Who doesn’t love a romantic confession at times!)
Romance in real life runs on communication and maintaining an understanding, not always on mind-reading or telepathy (although that would be greatly impressive too 😉 ). Today’s population is influenced greatly by movies. Movies demonstrate a lot of heroic deeds by the actor.. far far from the reality of life -- I’ll get to that Bollywood problem in a minute.
Bollywood: The Great Expectation Factory
Bollywood doesn’t manufacture just movies; it demonstrates a full-blown relationship fantasy training.
Bollywood has definitely given us some unforgettable love stories… and not to mention, some completely unrealistic red-flag relationship goals. Releasing movies for entertainment isn’t bad. The problem arises when people stop taking those movies for just entertainment and decide to implement all those dubious dialogues and actions into their personal life.
Let me sketch some usual scenes portrayed in movies:
· The actor always knows the actress’s needs before she speaks.
· Grand gestures happen daily (he fights off twenty men for her honor before lunch).
· Couples dance in the rain wearing white clothes without ever catching a cold or looking around for physical safety.
These are just a few to mention. However, in real life, people are tired after work. Once home, they need to support each other emotionally and verbally. Sometimes, just a mutual smile works. Fighting off twenty men is not on anyone’s to-do list, for whatever reasons. Behaving responsibly in public places is a norm for a reason. Dancing away in the rain may mostly mean a trip to the doctor ( taking untimely rains coz of climate change into account).
The downside? When we expect our partners to match movie-level devotion and action-sequences, we are likely to miss the quieter, more reliable ways love might show up — like making your tea exactly how you like it, remembering to charge your phone when you’re asleep, or making your favorite dish to cheer you up when you are having a bad day.
Folks! Stick to a rule: enjoy the movies, but treat them like dessert, not your diet. You can savor them — but try not to build your daily relationship menu on them!
Daughter-in-Law & In-Laws: If You Loved Us (from the moment you got married), You’d Become One of Us..
No one ever hands you the rulebook, (coz there isn’t one written yet), but somehow you’re expected to follow every line in every chapter.
Listing some drops from the ocean:
· Attend every family event, fever or no fever.
· Cook exactly like Grandma, always. ( cringe: gol-gol roti)
· Never challenge tradition or try to reason with it— or worse, change it.
· Uphold all verbal insults with a smile. ( mind you, not even an irk on your forehead should show).
· Give up on your dreams willingly to fit into the Family.
· Dismiss the house help and willingly perform all household chores even if you are sick…
…. and it goes on to infinite.
Thanks to many supportive parents and husbands nowadays, situations are better for many women out there, for a variety of reasons. But, some points do hold true to a vast majority of them , even today.
For a daughter-in-law, Love often gets mistaken for Compliance.
When the realization that real acceptance happens when differences are embraced, not erased, dawns upon people, peace in families could be ensured.
Son-in-Law & In-Laws: Welcome to the Family… Now Impress Us Forever
You’re welcomed warmly… but don’t get too comfortable, neither the auditions, nor the attempts to impress us must ever stop.
The checklist to be eligible:
· Have a respectable career.
· Treat your wife like a princess (no matter what the circumstance is ).
· Be present at every festival and family WhatsApp drama.
Yes! Sons-in-law are lucky in a way. They do have to meet certain expectations, but not as many as that of their better halves. Usually.
Here's a thought snippet: If love is based on performance, what’s being loved isn’t the person — it’s the image.
The Relation which has stood the test of Time: Siblings Relationship: Netflix Passwords, Birthday Wishes, and Other ‘Currencies’.
It’s not that they don’t love you — they just can’t believe you didn’t take their side during a small family discussion/argument.
Sibling relations are like the Sun and the Sunflowers! They expect loyalty in disputes, birthday wishing without reminders, exchanging of dresses or jeans ( whats yours, is mine too!) , or the occasional free streaming login. Its not all wrong though. Infact, it is fun and bonding! It is crucial that it must be accepted as such. It is imperative that siblings understand that these are not the only measurements of their emotional bond. Sibling affection goes far beyond that. The capability of siblings to stand for each other while weathering through the storms of life is truly marvelous.
But if people judge love and affection depending only on these small gestures alone, maybe it’s time to rethink what the kinship is actually built on.
Friends: Friendship Isn’t 24/7 Customer Support
Fact : Real friends can love you even when they don’t instantly reply to your memes.
Let me be real.. what are we without our friends!! They mean the world to us. We have stood by each other through thick and thin, in all weathers. However, we sometimes tend to treat them like they’re contractually obligated to respond within minutes, always agree with us, and be available at all hours.
We do not realize that a friend who says, “I can’t talk right now” may still love you just as much as the one who shows up instantly. The difference is, the circumstance the person is in, not the care they feel for you.
From Gold Stars to Guilt Trips
Lets be honest. We all grew up earning praise for performance — and now we expect affection to work the same way.
Many of us learned right on early in life: “ If you behave well, you earn love. Disappoint, and affection vanishes.” And we grew up carrying the same equation into our adulthood.
The fact : Real love doesn’t vanish when expectations aren’t met. It is unconditional. So, it just stays. And you know it will stay. Just like you know that day comes after every night. If love were to vanish, it was never unconditional in the first place.
May I reveal something less known? Using expectations to measure love is like weighing yourself to find your height — pointless but oddly popular.
I admit we all enjoy measurable proof of love — visible gestures, remembered dates, trips, gifts etc. But some of the deepest forms of love are invisible: patience, tolerance, forgiveness, trust. You can’t “count” them, but they do count the most.
Must Love Feel Like a Job You Can Lose at any Point of Time?
Did you know : The higher the expectations, the shakier the relationship feels.
When people live in fear of failing each other’s standards and expectations, they start performing instead of connecting to each other. This holds true in all kinds of relationships. And repeating performances for the sake of fulfilling expectations, over a lifetime… Oh boy! Isn’t it exhausting?
So, Now What?
How to sustain Love Without a Checklist?
Appreciate, communicate, show gratitude and allow room for human error. ( we are all humans after all! Our imperfections define us! )
Try to differentiate between the person’s emotions and their actions: – Believe that it is very much normal and possible for someone to love you and still forget your anniversary/birthday/any special day. Your special days are not the hinges for your Relationships. Lets just normalize stress-free relationships.
Say It Out Loud – I mean just literally! ‘Guess my mood from my face!’ kind of games do not belong in relationships. You need to consider that the person might be undergoing through some situation which is serious enough of him/her not noticing you. In that case, shouldn’t you rather exercise your emotional intelligence!
Ditch the Scorecard – Lets not keep a score of how many times each hurt the other or how many times one met the other’s expectations. Generosity in letting go and acceptance beats scorekeeping every time.
Practice Gratitude – If you still want to keep a count of, then count the number of times you smiled or your heart skipped a beat because of the other person. Count what’s present, not what’s missing!
Accept Imperfection – Love grows stronger when it survives mistakes. Humans make mistakes. They can also correct them or forgive them. After all, humans are defined by their imperfections.
Human Emotions are Messy. Love Is Messy — And That’s Exactly the Point!
It’s not about perfect display of words or gifts. It’s about showing up, even when the dishwasher is loaded all wrong.
If you unhook your emotions and Love from your rigid expectations from others, your relationships begin to feel lighter. People will stop being good just to your face to meet your notions and will genuinely start ‘being’ in your life. Now, doesn’t that feel miraculously relieving! And that’s when Love gets room to breathe.
Because real Love? It doesn’t need to tick every box. It just stays. Stays, so that you know!
Keywords: #lovetoday #the hairlinedifferencebetweenloveandexpectations #buildingalifetogether #doesmeetingexpectationsmeanmorethanlove
You must be logged in to post a comment.