How come I’m always the one planning what we do for date night?
They never initiate deep conversation.
They said they were sorry, but they aren’t improving.
They never help out enough around the house.
Things just don’t seem to be getting any better…
Do any of these resonate with you?
When it comes to your marriage, it’s easy to focus on all the ways your spouse doesn’t measure up.
This could be due to broken trust, a perceived lack of effort, or simply wishing your spouse were more like you or the image you built up of them in your mind.
If this sounds familiar, you may be experiencing what we like to refer to as the “slow fade of unrealistic expectations.”
Is this your first time learning about “slow fades?” It’s a term we use often in our speaking and marriage coaching to describe the twelve categories of connection erosion we’ve identified that happens in most marriages. Slow fades gather over years (or even decades), pulling our hearts apart one quarter inch at a time.
LISTEN: What’s a Slow Fade and Why Does it Matter in Marriage? | Episode 30
Unrealistic expectations are one of the most common and most dangerous slow fades. That’s because when our expectations don’t match reality, it’s a recipe for discontentment, disappointment, and resentment—not just for you, but for your spouse, too!
Thankfully, there is one small shift we can make to change this:
Do you have a scarcity or an abundance mindset?
This is an analogy we like to use in our speaking, training, and coaching. When we have a mindset of scarcity, it’s like viewing our spouse through the gap of our unrealistic expectations.
Sometimes, this gap between reality and our expectations can be so far that it’s basically a chasm! It puts us so far away from them that we can’t see when they grow or make improvements.
But an abundance mindset meets and accepts our spouse where they are at. We are all imperfect people. We have flaws, shortcomings, and room for improvement. We’re also all different from each other. If you keep expecting your partner to be like you, you’ll forever be disappointed. It’s disheartening for anyone to always be seen through the lens of how they don’t measure up.
A scarcity mindset tells us and our spouse…
- They aren’t enough
- They will never measure up
- We will always be disappointed in them, so why even try
An abundance mindset tells us and our spouse…
- We see their efforts
- We celebrate improvement
- You are safe to try and fail and try again
Here’s a visual representation of what these two mindsets look like (abundance is the small circle and scarcity the big one). Keep in mind that the same amount of growth is being made in each scenario; the only thing that is different is our expectations:
The God-Tool of Acceptance
I know what you must be thinking. Doesn’t an abundance mindset let our spouse off the hook? While on a basic level an abundance mindset can look like settling or compromising, it’s actually just accepting reality.
At the beginning of this article, we talked about how unrealistic expectations is one of the slow fades that can chip away at your marriage.
That was us giving you the problem. Now, we’re excited to share with you a solution!
One of the most powerful solutions we offer to the couples we work with is our “God-tools.” We go into depth about the eight God-tools that can restore and strengthen your marriage in our book, No More Perfect Marriages.
The God-tool we want you to know about right now is the God-tool of acceptance.
Here’s a short excerpt from No More Perfect Marriages:
“Acceptance is the action of fully receiving someone for who they completely are without trying to change, alter, or correct them. This is a hard one for many of us. We say we accept our spouse, but in those dark places of reality, we’re trying to change them. They are driving us nuts and we want it to stop.”
We know it’s not easy to accept things about your spouse you may wish were different.
However, we encourage you to give this a try—you may be surprised at the magic that can happen when you embrace someone for who they are instead of who you wish they would be. This accomplishes two things at once:
- It brings you inner peace, allowing you to set down the burden of constantly feeling irritation at your spouse’s perceived shortcomings and then driving yourself crazy trying to change them.
- It takes the pressure off your spouse. This can encourage them to make a positive change for themselves—which always feels better than changing because someone else told you to.
To borrow a concept from the business world, imagine your boss sat you down one day and demanded that you generate $100,000 more in sales this year. That would seem like a pretty daunting and unreachable task, wouldn’t it?
Not only would you immediately give up hope of reaching such a high hurdle, but you would also probably give up on making any small improvements as well. Why? Because you would know that anything less than $100,000 wouldn’t be appreciated by your boss—they might not even notice it. So why try?
Thankfully, businesses have already caught on to this principle of realistic expectations. That’s why smart leaders give their team members smaller, more achievable goals. This helps them build momentum as they meet their goals, celebrate each win, and enjoy small boosts of motivation at each milestone.
What Happens When You Meet Your Partner Where They’re At
So how does this concept relate to marriage?
We must recognize when we are holding our spouse to an unrealistic expectation.
In these moments, the reality of our spouse’s behavior is below where the line of our expectations is. Often, we think the solution is for them to rise to the level of our expectations.
But what if we told you the opposite is true? What if we told you that you need to come down and meet them where they’re at?
This is what it means to use the God-tool of acceptance, and here’s why it’s so powerful:
When you’re looking down at your spouse from a pedestal of unrealistic expectations, you can’t see when they make a little bit of progress. After all, from your sky-high vantage point, that tiny but meaningful improvement doesn’t even register.
On the other hand, if you’re meeting your spouse where they’re at by matching your expectations to their reality, you’ll easily be able to see and appreciate any effort they make in the right direction. This will make you happier as you notice improvement, and it will be encouraging to them to see that their efforts aren’t being ignored.
A Real-Life Example
Imagine this:
You often feel like you’re carrying more than your fair share of the household chores and wish your spouse would help out more.
Knowing they’re not naturally as neat or organized as you, your spouse notices your frustration and makes an effort—they wash and dry the laundry on Saturday morning without being asked.
But instead of feeling grateful, you’re irritated. After all, the clothes still need to be folded and put away, not to mention the vacuuming and dishes waiting for you. Frustrated, you point out what they didn’t do instead of acknowledging what they did.
Your spouse feels deflated. The following weekend, they don’t help with the chores at all because they know you won’t be satisfied.
Can you see how unrealistic expectations can be far more harmful than helpful when it comes to marriage?
Here’s the bottom line:
When we make the shift to a mindset of abundance and acceptance, something astounding happens: our spouse feels safe, and safety is the fertilizer for growth to occur. Rather than feeling our constant disappointment, they experience our encouragement and we cheer them on and recognize their efforts.
Scroll back to take a look at the smaller circle in the picture we shared above. Here’s a secret about that little circle: it doesn’t stay tiny forever. It grows as you grow together in your relationship in appropriate and obtainable ways!
It takes effort and reflection to create a marriage dynamic where both you and your spouse can learn and grow alongside each other. We certainly didn’t get everything right our first try, but through the years, with a lot of grace, we’ve been able to create a strong marriage full of encouragement and love for one another.
If you would like even more tools and tips to strengthen your marriage, the perfect place to start is with our FREE Marriage Crash Course. Whether you’ve been married for one year or forty or more, this email course is designed to bring understanding, connection, and love to your relationship:
Click here to get started for FREE >>
