High Expectations and Difficulty Self-Soothing
I’m pretty sure that my high expectations almost ruined my marriage early on.
My husband and I met in middle school and got married in our early 20s. Despite being so young, our marriage was pretty solid early on. We genuinely liked each other, we communicated pretty well, we could get through an argument, and we were considerate and thoughtful to each other. There was lots of good stuff happening.
But despite all the good stuff, I found myself honing in on anything that was slightly off. If he didn’t respond perfectly to my emotions, I tended to get even more upset and had difficulty extending understanding to him. Or if he seemed distracted or irritated, I would often personalize it and worry that it meant something was wrong in our relationship. The negative moments also seemed to cloud my perception of the relationship and even though it was mostly great, I struggled to not focus on everything that wasn’t.
In addition to these high expectations and over-focus on the negative, my only strategy to cope with the problems was to talk with him about it. (Don’t worry, I’m not saying bringing up concerns is wrong. If you’ve been reading my emails for awhile, you know that I’m a big fan of communicating well!) But talking and externally processing was my only strategy for working through something and I was bringing up problems a lot.
It created a lot of stress in our relationship. I felt exhausted and drained and on edge. And he started to feel like he was walking on eggshells and couldn’t make any mistakes. We started arguing more and had a harder time feeling like our conflicts got resolved.
At the time, I honestly felt like the solution was just for him to stop messing up! I really thought that the problem was just that he kept disappointing me and if he would just get it together, then we’d be fine.
But what I couldn’t see at the time was three things:
He would never be perfect. I had actually managed to find a partner who was incredibly relationally and emotionally mature and who was very invested in our relationship. But he, of course, would always make mistakes.
I was preoccupied with anything that was negative and couldn’t see all the positive things happening.
I needed to build more skills for self-regulation so that I could tolerate my own frustration and disappointment better.
Being overly focused on our partner’s mistakes is a very common trait of those with an anxious attachment style. We tend to be very attuned to the relationship (which can be great!) but also can be overly focused on anything negative (which can be hard!).
Being able to recognize that the problem is not only with our partner making mistakes, but that it’s also about our expectations, our difficulty in acknowledging and appreciating the positives (even when there are negatives), and being able to self-regulate when we are disappointed is so important to sustain a healthy relationship.
These are all things that I’ve had to learn and work hard on over the years. And I’m happy to say that it’s gotten a lot better.
Last night when I got home from work, I was feeling upset and stressed out about my day and wanted to talk with my husband about it. I started describing what happened and, to my surprise (because he’s great at this 95% of the time), he didn’t respond in the way that I was hoping for. He listened, he validated, he asked questions. But for some reason, it just wasn’t *quite* what I was wanting.
I tried to explain what I was missing. “I need you to be more comforting! Or more caring!” He tried to respond differently, in the way I was asking. But it just didn’t really work.
I felt disappointed. And irritated that I couldn’t get the level of warmth and comfort from him that I was used to.
But you know what? It was okay. He hugged me and said he was sorry it wasn’t exactly what I needed. And I thanked him and went upstairs to change my clothes and take a few minutes to myself to reflect and soothe. I breathed deeply and hugged my kids and was okay.
The younger me would have been hurt and angry all night that he disappointed me. I wouldn’t have been able to let it go, I would have silently stewed, or would keep bringing it up. We’d probably get in a fight at some point and it would have sucked.
Now let me be clear: I’m not saying all of the responsibility is on me to lower my expectations or self-soothe. Of course I expect my partner to meet me halfway and be kind and responsive and thoughtful much or most of the time (like he was last night, even though it wasn’t exactly what I needed).
But when he inevitably makes mistakes or disappoints me (just like I do!), I have learned to talk about the situations that are really important, to let go of some of the ones that are not that big of a deal, and to give both of us compassion and understanding when we can’t quite get it right all of the time.
Does this resonate with you? If you have an anxious attachment style, you may struggle (or have struggled in the past) in this way with your partner.
What stands out to you in my description of my own journey with this? Is there anything that you know helps you have more understanding for your partner and also regulate yourself when they disappoint you?
I’d love to hear!