By Jonathan Hart, LPC
I work with a lot of couples, and one thing I notice a lot of is Expectations. I think this is a simple fact of being human. We place a lot of expectations in the people around us. The closer they are, the more we expect of them. Most of the arguments I hear (and honestly, most of the arguments I start myself) begin the same way: “You always…” or “You never…”. Loosely translated, what this usually works out to is something like this: “You don’t do what I want/hope/expect you to do. I have the right to expect that you will do this. My expectations are disappointed.”
Naturally when someone hears a statement like this, the human response is a defensive counterattack. “Oh Yeah? Well, YOU always…” and it only goes down hill from there. A good rule of thumb is to listen for the words “Always” and “Never”. Often, those words are code for the expectations that we have, and that we feel our partner is not meeting.
It is a natural pattern to look at everything our partner is supposed to be doing and highlight where they are dropping the ball. But what if we turned this pattern on its head? What if we were able to shift our focus away from the places our partner is disappointing us and look instead at how we can help them be everything they were made to be? To organize our efforts at encouraging and building them up instead of encouraging them to build us up?
I am not suggesting that we should simply try to do everything our partner tells us to do. That would be about as much fun as boot camp. That only feeds the conflict monster. I am suggesting that we work toward helping them be more emphatically themselves, rather than trying to shape them into who we want them to be.
This requires listening to and learning about who they are, who they want to be, their hopes and dreams, desires and fears. It requires starting at the bottom, working to understand what makes them tick and why they do things the way they do rather than trying to convince them that the way they are doing it is wrong. It requires placing yourself in the position of learner rather than expert. We are asking the question, “How can I help you reach your dreams and goals?” rather than “What have you done for me lately?”
This is not mindless subservience. Sometimes helping someone be better at being themselves can include challenge. It can include confronting hurtful and destructive patterns. It can include stretching and pushing someone we care about outside their customary limits. And again, these things must be done in a spirit, not of reshaping them into our own image of what they should be, but of helping them sharpen and explore their own potential. I am talking about placing yourself at the service of your partner.
There is a lot more to this idea than there is space to explore it here. Consider this a teaser, food for thought. I am asking you to simply consider what it might be like to “through love, serve one another”.