owning your expectations

I've written a couple of posts about my experience with depression and anxiety. It was extremely hard to convince myself to publish them because, as I said, I don't like to talk about my feelings and I do like for people to think I have my life together. But the truth is that a lot of the time I don't have my life together and it's important to me that other people know that, that they see the real me. So there will be many more posts like those ones because discussion about mental illness is something that is near and dear to my heart.

Parks and Rec is where it's at y'all.

I learned some valuable lessons from my short stint in therapy. I say short, not because I successfully convinced my therapist that I was mentally sound enough to cope with the stresses of daily life, but because I went to four appointments and then cancelled the rest (because again with the whole 'talking about feelings' thing). I really probably ought to go back. It helped, a little bit. 

For one of my assignments, I took a walk along a trail that overlooks the entire Salt Lake Valley, found a flat-ish rock, and sat down to think in peace for a few minutes. I wrote down things I liked about the family I grew up in, things that I wanted to implement in my own children's lives. I wrote down things I didn't want to keep from my upbringing, and then I wrote down things I'd noticed that I appreciated about Jason's family.

I think the vast majority of us grow up thinking that all functional families are governed exactly the same as our family of origin was, and that's why, when we marry into a different family, we shy away from any traditions or customs that are different from what we're used to. Whether we realize it or not, we all possess some sort of innate sense that those familial differences absolutely cannot be functional or good or right. 

But that's not the case at all. There are many, many good family norms and expectations, so many that one family can't possibly practice them all. I wish we could all learn, preferably before coming to the marriage altar, to embrace differences and change, to see them as splendid opportunities for growth rather than personal affronts to our way of life.

We went on a camping trip with Jason's family.

My cute niece and sister in law. (By the way, I am Evelynn's best friend. You can all be jealous.)

Families don't just have unique sets of traditions either. Each of us also comes into a marriage fully equipped with firm expectations of how our spouses should act and react in different situations, and here's the clincher: most people don't even realize they hold these expectations. Then, when their spouses fail to meet them, (and make no mistake, they will fail by virtue of the fact that they did not grow up in your family) we find ourselves becoming angry or upset without really knowing why. 

It doesn't have to be that way though, as long as you're willing to take the time to do some real self-reflection, determine what your expectations are, and then decide if what's bugging you is something you need to bother talking about or if you should just let it go. And if it is that important to you, you need to communicate your expectation to your spouse in actual words, and they'll be happy to oblige you. 

The truth is, many of us grow up anxiously anticipating the day when we can escape our families but we never really do. We always take them with us, in our mannerisms and figures of speech, our actions and habits. The trick is learning to differentiate between what is truly important and what is merely comfortable to us. We need to gain some self-awareness about our expectations and own them, and be willing to clearly communicate them. I'm certainly no expert at this; Jason is a lot better at telling me exactly what he wants from me as his wife. I've learned a lot from him and his family. But I do know that the few times I have made an effort to own my expectations and communicate them, life is smoother and happier. We spend more time enjoying each other's company and less time bickering and feeling let down. It's not an easy way to live, but I believe it's a better one.

From our backpacking trip with my parents and aunt and uncle over the 4th of July.

Yes, those are stairs behind us, and yes we did climb all 2700 of them. (This was taken in
March on our trip to Colorado with my family.)