“The curse of the romantic is a greed for dreams, an intensity of expectation that, in the end, diminishes the reality.” -Marya Mannes

What exactly are your expectations for a relationship? Do you have any? Do we ever consider that maybe these expectations are too high? Maybe they aren’t even existent. Throughout life, we grow up watching TV shows and movies that give us hope that maybe our own Lara Croft is out there, and while a chick with perfectly shaped tits wearing no bra isn’t too far fetched today, Angelina Jolie is a pretty unrealistic expectation from a chicks standpoint. Or maybe we think that we might just have to headhunt JT for GQ and he’ll close out Union Station to profess his love for us.

Or do we?

Subconsciously I’ve realized my expectations of relationships have shifted, as I’ve gotten older. I’ve been on both sides of expecting too little and expecting too much. I think our expectations grow through experience and through our own self-esteem. We expect a reflection of ourselves, and when our other half strays too far from that, we panic. When they reflect us too much, we panic. So how do we find our, “person” if we’re caught up in our own presumptuous “perfect” expectations?

The answer is we don’t expect. We can’t. Through out my short years of dating experience, I’ve learned that expectations are the worst thing to bring in to a relationship. The best relationships are the ones we didn’t see coming, the ones that come to us naturally and that’s why they flow. I’ve realized the more relationships I’ve been in, the more expectation has become a factor. Going from someone you have learned to love, learned all of the things that make them, them; it’s hard not to carry some of that with you into the next relationship. When we begin a new relationship and it’s not as great or it’s great for new reasons, we don’t always know how to handle it. I’ve learned the hard way that you can’t expect one man or one woman to be the way someone else is or was. Everyone has their own identity and forcing them to be what you think is “perfect” is an awful process.

I’ve watched two of my relationships crumble under both evils: being expected to be something I was not and expecting someone else to be something they’re not. When you love someone, you find yourself trying to do everything in your power to make that person happy When they make you feel inadequate in some aspect of life, or you realize they prefer something different, you try to become that. Sometimes you don’t even realize how much you are willing to change for someone until you entirely lose yourself. Whether it’s something as simple as your hair color or as complicated as your religion, changing something about you, that makes you, you is a flawed concept. By the time you’ve changed entirely to fit someone else’s expectations, you’ve lost yourself. When the relationship falls apart you are left with all of these scattered pieces of who you were and who you were trying to be. Piecing yourself back together is that much more difficult because you can’t even remember who you were before the relationship.

On the opposite side of the spectrum, I am guilty of expecting someone to change for me. You don’t even realize what you are doing until it pushes the other person over the edge. I think you’re entitled to expect some things from relationships: they should respect you, make you happy, and take care of you. When you invest your time and emotions in someone else, you usually know that person pretty well, so why we nit pick things later down the line is really a reflection of ourselves, not them. By the time we’ve force-molded them into our ex, or our fantasy we made up from a rom-com, he or she is already out the door. And when you finally realize what you did, they’ve moved on.

Expectations make us predetermine what we want before we even know what we want. If you are seeing someone and they aren’t for you there isn’t much of a point to trying to rearrange their cells and alter their lives and universe to fit us. We live in a world of false standards of how men and women should act, look, and live. If we weren’t constantly expecting and started accepting, I think we’d find a lot more success in every relationship we have whether romantic or not. And if you find yourself in a situation you aren’t comfortable in, being manipulated to be something you know you’re not, step away and start over. In the long run, it’s healthier for you, and your partner.