great expectations

So, I’m having some issues with a friend right now.  There are a lot of emotions involved on all sides, but what this particular issue boils down to is unspoken expectations.  Unspoken expectations is the one and only thing that I took away from my pre-marital counseling, but it has proven to be very valuable. 

I believe that unspoken expectations are the #1 cause of conflict in my life.  I won’t speak for the rest of the world, but I’ve found it to be true for myself that both unspoken expectations that I have of others and unspoken expectations that others have for me have caused many hurt feelings, moments of disappointment and the occasional angry outburst.

The key to avoiding and/or managing these unspoken expectations (let’s see how many times I can type this in one blog post) is of course, to head them off ahead of time.  This is a practice that takes much thought and planning, and one to which I often fall short.  However, it has been immensely helpful to me, in the moments where I’ve failed to have the foresight to examine expectations to diagnosis mid-conflict or post-conflict that the root of all of it boiled down to unspoken expectations. 

 The beauty and the curse of this type of conflict is that the one who holds the unspoken expectation must at some point take some – not all – responsibility for the conflict.