Should I Lower My Expectations?
After doing our Easter church service early last weekend, we ate lunch at a local cafe. They had recently opened a more fine-dining type restaurant and were running an insane promotion. For every meal eaten there, you would receive a gift card with the same amount as your bill during March. Apparently, the promotion worked wonders. My parents had gone with their leadership team the week before, resulting in a pretty hefty bill and gift card. So after a breakfast and dinner, we had just enough for the family to go out to lunch after church (with five dollars still left on the card).
It had been a long time since I had last gone to this restaurant, so I read some of the quotes on the makeshift wall that separated the restaurant from the kitchen. One of them read, “Expectations are just premeditated disappointments.” I really didn’t like that.
When we read something we don’t like, it is important to take a step back and ask why.
Sometimes, we don’t like it because it is pointing fingers at a habit or behavior that we already know needs to change. Other times, it is just plain wrong, and that’s why we don’t like it. So, I’ve been trying to identify precisely what I don’t like about this statement, and I think I’ve figured it out. (Although it is entirely possible that I am the one in the wrong and need to adjust my thinking.)
As military spouses, we are constantly told to lower our expectations. Even if no one verbally says those words to us, we know that every plan we make has a huge caveat of “if the military says yes.” Even plans that the military makes can change on a dime. My husband was placed on a last minute TDY to Germany, and I had made plans to join him, only for that TDY to be immediately cancelled. Since we arrived at the new squadron, he’s been assigned to Japan, Hawaii, and Alabama, all of which we planned trips around that subsequently fell through when one thing or another popped up.
My effort to “go with the flow” of military life looks like getting excited about the upcoming assignments. For PCS, it means looking at houses. For TDYs, it means planning trips to visit a new place. For deployments, it means creating big and little milestones to celebrate. I am not a go-with-the-flow person. I am much more of an all-in person person. I get all in on a plan real quick and then bummed out if and when it crashes and burns.
Do my expectations create disappointments? Yes. Do plans change frequently in military life, creating more disappointments? Yes. Are my expectations premeditated disappointments? Maybe. Does knowing this fact mean that I will change my expectations? Absolutely not.
Here’s the thing: when we tell people to lower their expectations, we are priming them to accept less than they deserve in the best-case scenario. In the worst-case scenario, we are priming them to stay in abusive situations. Lowering our expectations can give people the green light to run us over. We have to be really careful when we give blanket advice, especially when we don’t know the whole story about a situation (even if we think we do). I’m not here to talk about abuse since that is not my education or specialty, although I can point you in the right direction if you need more insight into this situation.
The unfortunate reality of military life is that our spouses do not control their availability. It doesn’t matter how long we’ve been planning the trip or how important the anniversary is; if the military says no, the answer is no. But, in my mind, the only alternative is to have zero expectations. If you never expect your spouse to be home for your birthday, then it will be a pleasant surprise the year that they are. Maybe that is a better way to live. Perhaps we are supposed to reduce our expectations of anything that our spouses cannot control.
I can’t do that, though. To reduce my expectations would mean to suck the hope out of my life. I must have things that I am looking forward to. I need to be excited about things to come. I need to know that good days are right around the corner. Sure, that means I end up disappointed when things don’t work out. Sometimes, there is a bad guy to blame, and sometimes there isn’t. Sometimes, I want to shut down the hope factory. But what are hopes for if not to get them up?
I don’t have the answer to the balance between accepting the problems and lack of control within military life while managing not to lower our expectations. Disappointment and hope are two sides of the same coin. We don’t know which side will land when we flip it, but we do know that hope is always there. And I think that’s good enough for me. I’ll keep rallying for change and complaining about the system in place when things don’t work out, but the hope will remain. Because I know that one day, everything will go exactly as planned, and it’ll be even better than I thought it could be.