Lower Your Relationship Expectations, But Not Your Standards

My friend claims he has high standards when it comes to relationships, but his choices of partners say otherwise.

The majority of the women he chose to date were shallow and conditional with their love. Their characters and moral values were deplorable. But he was besotted — so they easily got away with it.

There was this one girl he was really invested in. Her name was Gina. She was smart and witty. But her most defining feature was her beauty.

If only her beauty could be reflected in her personality.

Our friend group badly wanted to intervene and tell him otherwise. But we knew he would get defensive if we confronted him, and understandably so.

It’s not our place to tell him who he should or should not date. So we decided to back off and let this be a learning experience for him.

But we didn’t expect that he’d get cheated on. Gina was as superficial as most gold diggers are. She left him the moment she found someone richer and hotter.

He was devastated, but this experience became the driving force for his growth.

Since then, he stopped putting meaning to small gestures of love and would never settle for the bare minimum. In short, he upped his standards for relationships.

He learned not to expect anything when entering any relationship and would reciprocate the same amount of effort and energy that his partner put in.

Sure enough, this helped him find his future wife. He realized that he just needed to raise his standards.

Expectations vs. Standards

Most people assume that these two words are synonymous and that the lines between these two words are blurred. They both describe our preconceived notions which are based on one’s personal experiences.

That, however, does not mean that standards and expectations are interchangeable.

Standards, as defined by the Macmillan dictionary, are “a level of quality or achievement, especially one that people generally consider normal or acceptable.”

They are generally used as a basis of judgment for a more effective decision-making process.

Expectations, on the other hand, are a fantasy of how you’d like a situation to turn out. This gives you an idea of how you’d like people to behave. This is an internal belief of how things are to go in your favor.

Most people often have these definitions confused by one another. As a result, some people develop low standards, but high expectations.

Identifying Your Standards

To properly set your standards, you have to identify your deal-breakers first.

Look back on your past relationships. What made you decide to leave the relationship? What behavior did you swear to yourself to never tolerate again?

Not having certain values can be a dealbreaker. Values such as:

• Mutual Respect
• Transparency
• Honesty
• Punctuality
• Commitment
• Communication
• Authenticity
• Self-Discipline

Specific behaviors can also be deal-breakers. To state a few examples:

• Making fun of the things you enjoy
• Have no sense of humor
• Shutting down your opinions
• Depending on you to cover up for them
• Taking out their unrelated frustrations on you
• Not knowing how to clean
• Terrible with money management
• Puts their job first

No one else can tell you what your deal breakers are. It’s something you have to discover for yourself.

It doesn’t matter if you discover them through research or trial and error. There is never a final answer for what you personally want or don’t want in a relationship. Your opinion may change in a matter of years.

But there’s one thing you absolutely must not forget — never lower your standards.

Your standards are what help you discover what you personally find most important in a relationship. They help you identify what you want in a partner to avoid dating the wrong people and wasting your time.

Of course, it doesn’t always mean you should break up with your partner if your standards aren’t met. It still boils down to your judgment.

But if it’s non-negotiable, then you might want to reconsider having the relationship.

Lower your Expectations

The greater your expectations, the greater your disappointment. Hence, try not to have too-high expectations in the beginning.

This also means you shouldn’t have negative expectations either. Having the idea that something bad will happen on a date still counts as an expectation.

Expectations aren’t always bad. Some can be very reasonable, healthy even. But sometimes, those expectations can turn into a sense of entitlement.

Putting our expectations on people can pressure them into becoming the person that you envision them to be, even if they have to change themselves.

Relationships won’t always go the way we want them to be. Scratch that — LIFE doesn’t always go the way we want it to be.

To avoid misleading ourselves and potentially harming our future it’s best that you lower your expectations.

You may not realize how unrealistic and unreasonable your expectations are sometimes. You may expect your partner to:

• Always take your side
• Spend all their free time with you
• Constantly be in touch via call or text
• Apologize first
• Choose you over their family or friends
• Always be a priority
• Always meet all your needs

It’s not fair to enforce all these expectations onto your partner. The truth is, you’re not always going to be the center of their world. You can’t blame them for putting their needs first before yours, because you’d do the same as well.

As my favorite comedian, Bo Burnham once said, “If you want love, lower expectations.”

And like every trial that life gives you, it won’t be easy. But if you’re dedicated to changing this aspect for yourself, you have to start by making small adjustments.

With that said, here are ways that you can minimize your expectations.

• Ask your partner about their wants and needs
• Be unconditional when you support your partner
• Be accountable for your mistakes
• Meet your own needs instead of relying on your partner

When you start on these small changes, it will be easier for you to adjust your mindset.

Though we can’t help but have expectations at times, it is our responsibility to manage them. We can only set expectations for ourselves, after all.