Are My Expectations Too High?

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When discussing dating, and especially online dating, the question often comes up of whether our expectations are too high. Are we going in expecting to find a potential supermodel with a perfect wit, saint-like morals, and who shares all of our interests? Are we turning down or ignoring opportunities because we’re holding out for an impossible dream girl?

What are these standards supposed to measure?

The first thing to get clear is that having high standards is not a bad thing. On the contrary, I think we ought to set high standards for the person we intend to spend our lives with. At the same time, I think we are sometimes derailed by our own expectations, but it’s not quite in the way you might think.

To take an analogy, if you’re hiring a doctor, would you really care how many acting credits he had, or whether he scored the winning touchdown his senior year of high school? No, you wouldn’t. It may be interesting, but it’d be irrelevant to the job you’re hiring him for.

You see what I’m getting at: the real question is not so much whether your standards are too high but whether they are relevant to your purpose. The question, as always, is what exactly are we trying to achieve here? Why are you looking for someone with these specific qualities to this degree?

High expectations demand the impossible, but low ones aren't good either.

When someone’s expectations are too high, it generally means they’re not expecting a spouse so much as a lifestyle accessory: something whose primary purpose is to serve their needs, to make them look and feel good, to support their lifestyle.

This is a very common trap to fall into, both in romance and religion. Just as many people look on God as primarily a means to their own satisfaction, so many people look on their girlfriends or boyfriends as means to glorify themselves. We set unrealistic expectations because we aren’t thinking of them as people but as accessories.

But, then again, this is the same attitude that can lead us to have low expectations: to settle for the first girl or boy of tolerable appearance and manners who happens to come along, because what we want is just ‘a relationship.’ Whether we set our expectations too high or too low, we’re missing the point.

Most people fall into one of two traps.

Thus, when it comes to expectations there are two traps we can fall into. One is that we will be bogged down in irrelevant expectations—that she be this beautiful in this style, have this hobby, like this music, etc.—and so lose sight of the qualities that really matter.

And two that we will set expectations so vague that just about anyone would do and so, again, miss the qualities that actually matter. It is less a matter of degree than of type: less “you expect too much” than “you expect the wrong things.”

So, what to do? Here's a small, practical exercise that can help.

To counter this I recommend the following exercise.

1. First, take stock of yourself, your own personality, and your values. Create a clear image of yourself in your mind. In the words of the philosophers, know thyself.

2. Next make yourself a list of every quality you want in a spouse, from the most trivial to the most important.

Put everything down. Describe your ideal mate. Then, go down the list and, for each one, ask yourself: “Knowing what I know of myself, do I honestly believe that I could not have an intimate relationship with someone who doesn’t have this quality?” Not whether you would like it, not whether it would be ideal, but just whether you could see yourself having such a relationship.

3. Once you’ve finished, you will (unless you are a rather obsessive type) be left with a short list of core qualities you expect to find in any potential spouse.

These will be the things that actually matter to your future happiness. They won’t be so much matters of degree as kind: not “looks exactly like Jean Arthur in her prime,” but “someone I find attractive.” Not “St. Therese reborn,” but “understands and lives her faith.”

Try to keep the list to clear values and general qualities, not specifics. So, “someone who values beauty,” rather than “someone who plays piano and sings.” Periodically repeat this exercise as time goes on to refine your list and use it to guide your search.

The goal is to focus your expectations on what really matters.

The idea is not so much to lower your expectations as to focus them: to concentrate on what really matters to you in a relationship rather than to what would fit your particular fantasies. Because if you keep your expectations to what is really important, you needn’t worry that you’re expecting too much.

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