Manage Your Expectations-Part 1: What Are Your Expectations?

Happy New Year (we told you—you were going to have to deal with this until January 31^st) and welcome to another edition of “She Said, He Said.” Last week, we introduced our new series entitled “Managing Your Expectations” and today we bring you part 1. So, strap in, hold on, keep your hands and feet inside the car at all times and enjoy the ride. Disclaimer: We will NOT be responsible for any loss of limbs if you choose to be hard-headed.

Before we dive in, we must revisit the question we asked last week in order to address “What are your expectations about relationships?” Now, before you start lying and saying you don’t have any, we’re going to stop you right there; before your pants catch on fire or the Good Lord turns you into a pillar of salt. She has expectations, He has expectations, we ALL have expectations and that’s life. No matter how big or small they may be, we all expect something out of our relationships. Romance, trust, honesty, monogamy, sex at your disposal and the list goes on. These are all expectations and whether you have some or all of them, you definitely have them.

Examining the type of relationship you have (jump-off, side-chick, significant other), is the first step in determining whether your expectations are even reasonable. For example, if you’re a woman, who happens to be a side-chick, and you’re expecting your partner in your “side relationship” to buy you a gift for Valentine’s Day, Christmas, or your birthday, your bar is too high and you are suffering from Unrealistic Expectation Syndrome (UES). If you’re a man who expects your significant other (wife or girlfriend) to be okay with you coming and going as you please without so much as a call, a text, or a tweet, sir, your bar is too high and you, too, are suffering from UES. As we’ve discussed before, relationships come with rules and expectations and whether you agree or not, it is what it is. You can fight that uphill battle about setting your own rules and doing what you want, but unless both parties mutually agree to abandon the rules, which in and of itself would be a rule to abandon the rule, ultimately leaving you with rules, one or the both of you will be screwed. Do you see where we’re going with this? Just wanted to let you, “I’m an exception to the rule” fools know early, that you’re not.

So what are your expectations? People’s expectations differ depending on their lives, upbringing and experiences. Did you watch a lot of Disney movies? Did you have a father or father-figure in your life? Did you have positive examples of what a healthy romantic relationship looks like? Did you watch a lot of “The Cosby Show”? All of these things affect your ideas and expectations of relationships. We believe that there are a few different types of expectations. Now, you may get to the end of this post and say, “Hey none of these fit me” to which we’ll reply “Who gives a sh*t, you missed the point!” So, you should know early that these words of wisdom are not the results of studies and experiments conducted using the scientific method. It’s a blog about our experiences, observations and commentary on relationships. If you’re looking for a scientific breakdown about why your expectations are fu**ed up, go hire a therapist. If you would like a humorous, anecdotal, observation on expectations from a male and female perspective, we’re your team. Now that the riff raff has cleared the room, let’s get down to business. .

 

She Said:

Ladies, there’s an old adage that says “When life hands you lemons, add some Vodka and make a lemon drop.” (Well that may not be what it says, but that’s what you should do!) In relationships, life hands you lemons ALL of the time. Think about it-we’ve all had relationships that went wrong for any number of reasons: cheating issues, lack of attention issues, sex issues, lack of ambition issues, not on my level issues, chivalry issues, pick an issue and insert here—and when they went wrong, we left.

However, there are also times when situations could never even turn into relationships because of what I like to call non-starters. The dictionary defines a non-starter as an idea, proposal, or candidate with no chance of being accepted or successful. So, take a minute and think about all the people who approached you, hollered at you, asked for your number, or tried to get put on that were just non-starters. I’ll wait! I’m sure your list has at least 5 people (I’m being VERY generous) that fall into the non-starter category because they were too short, didn’t dress well, didn’t speak properly, didn’t have the right level of education, worked in blue collar professions, so on and so forth. 

Why is this important? Because when you take the list of reasons that your relationships went wrong and combine them with your reasons for classifying folks as non-starters, you should realize that you passed up on a lot of people. But the million dollar question is why do we, as women, do this? The million dollar answer for a vast majority of us is what I like to call “The Princess Diary” syndrome. I will willingly testify that I had it for most of my life and if you are honest with yourself, there is a high chance that you had/have it too. To explain, the Princess Diary syndrome goes something like this: I grew up with a mom, dad, grandparent, aunt, uncle, or other close relative constantly telling me that I am the most special girl in the whole wide world. They bought me the best of everything, they rewarded my good behavior, they showered me with love, hugs, and kisses and I was (and quite possibly still am) a princess! On top of that, as I got older, they told me that any man I dated needed to treat me like the princess/queen that I am.

Now, again, I was that girl (and in some ways I still am); and as much as I love my family for treating me like a princess, real life didn’t quite conform to these requirements and my princess-level expectations proved to not be all that realistic when it came to dating. For starters, when you’re treated like a princess for much of your life, you have a certain expectation that most things will go your way (because they always have). You didn’t have to compromise, navigate personalities, figure out how to be the bigger person in arguments, admit and acknowledge that you just might be wrong, or do any of the other things relationships require you to do in order to be successful; so you’re not prepared for all of these things when you start dating. Further, the princess diary syndrome makes you think that there is a true prince charming out there who will come dashing in on a white horse, sweep you off your feet and take you (and all of your baggage, hang-ups, personality defects, and issues) to some far away enchanted land with unicorns and butterflies where you two will live happily ever after (because that’s what happens in “Snow White” and “Sleeping Beauty”). But in real life, when times are hard, the rent is due and you’re stealing from Peter to pay Paul to keep the lights on, you feel like the world is crashing down around you and you’re wondering where you went wrong because this doesn’t happen to princesses.

When analyzing the Princess Diary Syndrome, the biggest problem it creates for women is the notion that it’s all about you. Unfortunately, it doesn’t prepare you for all of the trials and tribulations that happen in real life or for the realities of life that come along with relationships. It gives you a false sense of reality that puts you at the center of the universe and often results in you being alone because you are looking for prince charming and, honestly ladies, he doesn’t exist like he does in the storybooks.

The other issue we, as women, face is what I have entitled the D.R.A.K.E. fallacy. As you may know, Drake stands for Do Right And Kill Everything. If you suffer from the D.R.A.K.E. fallacy, you believe that if you do right and kill everything, you will end up with the person of your dreams and live happily ever after. Sadly this is not true either; another lesson the dating game taught me well.

The D.R.A.K.E. fallacy is the biggest culprit of “list” making. We are all familiar with the “list”; in fact, most of us have had one (even if it wasn’t written down). For example, you may desire a man who must be taller than 5’10” (so you can still be shorter than him when you wear heels), athletic, funny, honest, romantic, sensitive, must be a white collar professional (doctor/lawyer/accountant), should come from a good family background, must speak intelligently, must have gone to college, definitely needs a post-graduate degree, and must put it down in the bedroom. Now, you’ve created this list because you may be a 5’5” Legislative Aide on Capitol Hill with a Bachelors from Yale and a Masters in Public Policy from Duke, who enjoys long walks in the park and weekend trips to the beach. Not to mention, your parents are both physicians who went to top of the line universities for undergrad and medical school, you have two siblings (one lawyer, one accountant), you grew up in a 6 bedroom mini-mansion in Baldwin Hills and most of your friends belonged to Jack and Jill (even if this doesn’t completely mirror your life, I’m sure there are many similarities). So, clearly, it is only fitting that your mate match your fly, pound for pound.

Now see, here’s the rub. Ideally, the plan is to have someone that meets every qualification on your list. Unfortunately, that may not happen; in fact, it’s more likely than not that it won’t happen. While you may find someone with some, or even most, of the qualities/attributes that you want, you will never get everything and that’s just life. Maybe he’s great, but he sucks in the sack. Or maybe he’s an accountant but never got that MBA from Wharton and he attended University of Phoenix for undergrad. Or maybe, just maybe, he’s accident prone so he never played sports and is zero percent athletic—do these qualify as deal breakers? Too often the answer is yes; and too often women may miss out on their soul-mate and perfect partner because of it. And to keep it all the way 100, many times, when women date/marry the man with every attribute on the list, the relationship fails and they realize that their list wasn’t all that it was cracked up to be after all.

So, when you live by the Do Right And Kill Everything fallacy, you do yourself a disservice because you disqualify really good candidates based upon the fact that your “happily ever after” mate needs to look and be just like you. Unfortunately, happily ever after doesn’t really look like that in real life and this may be the reason your relationships just haven’t been working out—because you need to manage your expectations

 

He Said:

Fellas, this is the He speaking in the “She Said, He Said” partnership. I’ll do the secret handshake so you know it’s really me and not She writing this. (Secret Handshake). Now that we’ve gotten that out of the way, let’s get down to business. Every man knows that, “Bi**hes be tripping.” Sorry Oprah. This is one of the basic tenets of “Man Law”. With that being said, fellas, admit it, we be tripping too. Harder than MJ after being crossed-over by Allen Iverson. Don’t worry I’m not here to beat you up, after all I’m one of you. I’m here to point out our shortcomings in an attempt to wrestle the upper-hand from women in the battle of the sexes. “He who knows others is wise. He who knows himself is enlightened,” Lao Tzu. Let’s get enlightened brothers.

Gentlemen, while it’s common knowledge that women have expectations, often times so lofty and unattainable that not even The Most Interesting Man in the World could reach them; we, too, have our own lofty expectations, which I’ve broken down into two categories.

The first type of unreasonable expectations are the ones I call the “Prince of Zamunda” expectations. These guys believe that “I can go out and sow my royal oats, and at the end of my shenanigans, my princess will be there waiting.” Guys with this line of thinking believe that we can knock down everything walking and that the good girls are supposed to stay chained to a bed with their chastity belts on, waiting for us to conquer them. That’s not how it works. If we’re knocking down everything that’s walking, unless you’re knocking down dudes and blow up dolls, conceivably you’re knocking down “potential princesses”. It’s completely and totally irrational to believe that it’s okay to rack up a body count as high as your top score on Mario Bros. yet hold in contempt the women who helped you get there. It’s like LeBron accepting D-Wade taking a supporting role when he came to Miami then being mad at him for not taking more shots. It doesn’t work like that. Plus, why would a woman who views herself as a “potential princess” ever want to submit to your sexual wilds if she knows she’ll be out of the running by “giving into her human lustful desires”? We’re disincentivizing them, which is counterproductive.

Anything we can do, women can do as well, except open pickle jars, take out the trash, determine the sex of a baby and lift their own luggage. However, short of that, they’re equal. If a 3 digit body count is good for you, it should be good for them. If you’re allowed to have sexcapades that rival Playboy Letters, then they should be allowed to have sexcapades that rival Lady Playboy letters or whatever the female equivalent is to Playboy. Believing that you can and they can’t is hypocrisy at its finest and forces women to lie or stop having sex. And since women are human too, let’s assume that they’re lying as opposed to not having sex.

I would even go so far as to say that if we could collectively agree to stop slandering women for giving us what we want (sex), more women would be open to doing it. No more coaxing, coddling, or lying about your intentions to settle down and wife a woman you absolutely positively have no intentions of seeing after you skeet. That could be life, but only if we commit to it.

The next type of unrealistic expectations we exhibit, gentlemen, is what I call the “Stepford Wives” expectations. This guy believes that, “My woman will cook, clean, suck, f**k and raise the kids and all I need to do is supply the bacon, d**k and baby juice (sperm).” Once upon a time, this expectation wasn’t just an expectation, but a real-life facet of life fulfilled by most women in the Western World. Then feminism came along and ruined it along with chilvary, so here we are. Now what?

The changing dynamic of home, work and society doesn’t allow this to be a reality. Yes, women are still marginalized, objectified and sexualized in many aspects of mainstream society but the instances are shrinking every day. While we still have scantily clad cheerleaders and Hooter’s girls, we also have female C.E.O.’s, world leaders and law makers. Like it or not, the world is changing and what once was the status quo is no longer.

The number of stay at home dads is increasing and so is the number of homes where both parents work. The days where men expected women to cook, clean, do the laundry and sex us to our hearts content, not so incidentally coincided with a time where many women didn’t work. However, given the economy and societal advances, that isn’t the case anymore. How can we rationalize turning our women into “house slaves” when they work just as long, if not longer, than we do, contribute just as much, if not more, financially as we do? Explain that Ricky Ricardo? It’s tough. I hate to say it bruhs but we may have to change some diapers, wash a few dishes and learn to cook something other than Hungry Man dinners and hot dogs. Do you have any idea how much more appealing we are to women when we can tell the difference between a chicken and a Cornish hen or know the best way to get grass stains out of a shirt? Bruhs…think about it. I can personally attest to having bedded many a woman on home cooked meals and displays of a clean house. If you cook it they will come.

I hope you don’t think I was beating up on you because I have had to have this same talk with myself. One of the things that separates us from our cavemen ancestors is our ability to think, change and adapt. While the landscape in the domain of male-female relations is ever changing, we can do this. I know we can and we kind of have to unless we’re going to screw prostitutes and fleshlights forever.

Now that we’ve covered expectations, what they are and the problem with them, next week we will delve into Part 2: Changing and Ridding Ourselves of Ridiculous Expectations.

Manage Your Expectations-The Series

Happy New Year (until January is over you’re going to get these New Year’s greetings so suck it up and deal) and welcome back to “She Said, He Said.” Where have we been you ask? Around. Why the long pause in posts? Life. Are you back-back or is this an anomaly? We’re back like Member’s Only jackets and Bugle Boy jeans. So, for our first topic of the New Year, we want to talk about managing your expectations. Here goes nothing.

It has come to our attention, via Twitter, Facebook and talking to wayward souls, that many of you have unreasonably lofty expectations of life, love and Labrador retrievers (we’ll explain later).  We’re not blaming you, at least not completely. There is plenty of blame to go around between you, society, Disney, your parents, Drake, fairy tales, your first love, your physical beauty (or lack thereof), your zodiac sign, etc. In short, there are a lot of places, people and things to point the finger at (except us), but ultimately the largest set of blame rests on your shoulders. A lesson that it took one of us a LONG time to figure out! Now, once you get over the fact that it sucks, you have to solve the problem. The first step to solving a problem is admitting that you have a problem. Now, this admission may take a while and might be accompanied by many journal-writing, self-reflecting, wtf, drunken nights. However, after all that-you’ll come to grips with the fact that you just might have a problem. After that, the next step is figuring out the root of the problem and then uprooting that b**ch like a weed you found in your illustrious rose garden. That’s where we come in. In case you forgot how this works, we’ll refresh your memory.

As you very well may know, opinions on relationships are like germs: you know everyone has 'em, but you'd prefer that they keep those opinions to themselves. Part of the problem with relationship advice is that it often comes from unreliable sources. For instance, either the advice-giver has been married (and divorced) multiple times or is single and hasn’t been on a date in years. Or, the advice comes from the view of one-sex which, unless you’re in a same-sex relationship, may not be all that helpful. If you’re a woman, taking advice from another woman about dealing with men is like taking advice from Chris Christie about diet and exercise or about how not to bully your political opponents. Not advisable. And if you’re a man, the advice you get from your boys will likely lead you right down the path to baby mama drama because you followed the stick and move approach to relationships. Not a good look. With that in mind, we believe that the best relationship advice provides insight from both perspectives because it’s only together that a reasonable and rational conclusion may be reached; so, here we are and you’re welcome! Now back to the topic at hand.

The idea of managing your expectations is thicker than a Luke dancer and more treacherous than “The Trap.” So much so, that we deduced that there was no way we could discuss all of the subtle nuances of this topic in one post. Consequently, we’ve turned it into a series.  You can thank us now (Drake voice). Over the next few weeks, we’ll be exploring your relationship expectations, how you got them, why they’re fu**ed up, why despite their fu**ed up nature you still have them and how to get rid of them. You’re either gonna love us at the end of this series, or be forced to go find yourself a counselor because we will expose the naked truth! Either way, it’s a win-win.  In preparation for Part 1 of the series, we are challenging our readers with a short assignment: Take 5 minutes to write down your relationship/significant other expectations; what do you want in a partner? Feel free to share in the comments section or keep them to yourself-the choice is yours. However, just make sure you do it! Now, stay tuned and enjoy the ride for the next few weeks as we embark upon “Managing Your Expectations-The Series.”