Sometime last year, I wrote about desires and expectations. I could summarize it here for you, or you could just click here and read it for yourself.

This post will again be about expectations in our marriages.

Talking about expectations is a tricky thing. On one hand, we should be careful not to allow our desires to become expectations such that we might end up resenting our spouses for not fulfilling them, or we might become unappreciative of them when they do. We don’t want to have an “after all” attittude, wherein our natural response to our spouses’ acts of service and affection would be “you are my spouse, after all“. No. We don’t want that. We want to maintain a joyful attitude in our marriages— always hopeful for the best and at the same time grateful for what already is.

Oh, I used the intro “on one hand”. Then there must be another hand right?  hehe ….Yes, on one hand we do not want that, but on the other hand, we do enter into marriage with a certain set of expectations that would actually serve as a benchmark for us, as to how we want our marriages to be. Let’s call these “foundational expectations”. These are things that are worth fighting for in our marriages. These are the areas that are okay for us to sit down  and discuss with our spouses. These are the the ones we constantly go back to and evaluate to see whether they are getting fulfilled or not. These are areas that, when overlooked and left unfulfilled, actually have the capacity to eventually ruin your marriage.

For me, these are some of the areas that fall under this category (in no particular order):

1. Communication

2. Service

3. Romance

4. Faithfulness

5. Respect

As you can see, we dubbed “foundational expectations” as such because when we remind our spouses of these things (read: with appropriate tone of voice and timing, NOT in any way synonymous with nagging), we are actually doing our marriages— ourselves AND our spouses a favor. We are actually communicating that I care enough about our marriage to have to go through the trouble of asking you to sit down with me, process this together, and ensure that these get fulfilled. It is not just about getting our desires and preferences and what would make us happy, but more importantly— what would make both you AND your spouse happy, and your relationship richer.

I must end this post on expectations with this though: Just because we say that these expectations are foundational to our marriage doesn’t give us the right to disrespect our husbands (or wives, if it so happens that you’re a man reading this ), or to be unloving towards them. I am sure that many of us do have unfulfilled expectations. What then? Do we gripe? Do we start to resent? Do we give up and not care anymore?

No.

Here’s another foundational expectation that I left out earlier: unconditional love.

The vows we made when we entered marriage were all made with this premise— that we are to love our husbands/wives unconditionally. This means we are to love them even if they still haven’t fulfilled our expectations. This means that we acknowledge and remind ourselves that “my husband/wife is a work in progress, just as I too, am a work in progress.”

Yes, we fight for our expectations to come to pass. This does not mean we fight with our spouses. Yes, we communicate and express our expectations to our partners. This does not mean we nag them to death. Yes, we will not rest until we can ensure that these expectations are met. This does not mean we remain resentful until then.

Instead, as we hope and wait, we trust that God is at work in our spouse’s heart, just as we trust that God is also at work in our hearts.

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photo: taken by our friend Bleau, during our friends’ (Bu and Lyka) wedding.