What do you do when you’re in a fight with your loved one ?
Love can feel like a loosing game because of expectation embedded in every relationship. Expectation is a dynamic living creature and it’s natural from our lazy pattern matching, story confirming brain. Expectation, I believe, is not the cause of happiness, but it’s the cause of unhappiness. You cannot have unhappiness without it.
Expectation, comes from previous patterns and previous stories we experience in life or society. Expectation on role and responsibility of a mother, on loving deeds from a partner, on raising a child, on a healthy and lucky life. Due to our limited exposure of the world, each of us do have different sets of them growing up. In any relationship, there’s always a mismatch expectation, and through time, we iron out and shape the future through positive (yes, you can expect it next time) and negative (no, that’s not my value) reinforcements.
The Downward Spiral
A typical situation that would happen in a relationship I call “the downward spiral” is a tricky situation. It started out with one missing an expectation of another, in return, the disappointment & reaction itself is a shortfall of expectation on another’s view and the loop go on and on bringing the worse out of both side.
For example a mother waiting for a son to call home after being away for a long time, was disappointed from her son not calling. When her son finally called, she express her disappointment through the call, and the son felt upset to fight with his mom and decided not to call too often anymore. This took the situation far worse than it started, and all of us could relate to how this can play out in life.
Love can feel like a loosing game because of expectation embedded in every relationship. Expectation is a dynamic living creature and it’s natural from our lazy pattern matching, story confirming brain. Expectation, I believe, is not the cause of happiness, but it’s the cause of unhappiness. You cannot have unhappiness without it.
Expectation, comes from previous patterns and previous stories we experience in life or society. Expectation on role and responsibility of a mother, on loving deeds from a partner, on raising a child, on a healthy and lucky life. Due to our limited exposure of the world, each of us do have different sets of them growing up. In any relationship, there’s always a mismatch expectation, and through time, we iron out and shape the future through positive (yes, you can expect it next time) and negative (no, that’s not my value) reinforcements.
The Downward Spiral
A typical situation that would happen in a relationship I call “the downward spiral” is a tricky situation. It started out with one missing an expectation of another, in return, the disappointment & reaction itself is a shortfall of expectation on another’s view and the loop go on and on bringing the worse out of both side.
For example a mother waiting for a son to call home after being away for a long time, was disappointed from her son not calling. When her son finally called, she express her disappointment through the call, and the son felt upset to fight with his mom and decided not to call too often anymore. This took the situation far worse than it started, and all of us could relate to how this can play out in life.
Fix You
Yes that’s right, to deal with this situation, one need to fix themself not the other. The spiral stopped when one decided to be bigger than their ego and put down their expectation. Here’s my advice to my future self:
1.) In an argument, isolate the person from the situation and talk about the specific situation not the person. (e.g. avoid “you are ______”/ “you always ______”).
2.) Don’t bother who did what first, a small start could’ve begun with a smaller start in another’s view.
3.) Don’t let your love & care depend on your expectation. It’s hard, it take practice but it’s possible.
4.) Be a bigger person, forgive, don’t need to say it verbally, just make peace with your ego, show others what you the unconditional care you always expected. It will start the upward spiral.
Yes that’s right, to deal with this situation, one need to fix themself not the other. The spiral stopped when one decided to be bigger than their ego and put down their expectation. Here’s my advice to my future self:
1.) In an argument, isolate the person from the situation and talk about the specific situation not the person. (e.g. avoid “you are ______”/ “you always ______”).
2.) Don’t bother who did what first, a small start could’ve begun with a smaller start in another’s view.
3.) Don’t let your love & care depend on your expectation. It’s hard, it take practice but it’s possible.
4.) Be a bigger person, forgive, don’t need to say it verbally, just make peace with your ego, show others what you the unconditional care you always expected. It will start the upward spiral.
