Journey to Surrender

Expectations in marriage: help or hindrance?

Which of these statements do you think is true?

1. You often get what you expect, so you should have high expectations for your marriage and of your spouse.


2. Unrealistic expectations in marriage will leave you disappointed, so you need to keep your expectations moderate and reasonable.


3. When you give of yourself to your spouse with love and kindness, you should do so with no expectation of getting something in return.

So which is it? High expectations? Moderate expectations? No expectations?

The answer is all three.

Truths in Tension

Expectations have the potential to cause much damage to your marriage.

Expectations in marriage present us with a complex set of truths that need to be held in tension with each other. What I mean by that is that there are reasons for keeping your expectations high, for controling or limiting expectations, and for expecting nothing. The trick is to balance these three notions together.

What you'll find below are four different truths about expectations in marriage that come at the subject from different angles.

Expect the Best. Get the Best. (The Good)

The way you anticipate something actually changes the way you perceive it. Your reality is shaped by what you expect it to be. There are plenty of scientific studies to prove this truth. Plus, it just makes logical sense.

So when you expect the best from your spouse, you are more likely to see their behavior in a positive light. For example, if you expect and believe in your spouse's love, you are more likely to perceive their actions toward you as loving. On the contrary, if you doubt your spouse's love, or expect them to behave in an unloving manner toward you, you are more likely to perceive their actions and unloving. It's just the way your brain works.

So, expect the best from your husband or wife. Look for them to act with love toward you, and you are more likely to see them doing just that.

(If you are geeky, here's an interesting TEDx talk that explains the way our expectations shape our perceptions. For a slightly less geeky and funnier version, if you don't mind a little language, here's a Penn and Teller bit that shows what happens when you serve people tap water from a garden hose in a fancy bottle presented by a fictitious "water steward." )

Unrealistic Expectations (The Bad)

Here is a counterbalancing reality to keeping your expectations high: unreasonably lofty expectations of your mate and for your marriage will ultimately lead to feelings of disappointment and disillusionment. And when your spouse senses your disappointment (and they will),  three negative reactions may occur.

The first is guilt and shame. They believe they are not good enough, or at least that you think so. They will struggle to separate their actions from their worth. They may strike back with their own judgments of you and your behavior, which may lead to the second set of emotions: anger or resentment. They may perceive your expectations as unreasonable or unfair. They may dismiss out of hand the need you have that is at the root of your expectations. This spins into a downward spiral fairly quickly and may result in the third possible reaction: complete withdrawal.

We all have expectations. They are unavoidable. Some will be good and reasonable. Some will not be. Some will come from healthy sources, some less so. They are shaped by our experiences, personalities and perspectives.

How do we manage expectation in marriage in a positive and life-giving way? As a first step let me suggest how you can prevent or at least minimize unmet expectations.

Unmet Expectations (The Ugly)

Unmet needs are responsible for much of the conflict in marriage, and when this leads to unmet expectations, it can inflict significant damage on a relationship in the form of disappointment and disillusionment, anger, or withdrawal.

Everyone has needs and wants in their marriage.  For the most part these are a normal and healthy part of every relationship. And it's somewhat natural for us to expect that our spouse will meet our needs.

Unfortunately, not everyone does a good job of communicating their needs and wants in helpful ways. In some cases we may not even be able to identify our needs, much less communicate them clearly to our spouse. And if we do communicate our needs, we may not clearly state how we expect those needs to be met.

If we aren't even aware of our own needs and expectations, or cannot communicate them clearly, how can we possibly expect our partner be aware of them? And if they don't know about them, how can they possibly meet them?

The best way to head off the disappointment associated with unmet expectations is to voice your needs and wants in a respectful and loving way. It's essential for each of you to take the responsibility to express your needs without demanding or demeaning. When you talk about your needs, it's really important to explain to your spouse what that would look like to you.

That kind of "what would it look like" conversation is great for identifying and exposing your expectations.

For example, if I tell my wife that respect is really important to me, but I don't tell her what that looks like to me, then she may struggle to meet that need. However, if I tell her that, to me, respect means her trusting me and my judgment, appreciating my efforts to provide and care for her and the family, that gives her an idea of my expectations. This opens the door to further conversation about it. If she is unclear, she can ask clarifying questions. If I request something that seems unreasonable or unattainable, we can negotiate a path the leaves us both feeling satisfied.

Unconditional Love (The Ultimate)

Ultimately the best way to manage expectations and to keep them from becoming a wrecking ball in your marriage is to expect the best of each other and your marriage, and then to love each other unconditionally as you go about working to meet each other's needs and expectations.

Dare to ask, "How can I best meet your expectations in this area?" Voice your needs and desires clearly in a way that best helps your spouse to love you well, but then have plenty of grace for when they get it wrong, because one of your expectations should be that they will, in fact, get it wrong sometimes.

How have you managed expectations in your marriage? Where have expectations gotten you into trouble? Leave a comment.

Today I am continuing with another “truth-in-tension” post. You can catch up on the rest of the series starting back here.

If you read here regularly then you know I’m really big on the importance of selflessness in marriage. A Surrendered Marriage is one in which we lay aside our rights-focused, entitlement-minded and self-centered ways that are based mostly on having your own needs met by our spouse. In place of all that, I encourage people to instead embrace a lifestyle of sacrificial love, selfless giving and the surrender of their rights for the sake of their spouse and marriage.

As much as I believe that a strong marriage is built on focusing on the needs of your spouse (and marriage) more than you focus on your own needs, there are some corresponding truths that must be held in tension in order to keep things in proper balance.

You are Not Their Savior

When it comes to meeting your spouse’s needs, you have to keep in mind that you are not solely responsible for meeting every need they have. You are not their be all and end all. That job belongs to God. You are not their God, so don’t try to be. Neither are you their savior. That job belongs to Jesus.

A Surrendered Marriage will only be successful in the degree to which each person is firstly surrendered to the Lordship of Jesus Christ. He is our ultimate source and the one who ultimately fulfills us and meets our needs.

Let Me Help You Love Me

It is perfectly okay, and even necessary, for you to express your needs to your spouse. Of course these aren’t to be expressed as demands or rights but out of a heart that says, “I know you love me. I know you want to love me well. Let me help you love me by telling you how you might do that.” Sometimes your husband or wife really will need some help in knowing what you need.

And don’t take the mindset that it doesn’t count if you had to ask for it. That kind of attitude presumes your spouse doesn’t want to show you love in ways that matter to you.

Sometimes Selfish is Actually Selfless

Sometimes putting your own needs first is necessary.

If you don’t take decent care of yourself, you can’t hope to have anything left to help take care of your spouse, your family or your friends. Ideally husband and wife are helping to look out for each other, each making sure that the other is well taken care of (read more on the “spouse-care” concept in this post),  but if that’s not the case, then you need to look out for your own mental, physical and spiritual wellbeing.

Self-care is not being selfish. In the right balance, it can actually be another form of selflessness.


So I will continue to encourage you here to go after meeting your spouse’s needs in a selfless and sacrificial manner. I actually hope you can move beyond simply meeting their needs in to the realm of learning how to delight them. But as you do, keep in mind that you have to balance that against maintaining your own wellbeing along the way. Hold these truths in tension.

What do you do to make ensure your own mental, physical and spiritual well-being?

Related Reading:

In my last post I offered some thoughts on how our spiritual relationship with Jesus offers us insight into how, in a marital relationship, we can similarly become “one” yet still remain as “two” individuals.

Today, as a follow-up, I want to paint another picture of oneness and individuality from an altogether different perspective. Today we’ll look at the one-flesh lessons found in sexual intimacy.

In Ephesians 5, when Paul refers to the “great mystery” of two becoming one, he quotes this famous verse from Genesis:

Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and they shall become one flesh.

Genesis 2:24

The obvious allusion here is to sexual intimacy between a husband and wife. Of course there is much more to becoming one than what is attained in a sexual union, but I think we can glean some insights for the broader context by looking more closely at the nature of sexual intimacy.

Sex as a Metaphor

It is sometimes said that what is happening in your bedroom is a microcosm of what is happening in the rest of your relationship. I don’t know that it’s 100% true, but I do believe that sexual issues often point to issues elsewhere in your marriage. It’s also often true that if your relationship is thriving outside the bedroom, then a great sex life is a lot more likely to result.

So, as part of this ongoing series of “truths-in-tension,” it makes sense for us to look at the tension between unity and individuality found in the act of sex.

When a man and woman come together as “one” in a sexual union, it is obvious that they do not somehow leave themselves behind in the act. Rather, they ideally bring their physical bodies to the sexual experience for the mutual pleasure, benefit and satisfaction of their spouse and themselves. It’s actually a great picture of how becoming one works in a much broader marital sense.

Male and female bodies were purposefully designed by God for this beautiful and intimate sexual relationship. In the same way, a husband and wife were hand-crafted by God as unique individuals but that that fit together in a unique, intimate and beautiful way. The beauty and pleasure of two becoming one in sexual intimacy is the same as the beauty and pleasure that grows out of a marriage relationship that embraces the one-flesh paradigm throughout the whole of their marriage.


Naked Without Shame

There’s an extremely important yet often overlooked verse that follows the one quoted above. Here’s the whole thing again in context:

(Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and they shall become one flesh.) And they were both naked, the man and his wife, and were not ashamed.

Genesis 2:24-25

Naked! Without Shame! In sex, yes, of course. But this means much more than sex with the lights on. Being “naked without shame” is also a way to live the entirety of your marriage. It means being willing to bring the fullness of yourself, flaws and all, to your marriage, knowing that unconditional love covers those places you’d rather not be seen by your spouse. It means being real, being vulnerable and being seen for who you really are. It means giving to your spouse the same grace and acceptance you hope to receive from your spouse in the face of your own shortcomings and weaknesses.

It takes time and experience for a couple to find their sexual groove. Over time they grow into sexual maturity by identifying their own sources of pleasure, developing their skills as a lover, and learning the unique landscape of their partner’s body. So too in becoming one in marriage, you come to fully know your partner and become fully known by them. You grow into the fullness of your marriage relationship, not by leaving yourselves behind, but growing more into who you really are.

Known Fully – Loved Completely

Because it is a fitting description of the intimacy that develops in a one-flesh marriage as well as in your sexual relationship, I’ll restate my definition of intimacy:

Deep, genuine intimacy comes from being fully known (naked) and completely loved (without shame).

It’s true that the fullest and most enduring kind of marital intimacy is the kind that involves the entirety of your being: spirit, soul and body. When two people become physically one-flesh in sexual intimacy, they still remain separate bodies. In the same way, when you and your spouse become one-flesh in the rest of your marriage, you are still separate beings.

In the end you will discover how in marriage you are very much interdependent with your spouse, yet your own identity is neither compromised nor diminished. In fact, it is actually enhanced!

The most important lesson from all this is that together you can create something unique and wonderful that is much more enriching and satisfying that either of you alone. True for sex. True for marriage.

Agree?

I’ve often said that you have to consider what the Bible says about marriage as a series of truths in tension. Many biblical truths, not just those concerning marriage, when considered in isolation from other truths, can result in a distorted perspective or an unhealthy imbalance. The tension is critically important.

To gain a thorough understanding of Surrendered Marriage you have to keep multiple facets of surrender held in tension. I’m embarking today on a series of “truth in tension” posts about the topic of surrender as it applies to marriage.

Can You Live With Tension?

As a Christ-follower, I have learned to become increasingly okay living with tension (not the headache-inducing-stress kind, but the things-are-not-so-black-and-white kind). The more I discover about God, the more I discover that He is full of mystery. Sometimes I feel like the deeper I go with Him, the more there is to know. Even the foundational Christian belief that God is one but also three (Father, Son and Holy Spirit) is a marvelously mind-bending and mysterious truth in tension. It’s everywhere.

Yep, life in the Kingdom is a life full of truths in tension. Jesus himself was a walking truth in tension. He was fully God, yet he was also fully man. He possessed all the power of the universe, yet he humbled himself and surrendered himself to be put to death by those who hated him. He was truly all-powerful, yet he was unwaveringly all-good. He was completely holy, but he associated with prostitutes and all kinds of “despised” people.

Surrendered Marriage - Many Mysteries

In order to take your marriage to deepest level, I think you have to be willing to embrace a certain amount of mystery. Yes, mystery can be messy. If you are the kind of person who likes their truth neatly packaged, wrapped up plainly in the clean lines of black and white, let me encourage you to step back and take another look. Peer into the gray. Look for the mystery.

When it comes to growing your marriage, you may have to be willing to temper what you think you know about it with some things you never considered. You may have to hold up your current set of marriage truths against another, polar opposite, seemingly incongruent set of truths.

For example, maybe you believe the biblical notion that a husband is given authority from God to lead his marriage and home. But have you also considered the truth that being a leader has nothing to do with being the boss but has to do with self-sacrifice and laying down your life?

Maybe you believe in the importance of selfless love and sacrificial giving in your marriage. Do you realize it’s okay for you to be selfless yet also have and express your own needs?

The Bible says that in marriage two become one.  But do you also realize that oneness does not mean you give up your identity or that you stop being who you are?

Maybe you understand that the Bible says a wife should live in submission to her husband. But do you know that a biblically submitted wife can still be strong, use her gifts fully and totally thrive in a rightly ordered marriage? Do you know it’s actually the husband’s job to help make that happen?

Stay Tuned, Join In

I’ve got a whole bag full of Surrendered Marriage truths in tension like these to examine more deeply as part of this series.

Part of my purpose is to challenge your assumptions and presumptions when it comes to marriage. I hope to stretch you a little. I hope to make you think.

Embrace the mystery. Jump into the tension.  And I truly hope you’ll jump into the conversation.

Do you have some truth-tension type questions you’d like to see addressed here?

Are there mysteries about marriage that you’d like to see examined more closely?

Are there some things I’ve written in past blog posts that you think need to be counterbalanced by another truth?

Face it, most of us like things black and white. We like clearly defined boundaries. We like to know if we’re in or out, if we are winning or losing, if we are OK or not OK. Such things make life safe and easy. No mess, no fuss, no fuzzy ambiguities.

To an extent I think many in the church are afraid to tackle some of the tougher issues related to the biblical truths about marriage because marriage is an inherently messy business. Marriage doesn’t tend to fit neatly into our little black and white boxes. That’s because God, the one who designed marriage, doesn’t either.

You see the Kingdom of God is full of truths in tension, things that are completely true but that must be held in healthy tension against other things that are also completely true. Consider a few example truths about God:

• God is completely sovereign. AND God gives us free will.
• Jesus is fully God. AND Jesus is fully man.
• God is trinity (Father, Son, Holy Spirit). AND God is one.

In each case, if you stick only with one half of the truth, you get a distorted and incomplete picture of who God is.

There are plenty of marriage truths that must also be held in tension. It’s when people try to isolate on one part of a truth that the missing tension leads to unhealthy imbalance. The strongest marriages are willing to embrace the tension, the fuzziness if you will, and live in the continual pursuit of proper balance.

So since I’m going for tension, I’ll start with one that’s sure to create some:

• God gives authority to the husband in a marriage (head of the home). AND a husband is to display that authority by loving his wife with the same kind of sacrificial love that Christ shows for the church.

Feel the tension? If that’s not enough, here’s one more:

• A wife is to submit to and show respect for her husband. AND a husband is to love his wife as he loves himself.

Each of these truths and counter-truths are clearly stated in various portions of Ephesians 5.

I posted a while back how many attempt to distort and refute what the Bible says about marriage by focusing on part of the truth without the counterbalance of what else the scriptures say. For example, if all you look at is the submission part of what is taught in Ephesians 5, it’s easy to draw completely wrong conclusion that women are to be subjugated and subservient to men. Likewise if you only see what that chapter says about a husband being the head of his wife, without reading on to see what that looks like, you fail to see that the model for leadership is Jesus laying down his life for his bride.

Those who use the scriptures as a weapon, either to beat women into submission or to paint the biblical concept of marriage as unfair and unacceptable, generally pick and choose what parts they accept or reject. I don’t think that’s helpful or wise.

If it’s in the Word, it’s in there for a reason. You can paint me as a fundamentalist or a fanatic, but I believe our job is to figure out what that reason is and apply it to our lives, with the help of the Holy Spirit’s illumination. Yeah, that’s messy business. Yeah, it can be hard to work through and apply to the infinite variety of marriage relationships that exist. Yeah, it probably means making some mistakes and occasionally having to retrace some steps (or mis-steps). Yeah, there is a potential for mis-use and abuse of the truth. But I don’t think the answer is to ignore it.

The fuzzy mess is OK with me, and I think it’s OK with God. Is it with you?