We all have deals, you know. Some of the provisions are on the table and mutually agreed upon. Many go unspoken, particularly when it comes to getting what we want from those closest to us.
By the time I was out of pigtails, I understood the expression Buyer Beware.
My parents taught me that nothing was for free. There were no such things as random acts of kindness; everything had a hidden, associated price tag. If they were going to do something nice for either me or my brother, there’d be a pound of flesh abstracted somewhere down the road.
Sometimes the price was innocuous. Sometimes, not so much.
A ride to the movies on Friday night might cost a Saturday morning washing dusty knick-knacks, or delivering Avon orders; you could never really tell.
Rafting on Bolton Lake with friends could mean being elected Dad’s “therapist” the next few times he flew into a drunken rage. A trade I would have passed on had I ever been allowed the choice.
I learned that it was wiser to do things on my own rather than risk a bill I couldn’t afford to pay.
I also learned that, in order to have my needs met, I had to lean heavily on The Law of Reciprocity.
Here’s what Wikipedia has to say about The Law of Reciprocity:
The focus of reciprocity is centered more on trading favors… With reciprocity, a small favor can produce a sense of obligation to a larger return favor. This feeling of obligation allows an action to be reciprocated with another action. Reciprocity works because from a young age people are taught to return favors and to disregard this teaching will lead to the social stigma of being an ingrate.
When I married my Iranian husband, it was clearly understood (and verbally agreed upon) that I would move to Iran, do all of the housekeeping and child rearing, comport myself like a proper Muslim, and be respectful to him and to his family.
In return, he would make the money, send me back to America every other year, and manage the myriad of responsibilities outside the home.
My unspoken deal, however, was a lot more convoluted.
Following the model I’d grown up with, I decided that, in exchange for being agreeable, for swallowing my unhappiness, for letting him run the show, for pretending to be someone I was not, he would stay with me forever and let me be a baby.
He was, according to my secret rules, never to call me on my lack of responsibility.
Suffice it to say, he wasn’t nearly as compliant as I had been.
Secret rules? Unspoken expectations?
Pumpkin, they create chaos, confusion, and resentment.
For those of us who harbor them, and those expected to pay the price.
In Fearless Living, Rhonda Britten has a lot to say about unspoken expectations:
When you expect something from someone else but never express that expectation, you are asking the other person to be a mind reader. Of course, almost inevitably, the other person will fail to guess what it is you expect… expectations that are unspoken, unrealistic, and unmet can cause us to do such things as take the wrong fork in the road and punish the people we love. When things don’t turn out the way we want them to, we simply feel baffled and powerless…. When our silent expectations are a primary factor in the way we think, speak, and listen, disappointment becomes a way of life.
Lifelong disappointment ? Ruh-Roh!
The resentment and anger and sadness you feel when others refuse to intuit what you want will never go away. That’s the stuff that spews out sideways. The stuff that begets eating disorders, addictive behaviors, and passive aggressive outbursts.
Don’t give me that look! You know exactly what I’m talking about.
The reason so many of our expectations go unspoken?
We know that if we actually put these fucked up requirements out there on the negotiating table, we’d be dragged straight to the hospital and checked for stroke. We know, deep down inside, that our tit for a tats are ludicrous, damaging, and utterly unreasonable.
So, my little friend. Do you know what yours are?
What expectations, spoken or unspoken, are failing to be met?
What might an honest conversation open up?
It’s hard enough to negotiate the spoken provisions of the deal, let alone the two sets of unspoken expectations operating just beneath the surface. Continue to operate with a hidden agenda, and you doom the relationship.
It’s time to play above board.
