Your Expectations in Marriage and Heart Hurts

How do we manage our expectations in marriage? It is so hard to gather the courage to address something with our spouse, share our heart, and be vulnerable. How do we move forward when it isn’t received as we hoped or anticipated? 

A good first step is acknowledging that we are not responsible for our spouse’s ability to handle our vulnerability. It can be so disheartening when we think we can somehow anticipate their reactions. 

Our heart wants to close off, and we want to shut down our emotions. Perhaps we vow that we won’t be vulnerable again or share our hearts again. Many times, I was tempted to stop trying, and I felt so responsible for how I shared my feelings and analyzed what I could have done differently.

Secondly, take a minute to sit with your feelings. Did your spouse shrug your comments off? Did they seem to be indifferent? Or maybe they were reactive and thought you were attacking them? Whatever the scenario is, if you have been disappointed and hurt, and you are not feeling like your vulnerability was honoured, take a moment to feel what comes to the surface.

Maybe that looks like sitting on your couch, hopping in your car or going for a walk. Whatever space you choose (or can choose), take a moment to feel the feelings. For me, it often manifests as anger initially, and then when I let the anger come to the surface, it shows me that it’s sadness. 

Anger is discussed often in therapy as a secondary emotion. This means that anger reveals something under the surface. The true emotion is often presented as anger first. I think often, especially for men, anger feels like the safer emotion to display. Women tend to be a bit more comfortable with sadness. But, and this is important, both men and women can experience anger. As well as sadness. They may just have a different way of getting there, or not, as I can’t tell you, many times I immediately go to an anger response. 

How do we move from our anger response to what we may be feeling? I think often we can sort of know what helps us. We may feel guilty about how we do that. We may feel like we need some beautiful, cathartic looking way, but surprise, it often can look like the mundane. What do I mean by that? Let me explain with an example.

I love cleaning. Okay, some days I hate it, but sometimes it just makes me feel great. I feel accomplished. I see the change, it’s a transformative thing we can do. We vacuum, and there are those sweet vacuum lines or the crunch of sucking things up! Yeah, it can be that good. Maybe cleaning is not your thing. Maybe you write, draw, paint, sing, dance, pray or scream into a pillow.

It is okay to distract yourself while you allow the emotions to come to the surface. I used to think that a distraction was exactly that. But it is a tool to get us from one place to another. Sometimes we can’t transition smoothly from one feeling to another and need a little buffer room. If you’re treating distraction as a way to never revisit something, then that is a different conversation, but if it is used properly, I think it is highly effective. 

Now that your heart is aware of what your feelings have been trying to tell you, it’s time to manage your heart. How do you manage your heart? If you are aware of how hurt you are, then maybe it’s time to communicate that hurt to your spouse. That could look like saying, “I feel hurt when I express my feelings because you are important to me, and I need to know you care about me and my feelings.” 

Managing your heart requires you to believe that you are worth it and that it is okay to have your feelings known. Managing your heart, if you have faith, also looks like believing that God has your heart, too. He is with you and wants to help you and your spouse. Managing your heart is also learning how to manage your expectations. Learning from the experience and how you, as a couple, can move forward, doing things differently. Hopefully better next time!

**I am providing some suggestions based on an uncomplicated scenario, and by that I mean simply that if you are in an abusive situation or suspect abuse, please reach out for help. This platform is not a place where I can advise on your personal situation. I want you to know, if you’re reading this, that if you are being physically, mentally, psychologically, sexually or spiritually abused, there is help available.