In the past, I’ve written about unspoken expectations. My friend, Brooke Castillo, calls this The Manual. Just like your dishwasher comes with a manual all about how to make it work properly, we tend to have unspoken rules about how the people in our lives should behave.
Recently, my husband and I went running together in a nearby neighborhood. This particular neighborhood has a cloverleaf pattern of streets and we’ve both run there before, but never together. We parked at the bottom of the stem of the cloverleaf.
We started out running together, but my husband is faster than me, so he pulled ahead very quickly. I followed behind until we got to a point where I couldn’t see him anymore. Once he was out of sight, I started running in loops.
I didn’t see my husband for a while but I didn’t really notice. I was in my own little world. Eventually I saw him running toward me. When we met, he said, “Where’d you go? I’ve been running for a mile and I didn’t see you. I was about to call the police!”
Huh?
I’d been running to go a certain distance, not a certain route or time. When we met up back at the car, my husband told me he runs the whole neighborhood twice from start to finish to get to the mileage he wants. But that’s not how I do it. I just do a few loops of this part of the neighborhood, then a couple of loops of that part. I don’t have a set route, I just go until I get to a certain time or distance and then I head back to the car.
I realized my husband had a very definite idea about what I should have done during that run. In his manual for running in this neighborhood, everyone is supposed to run the same route. When I didn’t, he became worried and upset. He couldn’t imagine why I wasn’t doing what he expected me to be doing. But I didn’t have a copy of his manual.
We all have many instruction manuals in our heads and we assume everyone has the same manual. But no one has the same manual. They’re all different.
My manual for running in that neighborhood was totally different than my husband’s manual. Mine just says, “Run in any pattern for x miles and head back to the car.”
Having different manuals when it comes to a running route doesn’t cause much suffering. Having different manuals when it comes to raising kids or sharing chores or even what time is bedtime can cause a lot of suffering.
It helps me to realize everyone around me has a manual for me—everyone has a different idea about what I should be doing, thinking, saying, and feeling.
Knowing that allows me to step back and see things from another person’s perspective, instead of stewing over why that person is so disapproving of me.
This past summer I went to a wake for a beloved aunt. I told family members at the wake I wouldn’t be at the funeral in the morning because I was leaving on vacation with my husband and son. I had thought about changing my flight, but knew my aunt would have been the first person to tell me to go, live my life, and enjoy my time with my family, so I decided not to change the flight.
One friend, hearing I was flying out early in the morning, asked me: “Can’t you change your flight?”
Knowing where this was going, I answered simply, “I could. I chose not to.”
She didn’t say anything else, but I could tell her manual for me in this situation (and I’m sure for herself if she’d been the one with the vacation plans) said I needed to change my flight and attend the funeral.
Luckily, I realized that was her manual, not mine. My aunt’s manual, I’m sure, said I could go. Mine, too.
The point here isn’t that I got to on vacation, it’s that I did what was right for me and didn’t let another person’s unspoken expectations lead me away from being true to myself.
What are your unspoken expectations?