Well, the weather for my Week 41 hike was stunning and I couldn’t. Get off. The trail.  So nice to have a mid-June Saturday with low humidity and highs around 80 degrees!  Of course, this kind of weather makes for a crowded trail…which meant more people (and of course their dogs) out on the Gunpowder during my hike.  Back in the day, this made for a nerve-wracking hike, as I would tense up every time someone approached (either with or without a dog) and hope that maybe this time Kirby wouldn’t flip out.

Alas, it happened every time.  No amount of stern talking or calm reassurances would ever do the trick.  I would end up feeling embarrassed, stressed, and thinking maybe I shouldn’t even be bringing Kirby with me on nice days.

Those were the days when I kept expecting Kirby to be different from who he was.  And that kind of expectation, which never got met, by the way, never failed to generate a huge amount of anxiety in me.  What a fun way to feel!

No.

I realized after one or two of those nerve-wracking hikes that I needed to expect Kirby to flip out and be prepared.  I needed to stay alert for other hikers and give myself extra time to walk Kirby off the trail a few yards.  More importantly, I needed to have distracting tasty treats at the ready in my pocket.  And lo and behold, my dread and anxiety of running into other people and dogs with Kirby in tow started to diminish.

On this week’s hike, a very well-mannered pit-bull walked within two feet of Kirby (there was no way for me to move further off the trail at that spot), and beyond one anxious yip, Kirby stayed seated and fixated on the treat I was offering.  We’re making progress, people.

But I had to let go of expecting Kirby to be different first.  I had to actually count on him behaving like a lunatic and adjust my strategy to accommodate that lunacy.  Now, I’d like to think we both enjoy our hikes even more.

I wish I could say I always have practiced this in my relationships.  But I haven’t.  I can honestly say that the bulk of the angst I have experienced with guy after guy has resulted from my own wishful thinking in the face of hard evidence.

Most of the men I have had long-term relationships with have been honest for the most part.  One in particular…the guy I dated for five years and got the closest to marrying…was always very honest and open about his feelings.  There were many wonderful things about that relationship, but even amidst mutual expressions of love and genuine affection, he was always careful to let me know that marriage wasn’t really on his radar.

After we had dated for a year, I hoped maybe he had changed his mind.

Nope.

After two years, he suggested moving in together to save money on rent and expenses.  My 27-year-old self decided that was a great idea, because surely it meant he was starting to think about marriage!

Nope.

After three years of cohabitating, he suggested we buy a house together.  “This is it!” I thought to myself.  “SURELY he would never ask me to go halvsies on a house if he wasn’t thinking about getting married!”

“That’s a great question,” he replied when I asked about it.  “Maybe it’s time we got some couples therapy and figured it out once and for all before we sign a mortgage together.”

“GREAT!” I thought.  “He’s so committed to the idea that he’s willing to do couple’s therapy with me!”

I immediately ran down to Rite Aid and bought a pile of Brides magazines.

And then, after several weeks of meetings with the counselor, my boyfriend sat in our final session, looked me in the eye, and told me he didn’t think he would ever marry me.

That was back in 1998.  This guy and I are still great friends (in fact, as it turned out, I did end up being in a wedding with him, but he was marrying another fabulous individual and I was just happily doing a reading).  And I chalk a lot of that up to the fact that he never led me on.  Every time I pressed him about marriage, he would hold his ground.  He liked things exactly the way they were and he didn’t ever feel the nudge to take that marital step with me. (There’s a blog post in there somewhere about the fact that a lot of times the guy is not going to buy the cow if he can get the milk for free, but that’s for another time.)

I could’ve saved myself a lot of tears and heartache if I had stopped expecting him to be different.  I’m not saying people don’t change or that time doesn’t grow two people together, but I can honestly say that given the number of tearful and tense conversations we had about the possibility of getting married, it was my own fault for not taking the guy at face value for who he was – a guy who loved me but was never going to marry me – and moving on a bit earlier than I did.

Of course, nothing is wasted.  I don’t regret a day of that relationship.  But I am curious sometimes where my path would’ve taken me had I accepted things for what they were a year or two earlier.

This concept isn’t just handy for dating relationships, either.  Imagine if you went to work tomorrow expecting your colleague to be super annoying like he always is.  Instead of getting angry that another day has come and he hasn’t changed into your dream co-worker, you can smile to yourself and say “right on schedule” and get on with your day.  You can plan for his annoying-ness (is that a word?) and skip the part where you stress out wondering how he’s going to act today.

Expecting people to be who they are instead of continually expecting them to change into a version of themselves that would make you happier will actually MAKE YOU HAPPIER.  They can’t disappoint you when you are expecting them to be themselves. You can plan ahead of time how you will react to the expected behavior and go into each situation feeling calm instead of irritated/annoyed/murderous.

Try it this week and let me know in the Comments section below how it turned out!  If you have a particularly complex situation in which you’d like to work through this concept, why not shoot me an email and schedule a free session with me?  I’d love to talk about it with you and help you feel better! Plus you get extra credit if you correctly identified the butterfly in the third picture as the Great Spangled Fritillary!

Until next week, peeps!