Letting Go of Expectations: A Miracle

The Angst of a Dirty Kitchen

            It is amazing how many emotions a sink full of dirty dishes used to stir up in me. I could  have been feeling great; maybe I was able to go for a girl’s night out or had a meeting to attend. But when I would arrive home to a dirty kitchen, I would be devastated. My self-worth would plummet, and I felt as if I was unloved and unworthy of love.

       This was a perpetual problem in our marriage when we had a houseful of kids. I was usually working part-time outside the home, car-pooling for three different schools, and assisting in our business, not to mention helping kids with homework, fixing meals, etc. .  My fantasy was to come home to a clean house where the laundry was folded and put away, the kitchen was cleaned, the counters were wiped, and the kids had clean faces and fresh-smelling hair. I was deeply hurt when my expectations were unmet, as they usually were.

Make Mom Happy…Not!

            It didn’t seem to matter how many times I explained to them how much it meant to me to come home to a clean house and I took it personally. I felt that it should be on the top on everyone’s list: Make. Mom. Happy. But it wasn’t. My kids, all boys if that means anything, had to be told each and every time to clean the kitchen, or whatever the chore was, and be given detailed instructions, because if I didn’t specifically say what I wanted done, it would not occur to them to do it. And my husband was a bit the same way. It was if they all had blinders on that prevented them from seeing anything below eye level and were perfectly happy not knowing what was happening beneath their line of vision. They could not comprehend why it mattered to me. They did not understand that my self-esteem was tied to how clean my house was or that, for me, it translated into feeling that they loved me.

          Did this perpetual problem get solved? It did but not in the way I expected. Of course, not having kids home anymore has made a huge difference in keeping a clean house and my husband is much more helpful now.  But the real change occurred in me. In the book, "The Seven Principles of Making Marriage Work, " John Gottman points out:

“It takes a lot of understanding and proficiency in attunement to be able to really hear what your partner is saying when he or she is upset.” (2015)

 I would also argue that it takes understanding and attunement to know what lies at the bottom of our own negative feelings. I really didn’t know at the time why I would get so upset and hurt over the dirty kitchen. It was out of proportion to the problem, and therefore, incomprehensible to me and my husband. 

The Miracle of Letting Go  

After years of introspection and painful honesty with myself, I realized that I was unfairly expecting my husband and family to express their love for me in the way that I wanted them to, not in the way they felt it. H. Wallace Goddard said in “Drawing Heaven into Your Marriage:"

“We enter marriage expecting our needs to be met. We even decide how they should be met. Then, when our partners are unable to meet all of our needs, we become resentful.” (2009)

           

When I learned to de-tangle my feelings of self-worth from the cleanliness of my house, I was able to turn a perpetual problem into a solvable one. I needed to accept that my sons (and my husband) did not care about the house in the same way that I did and that it had nothing to do with their love for me.  I let go of my expectation that they would spontaneously decide to clean it the way that I wanted it to be done, and when I was finally able to distance myself emotionally from the issue, I was better able to find objective ways to handle it. 

            Too often we get upset with our spouse because they do not see things through the same lens that we do. It is only when we take a step back and examine our own perspective that we can understand our motivations. We can then deal with things in a less emotional and intense way and create an atmosphere of give and take in the relationship. Miracles occur when we let go of our angst and accept love the way it is offered instead of how we expect it. 

References

Gottman, J. M., & Silver, N. (2015). The seven principles for making marriage work. New York: Crown Publishers.

Goddard, H. W. (2009) Drawing heaven into your marriage. Cedar Hills, UT: Joymap Publishing. Retrieved from https://content.byui.edu/file/821fd904-e409-49a9-b078-7fff99c33387/1/Drawing%20Heaven%20into%20Your%20Marriage.pdf