BOOM!  This line hit me like a ton of bricks when I heard it.  I know it was credited to someone else, but I heard this from Chris Williamson on the Modern Wisdom podcast.  It perfectly encapsulates a lot of the worlds problems these days:

Unexpressed thoughts and emotions leading to misalignment of ideas.

Although I have been in sales of some kind for my whole professional career; I knew that setting the right expectations to ensure a happy client was the best approach to take.  I tried my best to not over-promise and always have a realistic outlook on the transaction, ensuring I was operating with integrity.  I began to apply this same approach in my dating life as well, but it took a while to kick in.   I have been much better about this in my marriage, but for many of my “encounters” I was awful about this.  I somehow thought my person of the moment should be well aware of my preferences, desires or somehow reading my mind.  Um, hello… that is not how life works.  And to think I had the audacity to be mad about unmet expectations and misaligned desires  :-/

One of the best skills I have developed over time is the ability to have tough conversations.  Life is full of them, and likely we all should be having far more of them than we do.  It is easy to default to the idea that you don’t want to hurt someone’s feelings, so you keep your mouth shut and smile.  But the ramifications of that are rarely good.  I had two relationships that spanned the majority of my twenties, and the second one I thought I wanted to be with for the rest of my life.  I was optimizing for the wrong thing, see blog 451  I was convinced that since this person was the most attractive person I had dated for an extended period of time, that she was the one I wanted to be with.  I was amazed how many people in my life told me she was not the right one for me after we broke up.  Might have been nice to hear that before I started looking at engagement rings, but that is another story and another blog post.

After this, I was very disillusioned about long term relationships, and I vowed to not be in one for a while.  That “while” lasted twelve years, as I casually dated my way through a lot of people.  In the beginning of this run, I did not communicate that I wasn’t looking for a long term relationship, I just was aloof and distant, thinking this would get the message across.  It didn’t.  In some ways, it probably made me appear as the challenge that women seem to love.  The thought of melting my icy heart and changing for her was a resounding theme, and it ended badly for a lot of them.  I didn’t mean to break hearts and disappoint people, I just didn’t understand what I was doing.  Hmm, better stated, I didn’t take real responsibility for what I was doing.  But like most things, slowly I learned and I got better at it.

I was not willing to have the hard conversation upfront that said what I was about.  I mislead people, through lack of information much more than anything else, and led them to believe that I was on the same path they were.  I wasn’t.  I was still broken inside from my previous relationship, and I never addressed that head on to close those gaps.  But I am also a good guy, nice and respectful, polite and interested in other people and what makes them tick.  I listened.  I paid for dinner.  No wonder people were so confused as to why my actions were incongruent with my relationship plans.

Fast forward to the last five years of that span and I learned how to be honest and upfront about what I was looking for.  I became the guy that you see for a while after your own break up, the guy that makes you feel desirable again, breathing new life into you after someone ripped your heart out.  I was a relationship rehab program, helping you heal up and recover before getting re-released into the wilds of the dating world.  I rebuilt your self esteem, propping you up in a pseudo-relationship that helped you get through the tough time in between real relationships.  I filled the gap in social and physical connection for the time being, and then they moved on to someone else who had better and more long term intentions.  It was the role I settled into, and I played it to critical acclaim for that timeframe.

I had the talk down pat, practiced in my head a thousand times in advance.  “I am not a relationship guy, I am offering you only the following….”  I laid it all out, over the phone or on the first date, fully aware of the risk that I’d get hung up on or the drink that I was going to pay for throw in my face.  But, this is setting the right expectations, not leading someone on only to switch gears on them not long into the process.  I was no longer living the process of unspoken expectations leading to resentment.  I was willing to risk going home alone for a clear conscience, and an unkeyed paintjob on my car.  But it was the right thing to do, the moral thing.  I was now showing the woman sitting in front of me the proper amount of respect, laying my cards on the table and allowing them to make an informed decision on what happens next.  Do you want to guess how this worked out most of the time?

I was typically met with the response of “I’m a grown-ass woman, I can handle it.”  This proved to be less than accurate much of the time, but I did not hold myself responsible for someone catching a case of the feels about a month into things.  Some were mad, others blamed themselves later for agreeing to this “arrangement” in the first place.  But for the most part, I was not the one they blamed, as I was very upfront about what I was offering.  I didn’t con them into it, I didn’t use liquor as a tool to accomplish a short term goal.  I laid it all out, in plain English, and awaited the consequences.  In all cases the respect was appreciated, and in more cases than not, the offer was accepted.  In a few cases, a quick departure or even a drink throw in my face was the outcome.

I can promise you, your life will get better when you learn to have the hard conversations.  If you leave Unspoken Expectation unexpressed, you will have some huge resentment coming your way.  You can consider it premeditated, because you were in a position to avoid a messy outcome, but you were to chicken to do the right thing.  Be an adult, and picture yourself on the other side of the equation, as at some point you will be.  How would you want this handled?

As always, I wish you luck in your endeavors.