Expectations Exceed Performance

© 2000 Harlan L. Jacobsen

How to be unhappy, married or single

Marriage and love relationships used to be functional. Today they are "affectional". You used to love one another because you needed each other, and now you need each other only because and as long as you love each other.

You must learn that love and individuals both have their limitations.

The old myth that there is only one man or woman for you in your life has gone down the tube. If you are genuinely capable of love, you can love many times and many people.

Second marriages, for example, are often a much stronger love than the first marriage.
The old myth that there was only one love for each person has brought much devastation to many people over the years.
- The idea that if you just marry that certain someone it will cure all your problems is a very cruel hoax.
- The idea that all you have to do is find them and they will do the rest will get you nowhere
True love is a sort of form of prejudice.
- You learn to love what is available, what is near, what you meet.
- You feel you can only love that certain person you found, when in actuality there are ten thousand members of the opposite sex you would love even more if you ever met them, but, of course, you'll never meet them all.
- You can certainly meet some other you can love more.
However, you have expectations which no one person is ever going to be able to fulfill - no matter how kind, understanding and loving an individual they turn out to be.
- If your relationship does not deliver all the levels you expected, then the negative gap opens and degenerates, a gap that widens as you find that what you expected and what you actually see and feel are two different things.
You need to stop dreaming the impossible dream and having impossible expectations of utopia. Instead you wind up disillusioned, disappointed and crushed by the whole thing. You erroneously feel that your expectations were realistic, but you just had the wrong person.
- This myth is very painful to give up. Reality intrudes.
- The old fairytale where the magic mate appears at the last moment and solves all the problems and they live happily ever after just does not work out in actuality
- This has all been reinforced now with TV commercials, advertising, movies, all, in fact, escapes from reality.
Singles now seek a partner as an embodiment of all their unrealistic fantasies. When the partner cannot live up to these unrealistic expectations, they part bitterly.
- They each blame the other and the dreamers go back to their fairyland world, since they failed to change their lover into the imaginary person they expected.
You must not surrender your ability to feel and to act. If you surrender to the 'one and only' theory, you subordinate your will.
- You lose touch with your real self because you are afraid if you act on your sentiments, you will, in fact, lose your "one and only."
- You stop being your real self.
You need to develop self-assertion, self reliance, selfdevelopment and interest. A realistic lasting love is a " we" feeling.
- You must learn that love and individuals both have their limitations.
- To learn to realize the limitations takes real maturity on your part.
You must learn to love life, to learn to grow and change. When you learn to love life, to love growth and aliveness in general, love children, love ideas, and to love a man or woman, you find you can love many things and many times.
- Love and love again; with mature, realistic "expectations".

Sign up for
Free Dating Again newsletter of tips to help make new
relationships a part of your life.
Edited by Harlan.
click here
to sign up

Free Email 8 Day Course, on Dating Again, "Get Going" to a better life. Start your course by sending a blank email.
click here

Reprint Our Articles
Information Here

Submit Problems
and Questions for Divorce Support Group Discussion
Click here

FREE 5 DAY EMAIL DIVORCE COURSE, Five Secrets of MOVING ON TO A GREAT NEW LIFE.
End the divorce misery's. Start your "Moving on" by sending a blank email,
click here

Visit Divorce Recovery 101, with Divorce Help, Advice, Tips, Divorce Law, Statistics And Information
click here

Singles Talk shop, chat about single life adjustment at this site...
click here

Dating Again 101
is our new site for
help in getting back
into the dating
world successfully,
click here

Sign up to receive
The Divorce Recovery 101 newsletter of the
latest help in moving on to a new life.
Edited by Harlan
click here
to sign up.

Single Life Coach
is our site for those
worked thru their
divorce and are
working on a great
new life as a
single person,
click here

Country Singles
is our midwest Newspapers
online site with midwest singles clubs calendars, personals, archives of articles etc.
click here

Our Free
Country Singles
newsletter edited
by Janet Jacobsen
Sign up today!

AZ Single Scene
is our Arizona newspapers
online site. With AZ
singles clubs calendars
of events, AZ personals, archives of articles etc.
click here

Our Arizona Singles newsletter with Janet's tips on being single in Arizona
Sign Up

18 Wheel Singles
is our web site for
those in the trucking
industry and interested in meeting those in the industry
click here

Sexual Singles Information Site ...."Respectable" Sex Again 101, click here

Our Advice On Your Mature Sex Life, A Sex Education and Information Article on What Works, click here

Mature Sex Education for Sexual Singles part 1. "Guilt without Sex", click here

For Our Singles
Switchboard of over
500 links to sites of
help to singles,
click here

For Some of the over 100 general sites such as weather etc.
that we maintain
click here

Subscribe Free Dating Again Newsletter
Click here

Subscribe Free Divorce Recovery Newsletter
Click here