The Expectations Trap

Sometimes we get caught up in the emotion. 

It may be lack of perspective where we don’t appreciate what we have, and don’t appreciate that most Americans are far better off than those in other parts of the world and far better off than our grandparents were only 50 years ago.  We get excited about new opportunities, adventures or acquisitions and forget about gratitude.  Instant gratification trumps planning for the future.  Sometimes expectations are so high that we set ourselves up for disappointments. 

It may be lack of critical thinking.  Looking at the facts is never as much fun as living in a pretend world or persuading ourselves that the details don’t really matter.  Again we develop unrealistic expectations and are let down by reality, sometimes seriously.

Two recent stories serve as interesting examples.

A table on this website shows the average wedding cost in the United States for 2014 is up to $31,213 (excluding honeymoon).  Information comes from “The Knot 2014 Real Weddings Study” of 16,000 couples.  Now this survey is not going to include couples that just stop by a Justice of the Peace or have a private wedding.  It most likely includes formal weddings, those involving wedding planners and such. Also an average can be skewed by a few very expensive Hollywood affairs, but still! – That number represents the cost of a respectable middle class house in 1970.

It would not be out of line to mention that according to information from The Economist, Americans lead the industrialized world in both frequency of divorce and brevity of marriages.  Divorced couples stay together only about eight years before going separate ways.

This is clearly an expectations problem.  Little girls grow up dreaming about their wedding and being the star of the show.  (If the smallest thing goes wrong the whole affair may be declared a disaster – all that money down the drain!)  We know what little boys grow up thinking about, which motivates them to keep the peace and go along with any plans.  The point is:  it’s the marriage that counts, not the wedding.  It’s a shame that in America today it’s likely that your tattoo will last longer than your average marriage.  Let’s just hope the people spending $31,000 on a wedding are not the same ones owing an average of $29,000 on student loans. 

The second example comes from this USA Today report on low morale in the military.  “More than half of some 770,000 soldiers are pessimistic about their future in the military and nearly as many are unhappy in their jobs, despite a six-year, $287 million campaign to make troops more optimistic and resilient.”  This clearly says something about military leadership, but I was astonished to read a summary of comments from two sources that “the results are not surprising” given the realities of “[f]ourteen years of war and recent decisions to downsize.”  Wait a minute; if war is a reason for low morale, it’s pretty clear these soldiers joined with unrealistic expectations.  That’s what an army does: train for war or go to war.  People shoot at you and you shoot back.

I recently heard of a young man who couldn’t find a job and decided to join the army.  While he was in basic training, both he and his wife were surprised and angry that he couldn’t take time off to attend his daughter’s first communion.  They apparently didn’t understand that members of the military often spend extended periods of time away from their families and often do not get to choose when or for how long that occurs.  They were too busy concentrating on the prospect of getting a first assignment in Hawaii.  Imagine their surprise if he goes to war instead!  With these expectations – partly the fault of overzealous recruiters only interested in making the “numbers” and partly the fault of the enlistee failing to do enough research – it is not a mystery that morale is low.

Sometimes we get caught up in the emotion and forget that realistic and appropriate expectations are so important to a happy life.

Are We Over-scienced?

In this highly technological age, it seems we have become too dependent on science to provide all the answers.  We are prone to look to and take at face value the judgments of scientists on many questions that are easily answered with common sense and experience.  Furthermore, when advertisers come up with impressive, scientific-sounding phrases or make reference to some arcane scientific concept, we are too overwhelmed and impressed to challenge the conclusions.

During my master gardener training we were given a good example.  A neighbor asks, “What’s the best time to trim my tree in front?”  The neighbor rightly understands that there are more ideal times for trimming certain trees, times of year when the tree will be less stressed.  Before answering, the master gardener wonders why the neighbor wants to trim the tree.  The neighbor responds, “Every time I mow the lawn that low branch hits me in the face.”  The right answer of when to trim the tree has moved from the realm of science into the realm of common sense.  “Trim off the branch before you mow the lawn again.”

A second example came a few weeks ago from a health report on local television news.  The essence of the story can be summed up as:  It’s summer and the grocery store has a good stock of nice, fresh fruit, which is good for you.  Buy it and eat it.  There was a lot of talk about the health benefits and antioxidants, but the main message was to eat fruit.

My grandmother was born in Eastern Europe in the 1890s.  After immigrating to the US, she lived near New York City and kept a small vegetable garden in the backyard.  She knew that fruits and vegetables were good for you.  Her mantra during meal times was, “Eat your green stuff!”  No one had to tell her about antioxidants and other exotic components of fruits and vegetables.  It was just common knowledge.  Just like most people today, Grandma didn’t know what an antioxidant was or how they were good for you, but unlike most people today, it wouldn’t have mattered to her at all.

Finally, this headline made the fluffy news recently:  “Huge Weddings Lead to Better Marriage, Says New Study.”  I read several different articles on this research report from the National Marriage Project at the University of Virginia primarily because the headlines were so misleading.  The facts are:  they interviewed 418 couples and split them up by size of their wedding, yielding two or more smaller sampling groups.  They found that those with larger weddings, more than 150 guests reported themselves as happy more often – not that they were consistently happier.  No evidence shows that the large wedding led to happiness or the tendency to stay married.  (Correlation does not prove causation.)  More likely some conditions that led to a happy marriage were also more conducive to having a big wedding:  greater financial resources and a larger support system to name just two.  Finally, the study followed the couples for only 5 years, which is hardly a long time for a marriage, and depended on self-reporting, which has highly questionable validity.  A big wedding is not, as the headline suggests, a key to a happier marriage.

The trouble today is that we depend too much on scientific recommendations and scientific jargon and not enough on what we already know.  Advertisers constantly try to wow us or scare us with the results of research studies and trigger words like antioxidants, justice, organic, sustainable, and probiotics, or chemicals, low testosterone, mercury, quantum mechanics and carbon dioxide.  (Whatever happened to Beta-carotene?) They know we daydream about and will pay good money for magic answers to lose weight, to get rich and to stay married, all the while knowing in our hearts that all these are only achievable with hard work.

Professional Proposal Planners?

It's hard to believe how badly off we are after the recession or how serious the gap between the very rich and the middle class when there are businesses out there to help plan marriage proposals.  Apparently it’s not good enough to get down on one knee and pop the question!  No, you go out and hire someone for guidance.  We hear about young people graduating from college with huge debts, struggling to find a job, but there seem to be enough of them to support businesses that help you plan how to make a major production out of what used to be a simple personal interaction.

Beyond that, the average wedding now costs $26,542 – other websites give similar numbers but take care to notice their sponsors and sampling technique.  Even so that seems an awful lot to spend on the heels of a recession when employment security is still low along with retirement savings.  Could all this talk about the middle class disappearing be more hype?  Since the median household income in the United States is just under $50,000 (see blog dated January 9, 2012), this average cost of a wedding represents more than half a year’s earnings spent on a one-day celebration.  Let’s apply some perspective – moderation and distinguishing between wants and needs – and critical thinking – aren't these expenditures going to push the participants even further into debt?  Yikes!