Are High Expectations Good for a Relationship?

Why it’s important to inspect what you expect

3 years ago today, I turned 44.

It was not my best birthday.

I manifested this!

My birthday fell on a Sunday, which meant the day began with a small trickle of texts and not much else. We had done a family dinner two days earlier, and when Anna asked what I wanted on the day itself, I said I was fine with a normal Sunday.

So she made other plans.

This was completely reasonable. It also left me feeling alone and resentful.

I spent the afternoon at a playground with my son, trying to be present while quietly hoping that something special would materialize when we got home. A card. Flowers. A surprise picnic. Some evidence that this was a day worth celebrating.

But I hadn’t communicated any of that. In fact, I had told Anna I wanted a normal Sunday, and then became hurt and angry when I got one.

By the evening, after a few passive-aggressive exchanges, I stormed out of the house and went for a walk, fuming about the unfairness of life.

Not my finest moment 🫣

But that birthday has stayed with me because it revealed something I now think about constantly: some of the most painful moments in relationships happen when our expectations are high, our communication is low, and our partner has no idea there is a test they are failing.

Birthdays, anniversaries, holidays, vacations, and other “special” moments can bring out the best in a relationship, but they can also blow up in our faces.

So the question is: are high expectations good or bad for relationships?

When High Expectations Help and When They Hurt

Relationship advice often splits into two camps: lower your expectations and be grateful, or raise your expectations and build something better.

So which is it?

Researchers James McNulty and Benjamin Karney studied this question by following 82 newlywed couples over the first four years of marriage. They measured the couples’ expectations and satisfaction, observed how they handled problem-solving conversations, and then tracked their satisfaction twice a year.¹

What they found was a lot more interesting than “high expectations are good” or “high expectations are bad.”

For couples who handled problems well, high expectations predicted more stable satisfaction over time. Low expectations, by contrast, predicted steeper declines.

But for couples who struggled to handle problems well, the pattern flipped. High expectations predicted steeper declines in satisfaction, while lower expectations were associated with more stable satisfaction.

In other words, high expectations are not automatically helpful or harmful. They are powerful. In a relationship with strong skills, they can pull you toward something better. In a relationship without those skills, they can become a setup for disappointment.

That was part of what made my 44th birthday so painful. My expectations were high, but my communication was nonexistent. I wanted to feel celebrated, but I had not given Anna a clear way to succeed.²

So the better question is not simply, “Should we have high expectations?”

It is: “How can we develop the skills to make our expectations useful?”

How to Inspect What You Expect

Looking back on that unhappy birthday, I realized two practices could have turned it from a regrettable day to a special one.

1. Preview the disappointment

We are often wrong about what we will want in the future and how well our partner knows our inner world.³

One simple way to avoid this is to talk in advance not only about what you want, but also about what you really do not want. It’s like a vision board for your nightmares,⁴ and it’s a proven way to improve outcomes for complex situations.⁵

Here’s what this could look like for a birthday:

Imagine it is 9pm on your birthday, and the day has been a disaster. Everything that could go wrong has gone wrong, and you feel lonely, hurt, or resentful. What happened?

Had I asked myself that question before my 44th birthday, I probably could have predicted a version of what actually happened. I could have told Anna, “I know I said I’m fine with a normal Sunday, but I think I may actually feel sad if the day passes without anything special.”

That would have given her something much more useful than a vague claim that I was “fine.”

2. Make the expectation specific and actionable.

There is a simple test for whether an expectation is likely to be met: would my partner know exactly what success looks like?

“I want to feel special” is emotionally honest, but it is hard to act on.

“I’d love a card, a bowl of mint chip ice cream, and an hour together after our son goes to bed” is much easier to deliver.

Vague expectations are easy to miss and easy to resent. Specific expectations give our partner a real chance to succeed.

Today, on my 47th birthday, I’m relaxing at one of my favorite vacation spots. That did not happen by accident. I expressed my expectations early and made them specific enough to be useful.

High expectations are not the problem.

Unspoken expectations are.

1. McNulty, J. K., & Karney, B. R. (2004). Positive expectations in the early years of marriage: Should couples expect the best or brace for the worst? Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 86(5), 729–743. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.86.5.729

See also: McNulty, J. K. (2016). Should spouses be demanding less from marriage? A contextual perspective on the implications of interpersonal standards. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 42(4), 444–457. https://doi.org/10.1177/0146167216634050

2. Alternatively, Anna could get better at mind reading. I was disappointed to not find any research to support that this is actually a relationship skill that one can acquire. Dang!

3. Nickerson, R. S. (1999). How we know—and sometimes misjudge—what others know: Imputing one’s own knowledge to others. Psychological Bulletin, 125(6), 737–759. https://doi.org/10.1037/0033-2909.125.6.737

4. A nightmare board? This could be a business opportunity…

5. This is called a pre-mortem, i.e., talking about a situation before it’s dead. It’s the opposite of the more common practice of holding a post-mortem after a situation goes poorly. See Kahneman, D. (2013). Thinking, fast and slow. Farrar, Straus and Giroux.