Expectations

In Charlotte Bronte's complicated novel Shirley, one of the heroines, Caroline Helstone, is smitten with a man of business, Robert Moore, who loves his mill machinery considerably more than he cares for her. Caroline becomes lovesick in the most precise sense, physically ill because she has over-invested in a man who (we can see) doesn't possess the qualities she imputes to him. There is a lesson in that.

I have written before about my skepticism concerning the modern model of companionate marriage. In every respect, we load too much onto the figure of the spouse, who becomes the locus of our hopes, dreams, emotions. No one could live up to it. Little wonder, then, that marriages tend to fracture, or, short of fracturing, severely disappoint: the assumptions going in are all wrong and way heavy.

Personally, I do not find being the focus of intense expectations to be a pleasant experience. If I am not the answer to my own problems, as clearly I am not, how I can be the answer to another's problems? Nor do I wish to put anyone else in such an unenviable position. So I would not be a spouse, a lover, a parent; a business partner; a famous person, a powerful person, a person who runs things. These are just various ways of disappointing others, and then (naturally) feeling guilty for doing so. Strange that people long for these roles so much.

No one is capable of being a universal, unlimited Mr. Fix-It. My capacity to fix things is by and large restricted to what I have been trained to fix; as a teacher, say, or as a writer, I don't feel horribly burdened by expectations because (a) the expectations are circumscribed by the roles, (b) I've had extensive training and experience in the roles, and (c) therefore, I'm confident I know what I'm doing. It is not unreasonable to expect a dentist to fix teeth, or a plumber to fix sinks, or a psychologist to provide insight into our emotions; that's what they're for. But it would, of course, be unreasonable to expect the dentist to tackle the sink or the plumber to analyze us. Spouses, though, are expected to fix everything and to be everything. Thanks but no thanks!