What if she is trying too much to make you happy?

What if she is being burdened with your expectations and trying too much to make you happy?

Expectations are a kind of cages we put people in. We try to control their actions by asking them to satisfy our expectations. And when they don’t, we start to question their love for us. We start to put them behind bars for going by their hearts. We sort of make it an obligation for them to satisfy our illusions. And when a relationship starts to become an obligation, it starts to feel like a burden.

Unintentionally we put so much pressure on our loving ones to satisfy that image in our head. But no matter how much they will try, there is sure to come a time when they won’t be able to. Because sometimes what they want to do for themselves won’t go with our expectations. So either people sacrifice themselves or choose to sacrifice their loving one’s happiness. But either way, they won’t be feeling fully happy. There will be some sort of sadness lingering around.

Just that we realize that no matter how much someone will try to take care of our emotions, they can’t. And we will only burden them if we will expect them to behave as we want them to. It becomes quite difficult to handle the truth that the other person is being burdened by us. “She is trying too much to make you happy”.

It feels as if someone is being caged and compelled to do what they don’t want to just for our emotional wellbeing. And when people live in cages to save some relations, the relations may live longer but they start to die inside. Their own selves start to vanish.

There has been a lot said about expectations that we should not expect anything from others. Expectations hurt and at the end, we are broken. But just that we pay attention to the other side of the coin. Rather than whining over the fact that people don’t stand upon our expectations, we must try to understand how hard it is to do it. We don’t see how burdensome it is to stand upon our expectations. How many sacrifices that person will have to do in order to do it. And then there is no guarantee that we will stop expecting anything from them. We squeeze people until there is nothing left in them and at the end, complain that they have nothing to give us.

How long someone can keep on behaving as we want them to, and how long will they be able to hold themselves back.

Only if we start to accept that it isn’t necessary for them to stand upon our beliefs. It’s all their will. And if they won’t, we should change our expectation rather than expecting them to change their actions. If I expect someone to never betray me and if they do. Then rather than forcing them or questioning them, I should change my expectations from them. I should no longer expect them to be loyal to me in that aspect.

We want the freedom to act for ourselves but we don’t give such freedom to others. If someone has chosen to not be with us then why do we try to bring them back? If someone chooses to betray then why we expect them to be loyal with us. Even if they have shown us what they are, we expect them to be what we hold an image of them. Maybe we just aren’t ready to break that illusioned image and confront the reality or we are merely a fool.

People are what they are and there is no point in trying to make them close to the image we have of them. As they can’t become that person, because they aren’t. If tomorrow someone starts to mold you into a different person just because they have a certain kind of image about you. Would you get ready to change yourself? Would you handover yourself to them and let them force you to behave as they want you to? Surely, you won’t. Why would we change ourselves for someone’s mere illusion? Why would we try to satisfy the image in their heads that we don’t give a damn about?

Then why do we expect them to satisfy the image that we hold in our head? We always have a certain kind of image about everyone and we want them to satisfy that image. And the moment they disappoint us, we don’t even want to see what they actually are. It gets hard for us to come out of that picture and see the reality.

When people choose to not go with our expectation, we should let them go. We should let them do what they want without forcing them to go our way. When we let people fly and don’t hold them in a cage. We give them the choice to decide whether they want to fly back to us or not. Putting them into a cage of expectations and feeding them with the image we have of them won’t give us real happiness. Rather freeing them and accepting them as they are will create an ambiance that will itself feel serene.

Rather than trying to hold control of their direction, we should better try to win the heart which directs it.

Originally published at http://sanarajarsite.wordpress.com on April 20, 2019.