When I woke up on the morning of September 28, 2011, I had no idea that this would be my wedding day. John had been invited to a MacArthur Foundation event in Paris, an international mind-meld of twelve academics from different fields who all had something to contribute to the study of aging. The group included some of the world’s top public-health experts and psychologists—among them my fiancé, John Cacioppo, one of the founders of social neuroscience, most famous for his pioneering work revealing the mentally and physically damaging effects of loneliness. John was invited to discuss, among other things, how the elderly could protect themselves against the dangers of loneliness. At the time, he and I were several months into our long-distance love story and getting good at juggling business and pleasure.
John suddenly looked very serious. “No, I’m meeting someone over there, someone important.”
He started to tell Laura about me, how we had fallen for each other after a chance encounter in Shanghai, how he needed to be on that flight. Laura knew about all the wreckage from John’s two divorces. It struck her that John spoke about me as though I was his last chance at love. He said he wanted to get this one right.
Now, in Paris, Laura wanted an update: “How are things with Stephanie?”
A sheepish grin. “We’re getting married.”
“Wow, John, that was fast! Congratulations! I’m so happy for you. When is the big day?”
He looked momentarily confused.
“Oh, I don’t know if we’ll do a classic wedding. Steph and I are both so busy. We’ll probably just go down to City Hall in Chicago during our lunch break.”
“You know, I could marry you right now.”
Laura had just gotten ordained as an internet minister to officiate the wedding of one of her grad students. She meant her suggestion purely as a joke—“There was not a shred of seriousness in it,” she later told me—but John didn’t seem to realize this.
“You mean, like, today? You know, Steph’s here in Paris with me… That could actually work!”
He grabbed his phone and began typing a message to send to me. DO YOU WANT TO GET MARRIED AFTER WORK TODAY?
“John, wait—what are you doing?!” Laura said. “Are you crazy? These things must be planned out.” John didn’t seem to be listening. The conference was about to resume. Laura just shook her head and muttered under her breath, “John, you don’t know women.”
He smiled devilishly. “You don’t know Steph.”
So, did I want to get married today? I did a double-take when that message flashed on my phone. But it only took me two seconds to reply. “Sure.”
Then I dashed out of the hotel room to find a white dress.
Turning Your Back on the Frontal Lobe
By surprising me, John had instantly found a way of making our wedding special and unique, however it turned out. Such a spontaneous ceremony wouldn’t work for everyone, of course, but it’s worth considering the role that unpredictable events might play in love, and whether we can benefit by making more room for improvisation in our relationships.
So much of our social experience, especially when it comes to romance, has to do with expectations. Maybe we have an image of the man or woman we will marry long before we’ve met them. Usually, we call this a type, an ideal. Or maybe we have in our mind’s eye the perfect first date: a walk by the lake, a hike in the woods, a romantic restaurant. When it comes to the wedding—an opportunity not only to proclaim our love but also to show off our good taste and social network—we probably know how it should look. Perhaps more importantly, we know how it should not look.
If these expectations actually set us on a course toward genuine happiness, then they are all well and good. But I would argue that in many cases such plans can become a kind of mind trap, forcing us to pursue a preconceived kind of happiness that we may never reach or that, once reached, may not actually make us happy. To take just one study proving this point, the Yale psychologist Robb B. Rutledge and his colleagues conducted an experiment in which they had participants set expectations before playing a decision-making game with small financial rewards. Their results show that the ultimate amount of money participants won did not determine their happiness. Rather, what predicted their level of happiness was the difference between their initial expectations and the outcome. If they had no expectation of winning and ended up with even a tiny amount of money, they were happy.
Social pressure often drives us to pursue unrealistic expectations, without understanding what it is we really want or need.
Applying this expectation formula to love relationships, the more we love without expecting any rewards in return, the more we will increase our chance of happiness. This is in line with a large body of research showing that setting realistic expectations leads to greater relationship satisfaction. But adjusting your expectations does not necessarily mean lowering them. It’s more about letting go of the social pressure that often drives us to pursue unrealistic expectations without understanding what it is we really want or need, and what we can do without.
The important thing about letting go of your expectations is that it should feel like an act of generosity or faith in your relationship—and not a sacrifice. Otherwise, you will likely feel that you’re giving up something important to you for the sake of your partner, leading to feelings of resentment or spite, which can spell serious trouble. An interesting study from the Netherlands shows that while couples greatly appreciate it when their partner makes sacrifices for them, when they begin to expect such sacrifices they feel much less gratitude and no longer see their partner’s sacrifices in quite the same positive light. This finding is in line with a theory I’ve long held: Expectations kill gratitude.
We have a natural tendency to expect help, support, and sacrifice from our partner to some extent, but the beauty of our evolved brain is that we are neurologically wired to control this tendency and, if so moved, to expect less from our partner and give more in return—intentionally. The next time you have romantic dinner plans with your partner but they feel “brain-dead” after, say, an entire day of back-to-back Zoom meetings, ask yourself what’s more important: sticking to the script you had for how that evening should play out, or letting it go for both your partner’s sake—and your own. You might discover that going to bed early and spending the night cuddling under a warm blanket or stargazing together from the comfort of your backyard was actually more romantic than whatever elaborate evening you had planned.
What You Expect Is What You Get
Expectations don’t only complicate life within a relationship, they also can get in the way of connecting
with someone in the first place. What if you find the “One” but you don’t recognize that person as such because you had a different idea of what the person you marry should look like? Conversely, what if you stay in an unhealthy or abusive relationship for too long because you and your partner should be perfect together, because on paper your partner is the kind of person who should check all your boxes? Sometimes the search for