I came to a startling realization today about why so many of us are unhappy.

Expectations.

Oh, sure, there are a gazillion other reasons – illness, debt, seasonal affective disorder, that-time-of-the-month, and lack of coffee being some prime examples. But you know what? There are loads of us who are making ourselves, and other people, miserable because of the stupid way we build up unrealistic expectations about how we think other people are going to – or should – behave.

I realized this today, when I was snuggled in bed at 5am.

Normally, I’d pop out of bed and head to the gym – but today I had a plan.

I put our toddler’s lunch in the oven, got his bag assembled, and snuck back into bed while whispering to my snoozing wife: “Don’t worry, Honey. I’ll get the baby off to daycare and all you need to worry about is getting yourself ready.”

I had, you see, expectations.

Having just freed up half an hour or so of my wife’s morning schedule, I’d expected her to snuggle and nuzzle with me, and reward me with some morning nookie (as had been my cunning plan all along.) However, I’d never informed my wife about this extension of my plan – which is why it unraveled faster than a sweater from Wal-Mart.

Because instead of the snuggling and the nuzzling, my wife popped out of bed and starting getting dressed – thinking “Great! I have some extra time all to myself, so I can get ready and get to work early.”

So I didn’t get any snoodling or canoodling at all. I’d sacrificed going to the gym and done all this extra work and failed to get what I’d expected. As I result, I was in a thoroughly bad mood – banging the pots and pans as I got the baby’s lunch packed up.

This doubtless left my wife utterly mystified. There was her adoring husband, who’d promised to get the baby ready for daycare and give her some free time, acting all snotty and pissed off – as if she was in the wrong for accepting his offer in the first place!

She must have thought: Why offer to do something, and then act like you’re being taken for granted when you do so?

Needless to say, this left her utterly pissed off as well. So there we go – one failed expectation and two utterly miserable people (three, if you count the baby, who was upset that he didn’t get the Nutella sandwich he’d expected that morning.)

It just goes to show what dangerous things expectations can be.

And if you look at life, and at the way other people approach it, you can see that expectations make a lot of them miserable, as well.

Look at your single friend who goes on a date, and then gets upset when he doesn’t call back after three days. Did they agree the to timeframe for a callback? No – but she had expectations of when he’d call, and was upset when he didn’t meet them.

Or what about the guy who lavishes his date with a slap up meal expecting to get more than a goodnight kiss afterward. When he doesn’t, he feels hard done by because his expectations weren’t met.

But the problem with expectations is not that they’re often unrealistic (although they are – especially the guy who thinks a nice meal is currency for sex) but that they’re one sided.

My wife and I got irritable with each other because I’d expected her to behave a certain way – but I hadn’t told her how I’d expected her to behave.

In all likelihood, if I’d curled up next to her and said: “I’ll get the baby ready so it gives us some time for a little nookie” she’d have ducked her head under the covers and had my cock in her mouth before I could blink.

But no – she just took me at my word and assumed I expected nothing in return for my generous offer – and, quite frankly, there was no reason why she should have thought any differently! I was the one being the douchebag – doubly so for acting up about it afterward.

But it made me think of all the other areas in my life, and the lives of my family and friends, in which people get upset because they expected people to react or act in a certain way, and are affronted or disappointed when they don’t.

To a large extent, it’s all a massive communication problem – if you expect somebody to act a certain way, you have to communicate this expectation to them to have any realistic chance of it being met!

But, more significantly, if you allow your happiness to depend on somebody else’s behavior, you’re always setting yourself up for disappointment. Instead, take a deep breath and accept that the only person who’s behavior and actions you can control in this world are your own.

It’s what makes the words of Abraham Lincoln especially pertinent: “People are just about as happy or sad as they make up their minds to be.”