Relationship Expectations: Kill Some Impulsiveness and Set Some of These Instead

There's something in a normal relationship called the "honeymoon period." The honeymoon period is the period in the relationship where both parties are blissful and neither one feels the other can do any wrong and everything about one another seems special and amazing and great. Your girl thinks you're the most perfect man on Earth, and you may very well think she's the most perfect gal on Earth a little bit too.

But before you completely drop everything and immerse yourself into the sunshine and daisies and rainbows of the honeymoon period, there's something you need to know: dropping rational thought and running solely on emotions is what kills things long-term.

What are emotions? Emotions are, defined quite broadly, compelling short-term decision-makers. Emotions compel you, more powerfully than anything else in your head aside from the instinctive, entirely subconscious reactions of your reptile brain, to take certain actions. The thing about emotions is, the actions they compel you take are almost always short-term focused.

How often are the emotions you feel right now related to something you think might happen in a year or two? Very rarely. Your emotions are almost always contingent upon what's going on in your life right now. And that's problematic for the outset of a relationship, when you're in the beginning of the relationship-building phase, for this reason: running a relationship on pure emotion without setting relationship expectations is a strategy that dooms you.

What the Honeymoon Period Is

We're going to delve into why the honeymoon period is so dangerous to relationships' long-term viability, but first let's explore a little of the evolutionary psychology behind it.

What are the effects of the honeymoon period, and what would've been the benefit to you 10,000 years ago of falling wildly in love with a woman?

The in-love, or honeymoon, period where you're head-over-heels with a new girl and think she's the most incredible thing to happen to the planet since the invention of microwaveable pizza, has a bunch of profound psychological effects on you (and her). These generally include:

• Wanting to spend all of your time with her, or as much as possible.
• Wanting to check in constantly and see where she is and what she's doing.
• Wanting to do everything together (and continue spending as much time together as possible).
• Wanting to have lots and lots of time in bed together.
• Basically, well, just really wanting a lot of time together.

In a nutshell, being in love makes people want to spend 24 hours a day, 7 days a week together, and spend most of that time together either staring into each others' eyes and smiling happily at each other, or taking each other wildly and passionately to bed.

What purpose does this serve? Well, I suppose, think about it like this: 10,000 years ago, how often in your 35 years of life, and in your village of 100 or so people, did you meet an amazing girl you were crazy about? Maybe once or twice in your lifetime, right? And it was probably a similar frequency of meeting an amazing man for girls.

So when you met that once- or twice-in-a-lifetime amazing person, you'd better have hung onto them, and spent the time you needed to spend with them to make some babies. Otherwise, you don't pass on your genes; you line doesn't get carried on.

In other words, there may have been people who didn't fall in love, but their genes simply just didn't get carried on with the frequency and reliability of those who did. Falling in love is strongly selected for by natural selection because it works. It works at making babies and passing on the genes to fall in love and make more babies, that is.

So, that's why you fall in love. You fall in love to have children as fast as possible with a girl you like.

This is also, in my opinion, why there is such a thing as a two year drop: because, if you've produced children in your first two years together, you need to shift your time and energy from spending all your time together to raising your child(ren); conversely, if you haven't had any kids in two years of staring into each others eyes and taking each other passionately to bed, that's when evolution kicks in to tell you you ought to start looking for a more fertile partner, rather than get stuck with someone you'll never have children with (historically speaking, if a couple hadn't had children within their first two years together, it probably wasn't going to happen ever).

So, the honeymoon period occurs because it's just good business for baby-making.

The problem is, no matter your intentions with this girl you're with – whether your plan is to date her for three to six months, or you plan to spend the rest of your life with her and have a small brood of children with her – falling completely prey to in-love feelings and sacrificing all logical control and direction of yourself and your relationship is foolhardy.

You didn't listen to your emotions when you started meeting girls, otherwise you never would've overcame the anxiety you felt before approaching this girl you're crazy about in the first place; you never would've made that first phone call to her that you were stressing out about; you never would've made the move that got the two of you together that you almost didn't make. You're with her because you overcame your own emotions, I'm willing to bet.

But if that's the case, then why do so many guys think it's okay to give into the feeling of being love and just utterly abandon all sense of balance and self-restraint? Abandoning what works for what doesn't hasn't served people well in any area of life; I'm not really sure why they think it'll work better in their relationships. Probably they just aren't thinking about it – but not thinking about important things isn't exactly a recipe for success.

Why the Short-Term Focus is a Long-Term Nightmare

I think the problem for most men is that they view getting into a relationship as "Game Over." Victory's been achieved; the story is over; a happy ending is assured and in their hands. Now they can stop working to actively manage things.

Which is a little bit ridiculous. A guy's brought a woman – an entirely different person, who, no matter how wonderful and how considerate, brings her own host of fears, wants, needs, personal emotional baggage, relationship history, relationship expectations, and a lot more things – into his life, and thinks now is the time to stop managing things and just "go with the flow?"

I'm vehemently against "going with the flow" with anything in life. It's the path of least resistance in the short term, certainly, but it produces consistently the worst results in both the long- and the mid-terms. "Going with the flow" is the lazy man's recourse, and he gets his desserts – should we say, "flows into his desserts?" – sooner rather than later, when things start falling apart around him and the fairytale ends.

Having a short-term focus in anything means you don't plan for the future. Having a short-term focus in relationships means you don't set the right relationship expectations, and that instead the relationship expectations that are set are set for the emotional in-love honeymoon phase.

And here's the problem: even when those emotions dry up, the expectations you set while those emotions were running rampant remain.

So, if you spent five days a week with a girl when you were crazy in love with her, when two years later that feeling fades and you'd like to now start focusing on building up your businesses so you can bring in more income and support yourself and perhaps even her if she's in your long-term plan, or if you get promoted before then or you take on a new job that requires a much larger degree of travel, or anything changes in your life (and change does tend to happen in most people's lives) that impacts the time you can spend with her, what's going to happen?

She's going to feel like you're breaking your promises and reneging on the expectations you set with her. She's going to feel like she's lost importance for you in your life, because now things have changed. And no matter what you do, she will always look back on those earlier times as the golden era of your relationship, and everything that came after looks yellowed and faded by comparison.

The honeymoon is over, and because she views your love, passion, and loyalty for her as having faded, her love, passion, and loyalty for you fades as well.

That's what the short-term focus gets you. Short-term bliss as you go with the flow; long-term disaster as you realize you shot yourself in the foot early on and it's too late to fix now.

Relationship Expectations: Vital for Your and Her Happiness

What if, instead of going crazy and falling head-over-heels for a girl at the outset of a relationship and just calling and texting her constantly and spending all of your time with her, instead you killed a little of your impulsiveness, and you restrained yourself a bit, and you set some early expectations? How might that change things down the line?

First off, I'll admit that restraining yourself and acting rationally when your hormones and emotions are in a tizzy because you've got the girl of your dreams is no small feat. I have a well-formed method for controlling the in-love feeling you get that I'll post about in a future entry on this blog. Even with a method at your disposal though, and great internal restraint, it can be a bit of a slog.

So yeah, it's hard. But I will say it's very, very worth it.

Why's it so worth it? Because relationships today don't run like relationships 10,000 years ago. Your life expectancy isn't 35 years; you aren't going to fall in love just once and raise a kid for fifteen years with the girl immediately after and then buy the farm. You're going to fall in love a number of times; maybe you're going to want to have a relationship with a girl for a long time without having children right away (or ever); maybe you'll want to sustain a relationship for decades.

If you set the wrong expectations at the outset, you'll have a miserable time managing things in your relationship going forward.

Because, do bear in mind, whether you set them intentionally or not, you're constantly setting relationship expectations from the beginning. Women pay attention to your actions far more than they do your words.

If you tell a girl you want to keep things casual, but then you call her every day and text her every day and come up with a cute little pet name for her and spend every other day with her, she's going to see things as being quite serious and she's going to expect a lot of your time – because you treated her like a guy who's quite serious about her would, and because you gave her a lot of your time.

And then, if you decide to cut back on that, she's going to get hurt and upset.

To save yourself some headache, and to save your girl some heartache, it's absolutely, positively crucial that you set early relationship expectations. This is something I can't stress enough; if you aren't doing this – if you're just going with the flow instead – you're setting yourself up for a lot of problems down the road. Setting expectations is just good practice; it helps you get a lot more miles out of your relationships, and those miles cover a road that's a lot smoother and features a lot fewer potholes and speed bumps along the way.

The 6 Expectations to Set

Okay, so, going with the flow bad, relationship expectations good. But what expectations ought you to set?

The most important ones for you to focus on are going to be these six: time, money, correspondence, activities, intimacy, and stability. You must set these appropriately from the very beginning, or you'll struggle mightily later on. I'll detail each below.

1. Time. No matter how incredible your new girl is, you should stick to seeing her not more than twice a week. A good rule of thumb I go by for a primary girlfriend is one weekday, and one weekend night / day. In other words, I might see a girl on a Tuesday or Wednesday night, and then maybe I see her Saturday evening and she spends the night and I see her during the day on Sunday too. Regardless of what days you choose, look to keep it to two.
   
   For casual relationships, you should not exceed one day a week maximum – preferably a weeknight. Spending a weekend day or night with a girl you're only seeing casually communicates things are getting more serious – e.g., instead of partying with your friends or looking for a higher quality, serious girlfriend, you're spending your time with her. She starts becoming your de facto girlfriend at that point – so be wary of seeing casual girlfriends on weekends.

2. Money. These days, I spend about 50% of the money on girls that they spend on me. At times it's a little bit more or a little bit less, but it's about that. This is deserving of a proper post, but for now let's just say that if you're spending a lot more money on her than she is on you early on in a relationship, you're putting yourself in a very tight place, and it isn't negotiable.
   
   Chivalry is great, but keep your chivalry to pulling out chairs or walking on the side of a girl that's closer to traffic. Trust me, getting a girl to love you because you pay for things for her is not where you want a relationship that started off healthy to head. The reason I stick to about 50% is because I want it to be very clear to women that I'm not going to be their ATM like most guys will be. I want a girl to know, without a shadow of a doubt, that she's with me for me – not for my paycheck.

3. Correspondence. How much should you be in contact with a girl? I very much recommend less over more. Kill instant messengers if you use these – I know a lot of guys use IM, but trust me, it's is awful for relationships. IM is for the men with nothing going on in their lives who are able to be constantly available for people (and their girls) to chat with. Strong men with incredibly busy schedules and a lot going on in their lives do not have time for IM. At the very least, switch on "Invisible" mode and leave your IM there pretty much always. You don't need to be perpetually available – in fact, it makes you less attractive to women. You might also notice that the coolest, strongest, busiest people you know are hardly ever on IM – there's a reason for this. You want to be like those people.
   
   Phone calls: I've almost nuked these altogether from my relationships entirely. If I do have them, I try to keep them under five minutes where possible, and definitely under ten minutes. I used to get on 45-minute to hour-long phone calls with girls – that was bad for productivity. If you do do calls, stick to every other day, max. So, maybe you see your girl on Wednesday, give her a call on Thursday or Friday, and then see her on Saturday. Then you give her a call again on Monday, and see her again on Wednesday. This prevents you from getting into the habit of having to "check in" every day, which is a bad precedent to set.
   
   Texting: be real careful with this. Refer to the post on texting girls for a refresher on good texting; I primarily use texting to sort logistics these days, and recommend you do the same. If you use texting like a substitute IM – trying to be constantly in contact, build rapport, share stories, ask about her day, etc. – trust me, that's not a productive use of time. I never do that stuff, and I see the girls I'm lovers with getting texted constantly by these guys who are hoping to get with them. Me, no constant texting = taking girls to bed; these other guys, texting constantly = failing to bed girls whom they're unknowingly texting while said girls are lying in my bed.
   
   Texting all day long is a colossal waste of your time, and not something you want your girl to start expecting from you. Don't get in this habit with a new girl, and you won't have to break it later and deal with the fallout when you have more important things to do than text about how great the sandwich you just had was.

4. Activities. Are you meeting your girl's friends? If so, why? Ask yourself what things accomplish before you do them, and if they'll help you move things forward and get closer to your goals. I guess a big problem for many guys is, they don't really have goals, so that kind of makes it difficult to know what they're shooting for.
   
   Think about it like this: once a girl's friends know you, they're going to talk about you and ask about you. "How's it going with Will?" they'll ask. "Are you guys getting serious?" All of a sudden, your girl's getting all this social pressure to start pressuring you for things. Far better to be a girl's secret lover than have to worry about that stuff.
   
   If you have your own place, have her come to your place to meet you. Then, have some food, and take her to bed. Even if you really honestly like doing a lot of different activities, it's better if you start out simple and boring, and she learns to love you for you, instead of the things that you do together, than if you start out exciting and busy, and then over time you run out of things to do or get tired of going out all the time, and she starts to reminisce over how good things used to be and feel like you've gotten boring or stopped caring about her. Start out very simple and unexciting in your activities; you can get exciting and interesting down the road if you like, just set the right expectation at the outset.

5. Intimacy. You should get intimate almost every time you see a girl for the first three months, and you should be really good in bed with her. The exceptions to this are if she is on bad behavior or treating you poorly; if/when that happens, you should not give her intimacy that night. Do not reward bad behavior with good sex; this sends a resoundingly bad message. You can be intimate with her the morning after; that's still okay. But do not take her to bed the night of a big flare-up on her part, even after she's apologized.

6. Stability. Make it clear to women that you aren't going to be around long term, and that you have big plans for your life. Even if you aren't sure exactly what you're going to do with yourself just yet, just letting girls know you've got big plans and want to make waves in the world and might not be around forever is a great place to start setting your expectations. If you're older and you're in a more stable position, it's okay to tell women you're at the point where you just might not be able to commit to anything super long-term, since you have a number of other obligations in your life.
   
   The point is, you want women to know going into a relationship with you that you might not always be around. If you can actually leave and not be around from time to time, this is ideal; I travel at least once every two months for 2 to 3 weeks, and I do this partially so girls I'm seeing never get too comfortable having me constantly around. If you can do anything like this, even if it's a little less frequent, it's very good for setting your early expectations.

Goals of Expectation Setting

You should have this always in mind as you structure your early relationship:

"I want girls to know on the inside that they love me for me."

People look at what they have with you, and ask themselves why they love you. So if you:

• Are a great guy,
• Spend a lot of time with her,
• Spend a lot of money on her,
• Trade a lot of correspondence with her,
• Do a lot of activities with her and impress her friends,
• Spend time with her regardless of sex and/or give her intimacy after bad behavior, and
• Assure her of your continued and future stability and reliability,

Then she's going to say to herself: "Why do I love him? Well, it's because he's a great guy. Oh, and because he spends so much time with me. And he buys me a lot of stuff. And he texts me a lot and calls me a lot and we talk a lot on IM. And we do such fun, exciting things together, and my friends really like him. And even though we don't have sex that much, he still wants to spend time with me anyway. And he loves me even when I get upset and give him a hard time; in fact, maybe he even likes it. And he's so stable and reliable and I know he'll always be there for me and devote himself to me 100%."

Now, if at some point in the future, you slip up on one of those things and aren't able to deliver everything you started off delivering to her, how do you think that will affect her feelings? Do you think it will make her love you and appreciate you more – or less?

Most men start off giving women the world, then gradually cut back. Most women end up bitter and jaded because of this. Personally, I'm a big, big believer in promising less and delivering more. It's how you build real loyalty with people. Most people promise more and deliver less. That's how you build resentment and disloyalty... no good.

On the other hand, if you manage your expectations properly from the outset, you end up with a girl who thinks to herself, "Hmm, I love him a lot, but he doesn't spend much time on me, and he never buys anything for me. He hardly ever texts or calls me, and I never talk to him on IM. All I ever do is go to his apartment; we never do anything exciting, and my friends don't even know who he is. Half of what we do together is have sex, and I have to be careful what I say and do around him because he doesn't give me a free ride when I get angry and dramatic like other guys do. And for all I know, he might be gone in three months and I'll never see him again. But I'm still crazy about him anyway. Wow. I must really like him. I must really like him, for him."

Then, as the relationship progresses, you can add in more things if you like. You can see her more often; you can contact her more; you can do more things with her; you can meet her friends. Because here's the thing:

How in love a girl feels for you at the outset is going to be exactly the same whether you do everything for her, or nothing for her.

Because love doesn't come from the things you do for her. It comes from the conversation you have with her, and the time you share in bed together. Everything else is periphery. But people don't realize that, and she's going to assign a little of her love to everything you do with her. So, the more you give her, the less her love will be tied to you, and the more it'll be tied to what you do for her.

Better to have her love you for you from the outset, and then you can add things as you go and she only sees the relationship as strengthening, than to do it the normal guy way, of having her love him for what he does for her from the outset, and then he gradually subtracts things as he goes and she only sees the relationship as weakening.

When you set things up so that girls get you in a relationship, and nothing else – not endless days of romance, not extravagant gifts and dinners, not hour-long IM sessions, not exciting adventures, not envious friends, nothing – you'll find the relationship is infinitely more pure, infinitely more real, and infinitely more honest and focused on the two of you together, rather than the things she can do for you or you can do for her. And really, that's the healthiest kind of relationship you can possibly have – one where you set the right expectations from the beginning, and gave yourself a ton of room to grow along the way.

Yours,
Chase Amante