Affluent Americans Are Expecting Too Much Perfection - Part 1
By Hara Estroff Marano for Psychology Today
The Expectations Trap: Perfection, Please
If there's one thing that most explicitly detracts from the enjoyment of relationships today, it's an abundance of choice.
Psychologist Barry Schwartz would call it an excess of choice-the tyranny of abundance. We see it as a measure of our autonomy and we firmly believe that freedom of choice will lead to fulfillment. But does it?
Our antennae are always up for better opportunities, finds Schwartz, professor of psychology at Swarthmore College. Just as only the best pair of jeans will do, so will only the best partner-whatever that is.
"People walk starry-eyed looking not into the eyes of their romantic partner but over their romantic partner's shoulder, in case there might be somebody better walking by. This is not the road to successful long-term relationships." It undermines commitment by encouraging people to keep their options open.
Certainly, commitment narrows choice. But it is the ability to remember you really do love someone-even though you may not be feeling it at the moment.
Commitment is the ability to sustain an investment, to honor values over momentary feelings. The irony, of course, is that while we want happiness, it isn't a moment-by-moment experience; the deepest, most enduring form of happiness is the result of sustained emotional investments in other people.
Like Doherty, Schwartz sees it as a consequence of a consumer society. He also sees it as a self-fulfilling phenomenon. "If you think there might be something better around the next corner, then there will be, because you're not fully committed to the relationship you've got."
It's naive to expect relationships to feel good every minute. Every relationship has its bumps. How big a bump does it have to be before you do something about it?
One of the problems with unrestrained choice, explains Schwartz, is that it raises expectations to the breaking point.
A sense of multiple alternatives, of unlimited possibility, breeds in us the illusion that perfection exists out there, somewhere, if only we could find it. This one's sense of humor, that one's looks, another one's charisma-we come to imagine that there will be a package in which all these desirable features coexist.
We search for perfection because we believe we are entitled to the best-we deserve it-even if perfection is an illusion foisted on us by an abundance of possibilities.
If perfection is what you expect, you will always be disappointed, says Schwartz. We become picky and unhappy. The cruel joke our psychology plays on us, of course, is that we are terrible at knowing what will satisfy us or at knowing how any experience will make us feel.
Here's another problem. If the search through all possibilities weren't exhausting (and futile) enough, thinking about attractive features of the alternatives NOT chosen-what economists call opportunity costs-reduces the potential pleasure in whatever choice we finally do make. The more possibilities, the more opportunity costs-and the more we think about them, the more we come to regret any choice. "So, once again," says Schwartz, "a greater variety of choices actually makes us feel worse."
Ultimately, our excess of choice leads to lack of intimacy. "How is anyone going to stack up against this perfect person who's out there somewhere just waiting to be found?" asks Schwartz. "It creates doubt about this person, who seems like a good person, someone I might even be in love with-but who knows what's possible out there? Intimacy takes time to develop. You need to have some reason to put in the time. If you're full of doubt at the start, you're not going to put in the time."
Inevitably, images of the perfect relationship dancing in our heads collide with our sense of entitlement: "I'm entitled to the best possible marriage." The reality of disappointment becomes intolerable. "It's part of a cultural belief system that says we are entitled to everything we feel we need."
We take the everyday disappointments of relationships and treat them as intolerable. "People work their way into 'I'm a tragic figure' around the ordinary problems of marriage." Such stories are so widespread, Doherty is no longer inclined to see them as reflecting an individual psychological problem, although that is how he was trained-and how he practiced for many years as an eminent family therapist. "I see it first now as a cultural phenomenon."
Part 1was yesterday.
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