The Mindset Shift That Improves Both Your Relationships and Your Innovativeness
Avoiding the Appreciation to Resentment Pipeline
Research-based strategies, insights and inspiration to create value and drive positive change, in the world and in yourself.
If you like what you find here, please consider supporting this work and this community with a paid subscription.
Sometimes the most damaging thing in a relationship is how expectations change.
In a previous article, I talked about the role our expectations play in creating negative emotions. In this article, I explore a particular way that expectations weaken relationships.
There’s a widely recurring pattern that over time undermines friendships, marriages, and many other relationships: shifting expectations.
Questions this article explores
Why do some relationships deteriorate over time?
What causes resentment in long-term relationships?
How do expectations damage marriages?
What happens when appreciation becomes expectation?
How does mindset influence relationships?
How can an innovator mindset reduce conflict?
Initial Delight
When we meet someone new and they show us unexpected attention, praise or deference, we welcome and appreciate those behaviors. It may be a neighbor who’s exceptionally friendly and helpful. Maybe it’s a colleague who tells us they admire the work we do. Perhaps an acquaintance who aligns with our political views or religious beliefs. And especially someone we’ve fallen in love with, who seems so flawless at first.
Over time, as we get to know that person better, our impression of them becomes more nuanced. The neighbor who seemed so selfless at first, isn’t always available. That colleague seems less complimentary. We discover daylight between our political views and theirs. That special someone seems less attentive.
No one’s done anything wrong. What happened is what statisticians call reverting to the mean. That’s when an athlete has an exceptional game, followed by an average one, or a salesperson knocks it out of the park for one quarter, and misses their quota the next. They may be exceptional at times, but their overall performance or behavior hovers around a level that’s more typical—for them and for others.
The Expectations We Create
But something else happens that changes how we see that person. Our expectations shift. Fans come to expect exceptional performance from a star athlete and are disappointed by a level of play that would win praise for an average player. We come to expect that neighbor to be there when we need them. When they’re not, it upsets us. We get frustrated when that ideological ally we thought we had doesn’t always agree with us. Yet, we would shrug it off as no big deal if it was someone we didn’t expect that of.
This often happens in marriages and other long-term relationships. What seems thoughtful at first—the unexpected text, the deference to our preferences, the thank you note—are appreciated. But these gradually become expectations. We wonder: Why haven’t they texted? Do we have to go to that movie? They didn’t thank me.
Things that thrill you early in a new relationship—a lover’s touch , a compliment from the boss, a hug from a child—gradually get transferred from the I appreciate this column, into your I expect this column. Then, when you sense that those things are missing, you get upset with whoever you perceive to have taken them from you. This pattern explains why so many marriages deteriorate over time, and why they sometimes end so bitterly.
A post I once read, by someone who does couples counseling, summed it up this way:
Expectations are stored future resentments.
These expectations are frequently subconscious. You may not realize they’re there. Yet, they create resentment when they’re not met. You may further stoke that anger by telling yourself that not only is someone doing something wrong, but they should know better—another expectation.
Of course, people’s behaviors change and that can be a source of frustration. They may be less attentive, supportive or complimentary then they once were. Their performance may falter. But our expectations are dynamic too. When we perceive the exceptional as baseline, we sometimes set standards that are hard for anyone to meet. We set ourselves up for disappointments that may be more due to us than them.
One of the most important ways we maintain healthy relationships with our friends, colleagues and lovers, is by managing our own expectations—and that means adjusting the mindset that creates those expectations.
The Value of Innovativeness
What does this have to do with being innovative? More than you may realize.
A status quo mindset is corrective. It focuses on what’s wrong or missing or incomplete. It’s the urge to adjust things to some predetermined target—your expectations. The same tendencies that resist adapting to change, undermine our relationships. And when we approach those relationships through the lens of our own unexamined expectations, that reinforces behaviors that not only undermine relationships. They make it harder for us to adapt to the larger world around us.
An innovator mindset is more flexible and reflective. More responsive to your environment—including other people. Not because it doesn’t create expectations, but because it enables you to evaluate those expectations and adjust them. That brings added self-awareness of the role you play in those relationships. Ironically, that gives you greater control over your relationships. Because it focuses your attention on your own behaviors—which you determine—rather than trying to change someone else’s behaviors.
When you apply an innovator mindset to your relationships, you reinforce behaviors that make you more adaptive, creative and resourceful in those and other areas of your life. That makes you more innovative—and easier to get along with.
What expectations do you have in your marriage or other relationships? How have they changed over time? What’s been the effect?
Nothing is either good or bad but thinking makes it so.
– William Shakespeare
Hi, I’m Dennis Stauffer. I’m an internationally recognized expert on the mindset of world class innovators. I’ve studied innovativeness in entrepreneurs in cooperation with the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation, and developed innovativeness in students under a grant from the U.S. National Science Foundation. I’m a neurodivergent Emmy Award-winning journalist, author, speaker, independent researcher, social entrepreneur, and innovation practitioner.
In other words, I’m still deciding what I want to be when I grow up.
My focus here is on developing the capabilities we all need, to respond to the dramatic changes coming at us, in the world and in our lives. Thanks for being here. Let’s go make the world better.
To learn more about my work, go to:
If you found this article helpful, please share it.
Awesome to share with my students. Thank you