The script we didn’t mean to write
I'm getting ready to leave for a trip to Europe, and I've noticed something: I haven't even packed yet, but I've already been on the trip a hundred times in my head.
I've imagined the flights. The first café. How the days will unfold. I've thought about what needs to happen before we leave, and whether the dog will be okay. Some of that is useful — it helps me plan and prepare. But some of it is stealing the present tense.
I've traveled enough to know this about myself: the trips where I held my expectations loosely are the most memorable. The ones where I was open to what the day actually offered, instead of what I'd already scripted.
It got me thinking about how often we do this. Not just with vacations.
Expectations are everywhere
We carry them into every season of life. What graduation will feel like. What a new job will be like. What our partner will say in the hard conversation we've been putting off. What our kids will do — or not do — as they grow up.
Sometimes expectations feel like excitement. But sometimes they're something closer to prediction. Or assumption. Or anxiety wearing a costume.
I'm seeing this a lot in sessions right now. Parents with expectations about who their young adult is becoming. Partners who've had the same conversation so many times they've stopped really listening — they're just waiting for the part they've already predicted.
When we stop leaving room for the other person
When we walk into a conversation already holding its ending, something shifts. Our tone changes. Our body language changes. And almost inevitably, the other person responds the way they always have. We nod. See? I knew it.
But what we may not realize is how our certainty shaped that exchange. We didn't leave them room to surprise us — and they didn't.
This is one of the more subtle and consequential ways expectations operate. Not as predictions that happen to come true, but as scripts that write themselves.
Holding it more loosely
Some expectations are genuinely useful. They help us make decisions, set limits, and move forward. But there's a difference between a helpful expectation and a grip that keeps us from seeing clearly.
A few questions worth sitting with:
Where are your expectations functioning as excitement — and where are they functioning as anxiety?
Is there a conversation you've been having for years where you already know what the other person will say? What would it feel like to walk in genuinely curious instead?
What expectation are you carrying about someone you love — and is it leaving room for who they actually are right now?
The best moments of any trip tend to happen in the gap between what we planned and what actually unfolded. I think that's true of relationships, too. But that gap is only available if we're willing to loosen our grip — just a little — on what we already decided was true.
I'll be thinking about this somewhere over the Atlantic. And probably on a lot of cobblestones.