Sometimes our expectations are so high going into marriage that the first thing that we have a problem one of us gets mad or both of us get mad.

How do we deal with being more realistic in our expectations?

I'm John Fuller joined by my focus on the family colleagues, Aaron and Greg Smalley

and Greg let's take this from a

premarital angle because you've done a lot of work on pre-marriage prep. What are

some of the problems of having perfectionism for instance or this ideal of how it's supposed to be because of how I was raised.

Yeah. How can that collide with reality and cause problems?

Yeah, I mean I think what it does is it sets really impossibly high standards for themselves and for this person that they're really looking for I think it sets up

disappointment when I have these incredibly high standards.

I mean, who's going to be able to measure up to any of that?

So maybe I feel this constant disappointment, like I'm just not finding that person.

No one meets in my mind, you know, what I think. that person

should be,

which then can set up missed opportunities.

So if we've got this perfectionistic mindset,

I'm looking for this perfect match and perfect partner. No one's going to meet that.

And so maybe someone who checked a lot of the boxes, but not all of them, you know, I moved on. Well, we could have missed an incredible

person that would have made a wonderful journeying partner in this thing we call marriage.

And then I think it really sets up failure.

This at least fear of failure.

Like if I've got to find that perfect person

and if I'm so afraid if I make the wrong choice,

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