Our past relationships shape how we connect to others

You know the old saying, "What you see is what you get." Well, in reality, it's the opposite that's often true: "What you get is what you see."

Research into how we perceive our world demonstrates that our awareness of, image of, and understanding of what goes on around us is sometimes determined to a significant degree by what we expect.

This is especially true in the most complex parts of our worlds - our relationships with other people. Early on in our lives, in fact, we begin the process of establishing expectations of the people around us.

If, for example, we have a positive, caring, nurturing experience with our parents, we transfer that expectation to similar relationships - other adult family members, teachers, adult friends, spouses and so on. On the other hand, if our parents are negative, neglectful and distant, we expect that from other adults as well.

If our first playmates accept and affirm us, we expect that from friends throughout our lives. But if they reject and criticize us, we expect that instead.

For that matter, if our family dog is cuddly and affectionate, we look for a similar experience with other dogs. If a couple of dogs growl and nip at us, though, we expect all dogs will be similarly hostile.

Now, it's not necessarily our expectations that are problematic. It's our tendency to see what we expect even when our expectations don't fit reality.

Let's say we grew up in a particularly affirming, supportive and trustworthy family. Good for us. We will likely bring that expectation to all relationships. This can get us in trouble, however, when we inevitably run across somebody who is critical, undercuts us, and betrays our trust.

On the other hand, we might be programmed by our early experiences to see others as negative, distant, rejecting, critical or hostile. As adults, then, we will likely see other peoples' behaviors through this lens, even if they're not living down to our expectations.

Our husband, for instance, is only making a suggestion. But because we expect criticism, that's what we hear from him. Or our wife's "where are you going" is actually an honest question but we hear an attack.

On an outing with our best friend, we find that she is preoccupied with her young children's demands, and we see this as rejection of us.

What makes such situations still more complicated is that even the people who love us most will all, sooner or later, let us down. We are, in fact, going to hear criticism or hostility or rejection from them. Let's hope it's rare, but it will happen.

So if we are one of those people who are tuned in to expect criticism or hostility or rejection, the fact is, even in our best relationships, we are eventually going to experience it. And that, of course, only reinforces our tendency to hear it where it doesn't exist.

You get the idea. We get what we see. And what we see is sometimes what we expect to see rather than what's really there.

We certainly can't just throw out all our expectations about other people. Many, probably most, of these expectations are helpful guides for how to understand and respond to what's going on in our relationships.

However, we have to be very careful that we don't let our expectations, especially our negative ones, lead us to the wrong conclusions. We may find that if we at least give people the benefit of the doubt, and if we take the time to talk through what's going on in our relationships, things are actually a lot better than we expect.

• Dr. Ken Potts is on the staff of Samaritan Counseling Center in Naperville and Downers Grove. He is the author of "Mix Don't Blend, A Guide to Dating, Engagement and Remarriage With Children."