The Search for Perfection, Mostly in Others

……..that keeps me searchin’ for a heart of gold, and I’m getting’ old….

• • • • • Neil Young, singer and songwriter

I’ve often wondered why my relationships with people are so seldom perfect. Even these days, well into my seventh decade and pretty content, I wonder about this. I would, for instance, rate my relationship with Irene as “extremely happy”, but even marvelous she sometimes falls short of being judged “perfect”. Why is this, and why do I care?

Stand by. I am not a crazy person, expecting others to be perfect at EVERY turn. And I don’t think I’m a perfectionist in a “classical” sense, if that meant my also expecting perfection of myself all the time. (This is complicated; I do want perfection from myself but frankly I’ve let myself down so much in this regard I no longer expect it. I am, however, working on my expectations of myself daily!)

And, yes, I realize that expecting perfection from people I’m close to is a brutal flaw, destined for failure and sure to make anything good in our relationship less-good. And finally yes, I recognize my use of the word “judged” is….well, judgmental, and therefore also less-good.

But nonetheless it seems I often expect perfection unconsciously from others. ( I feel now like I should probably mention several of the folks I am thinking about and simply apologize to them publicly, just to get it over with. I won’t, but I know I should.)

Anyway, while I’m certainly not talking just about marriage, marriage is convenient to discuss as it’s been scientifically studied so many times. And, current surveys say, intact marriages are most often satisfactory for both parties. In fact, these same studies show about 80% of still-married survey respondents these days usually rate their marriages as very happy or better. However, only 11% of them rate their relationships as “perfect”.

Do you think most people have too high expectations in all their relationships, personal or otherwise? Rich or poor, famous or infamous, well-educated or not, indications seem to imply that this is common to many of us. In “Heart of Gold,” Neil Young’s only #1 singles hit, he never said what a heart of gold meant to him exactly. But I’d guess he means a woman who will love him with all her heart, always and unconditionally, or, in a word, perfectly.

But surely Neil’s being a little one-sided, no? Anybody who knows much about him knows he has had long periods where it seemed he was less ready to give perfection than to get it. There were times when you probably could have slapped him in the face with a full bucket of Grade A Perfection and he’d have shrugged it off like a gnat and go straight back to the bottle, mirror, or whatever.

But Heart of Gold was written late in Neil’s career, so maybe by that time, with him in his third marriage, he knew enough to at least mention “I want to give, I want to live” in the chorus. Maybe understanding, at last, that he was really looking for perfect love, this unicorn of two perfectly compatible hearts of gold. (Of course, maybe it was just a friggin’ song, just like “Sometimes a Cigar is just a Cigar”, as Dr. S. Freud once admitted.)

But that isn’t the usual way of it between us mere mortals, is it? Sure, I do believe perfect love can exist between God and us, but a perfect love between two ordinary humans must be a very rare beast, probably much rarer than the 11% mentioned above. On the other hand, wanting perfect love is ubiquitous and has caused me no end of grief.

As I said, while I usually don’t expect perfection from myself, as I’ve too often let myself down. I want it, but I don’t expect it. However, I’m often quick to expect perfection of those close to me, and that seldom is what I get. One problem is that I want them to love me in the way I’d consider perfect at that moment. And of course What I want changes, moment to moment! Making this worse, I generally won’t tell people exactly what I want. But I can’t afford to tell them, can I? Don’t you get it? If I told them, it wouldn’t count, they’d only be doing me a favor; doing what I was begging for, instead of satisfying my craving for perfection.

So, since people are only people and only a few read minds, they do what they do, and I wind up disappointed and disillusioned, thinking that my life isn’t as good as it should be and I’m settling for second-best, with neither myself nor other people giving me what I want. Or I’ll conclude that they aren’t trying hard enough, which then pisses me off. What I’m doing, it seems,  is comparing my unspoken desires with an ideal and then, in the same breath, assuming that that ideal is actually a reality. After all, these folks SHOULD know exactly what I want, not only in big-deal stuff involving, say, health or wealth, but in all the little things as well.

Unfortunately, aside from needing such perfection from friends and family, there are many other instances where I also expect perfection. This desire, for instance, applies to my interactions with nearly all salespeople, 90% of off-shore customer service reps, the folks at supermarkets, all the wait-staff in restaurants, our two city librarians, every door-to-door solicitor and our pastor, among others. So searching for a “Heart of Gold” is simply replaced by “Searching for Perfection”, which means….what?

Obviously I am missing a definition of perfection. But of course perfection almost can’t be defined. No, really. Just saying something is “the best” or “has no flaws” or “is completely satisfying” is not inclusive enough. Anyone who is rated a “10” for their figure-skating in the Olympics could surely point out one or two things where their performance wasn’t absolutely flawless…and if they themselves are perfectionists, maybe five or six things. So the search for perfection, in anything I do, is impossible. When you can get 100% on an essay test, or the “10” from your judges, and you know in your heart of hearts that you could have done better with the essays and your skating performance may have been good enough to win but certainly wasn’t a “10” if “10” is actually the definition of perfect, then, practically speaking, there is no such thing, it’s not possible to obtain. And by extension.  so too is my insistence that others deliver me perfection in anything.

But, you ask, what can be done? If we (I) are (am) finally starting to see this searching-for-perfection stuff as the negative it can be, what can one (we) do about it? As an old joke goes, “Question: How many therapists does it take to change a lightbulb? Answer: Just one, but it has to truly want to change!”  So the first question I now ask myself is, “Do I want to change enough to do the work?”

Yeah, or at least I’m gonna try. My current belief, developed after years in acting like I believe the opposite, is that we are not put on earth to live through some bizarre “continuous improvement” exercise. (In fact, I’m not sure why we are here – subject for another post, another time.) But, while I am here, perhaps the least I can do is work on myself a tad.  A tune-up, as it were. Or I could view it as paying rent on my space here on Mama Earth, if I needed a different rationale.

I don’t know. I’m confused about my own attitude anyway. And I can’t find much help from the experts articulating what to do next. Publicized stuff  about perfection seems to focus on helping people who are committed to obtaining perfection solely within their own deliverables, and as said that’s only half of my problem. I want others, especially significant others or people working for me or on my behalf, to deliver me perfection personally or in their work product. I often begrudgingly settle for less in my own case! So in this instance, I am too down on myself to expect myself to act or perform perfectly. But I can substitute but increasing my desire for others to be perfect. And I do have to ask –  “Is wanting perfection from others really that bad a thing?”

Not necessarily, not from a production perspective anyway. My demanding perfection from the people working with or for me seems to make people try harder, and deliver more. But that’s on the work/business/production/buying and selling side.

Personally I think demanding perfection from myself is much more usually a complete negative. But maybe I don’t have to completely drop it.

In fact, if I were to communicate more of what I wanted on a personal level, folks might even, for instance, think a bit more about what they are sending me for Christmas or my birthday. When they don’t stop to think, they send me stuff that I could never use. Like bottles of wine or liquor although they know I haven’t had a drink for over 30 years.  (This last issue has occurred in my life a dozen times at least.)

One thing that I realize I could do is to admit my own desires for perfection when I know perfection is unimportant. And, no pun intended, I think Irene is perfect for this experiment. I could immediately begin by telling her what I want for dinner, as she usually cooks and always asks.

This is a small thing, only improving on the many times when I’ve answered Irene with “I don’t care,” or “Anything would be fine!”. And even that is harder to do than it sounds because with her cooking I really am pretty easy to please; I genuinely like all her cooking, and anything would be fine, absolutely. But, yes, of course, I would also prefer her renowned Grilled Tuna and Cheese with tomato and onion, but I know also if I ate that every day, I would be even heavier than I am and I definitely don’t want that. So that’s a small thing but one with presenting at least a little bit of a challenge. “On the other hand, on the other hand”…I’m starting to feel like Tvye in Fiddler on the Roof, but hopefully you get it.

So, maybe if that works out OK I can, issue by issue, find ways to make other expectations of perfection manageable. Maybe I could , for instance, make more room for accepting instead of expecting. For example, accepting that the out-of-country online representative doesn’t speak clear English because of their own cultural background and that they are certainly trying the best they can.

This isn’t a perfect answer, of course. But you knew it wouldn’t be, didn’t you?