Relationships and marriages are beautiful experiences when rightly instituted. But the truth is that, anyone in a relationship or marriage has expectations that they want the other person to measure up to. Interestingly, it’s not only the partner in a relationship that has it, family, friends, and even society has expectations too.

When we arrived in Macedonia, there was no rest for us. We faced conflict from every direction, with battles on the outside and fear on the inside. 2nd Corinthians 7:5 NLT

This places a performance pressure on us. This pressure tends to be two-dimensional in nature; the outside battle and the fear within. The outside battle is about keeping up with the expectations of the one we love, so as not to disappoint them or risk losing them to another person.

The inner battle is the personal pressure felt from fear of not being able to satisfy them, or our best not being good enough to keep them.

The only way out of the burden of such pressure is to understand what the expectations are, then trust God in the place of prayer while doing our best to meet those needs in the most creative ways possible. Pressure can work both to our advantage or disadvantage depending on how we respond to it.

The right attitude to pressure brings out latent potentials in us, increases our capabilities and brings about the attainment of certain possibilities that otherwise might have been lost.