Step 2 of 4
Which of those differences are different trips in disguise?
An Expectation Gap is a Matrix gap where the two people would describe the purpose of the trip differently. Same destination. Different vacation.
Not every gap is an Expectation Gap. The test is the verb.
A Budget gap is a friction: "How much are we spending on dinner?" A Budget gap becomes an Expectation Gap when one person thinks we're going to Lisbon to splurge and the other thinks we're going to Lisbon to be together cheaply. They aren't disagreeing about dinner. They're on different trips.
There's decent research behind this. Satisfaction tracks what you expected, not what you got — it's called expectation-disconfirmation, and it's why a perfectly nice trip can still feel like a letdown. The trip didn't fail. It just wasn't the one someone had in their head.
Gaps that get named turn into logistics. Gaps that don't turn into the fight nobody saw coming.
The worked example
The Budget split is an Expectation Gap. Dev has been calling this "the big one." Priya has been calling it "a cheap week away." They've each said it out loud, separately, to other people. Nobody has said it to each other.
The Rhythms split is not an Expectation Gap. Jordan and Cole both think the trip is about wandering and eating well. They just disagree about when the day starts. That's a friction — Step 3's job.
People who haven't decided what they want yet. You can't have a gap in expectations you don't have. First-time travelers, or anyone who said yes because everyone else did, tend to show up aligned on paper and surprised in practice.