Sometimes I’ve heard young women talking about the guy they’re going to marry and they will make the comment. ‘I’ll soon change him once we’re married.’ Can I suggest such a relationship is heading from trouble from the outset?
For ages after we were first married, I tried to convince Mick it was better to get up and let me make him breakfast before he went off to work. But to him another half hour in bed was more valuable than eating breakfast. I had to accept I wasn’t going to change him, even if I did think it was for his own good. I came to see I had no hope of changing his view. Instead I accepted his decision and made sure I packed him a good lunch and morning tea.
Yet, sadly too often as Beth says, we want to other person or the situation to change.That’s not the way it works.
Before you get married you need to think about whether there are habits and qualities in your intended that are going to drive you mad after a short time. If there are, don’t reckon on them changing, because it may not happen. Can you live with those habits every day? It is often not the big problems in life that drive a wedge between people. It is the little things – like squeezing the toothpaste from the wrong end, opening the milk from the wrong side, leaving the toilet seat up, dropping clothes on the floor, cluttering bench tops with whatever has been used. These are the things that can become major issues, if we let them.
Sometimes a calm and reasonable conversation, not an argument in the heat of the moment, as to why these things drive you made might be in order. Just being able to explain why it is a problem, may help in solving the problem. Of course there might also be things you are doing that are driving your spouse mad and you need to be prepared to hear them. If a compromise of change can be reached, well and good. But if not, can you live with that fault every day of your life? It’s something that bears thinking about. Better to think about it before you marry rather than try and change it afterwards.
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