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1. Is it okay to want them to change?
We live in a culture that firmly suggests that the essence of true love is for one person fully to accept the other, as we like to put it, just as they are. In moments of quiet intimacy, the most romantic thing one could ever hear from a partner is, apparently, ‘I wouldn’t change a thing about you’, just as the most bitter and disappointed enquiry one could ever throw at a lover in a declining relationship would be: ‘Why can’t you accept me as I am?’
If things do end, we can be guaranteed to garner substantial sympathy from friends and onlookers by explaining that we left because they wanted us to change.
It sounds almost plausible until we pause and modestly remember what the human animal is: a largely demented, broken, agitated, blind, deluded and barely evolved primate. We are, each one of us, and with nothing derogatory being meant by the term, really rather mad. We are the inheritors of peculiar childhoods; we over-and under-react in a shifting set of areas; we fail to understand key aspects of reality; we get other people wildly wrong; we are unsure of our future; many of our judgements are questionable, and a lot of the time we have no idea what is going on.
Against such a background, to insist that there would be nothing about a person that one should want to change, that to be asked to change would be an offence, that we should be loved just as we are feels like the height of arrogance and unreasonableness. Given the facts of human nature, how could we be anything other than profoundly, tirelessly committed to changing a bit here and there? How could we not be embarrassed by who we were last year, let alone right now? How could we not embrace the idea of a lover kindly proffering suggestions as to how we might evolve?
It’s time to redefine a functioning adult. This isn’t someone who bristles at the idea of change, gently suggested; it’s someone who welcomes it as a path to redemption. The true adult knows they need to grow up. The truly healthy person knows they are ill (we all are). Conversely, the people who really need to change are those who think they don’t need to change at all, and who say it’s your problem when you float the idea. They become furious with you for even suggesting the concept and storm off, calling you weird or intense.
Of course, change has to be asked for in kindly and mature ways. We’re not talking here of a bullying demand for evolution. We’re talking about how much we are right to love our partners and still want them to grow up in particular ways: learn to listen more, learn to be more present, learn to be more affectionate or at least explain why they can’t be, learn to get better at fathoming their own sexuality, learn to understand their past and how it affects their present, learn to defuse what makes them irrationally angry, learn to admit to their addictive behaviours and seek the help that would be on offer, learn not to humiliate us in company or betray us with friends or our children, learn how to be loyal and kind and relaxed and present and good….
None of this is incompatible with love; it is the work of love. Love should be a classroom in which we mutually undertake to educate one another, in a spirit of support and compassion, to grow into the best versions of ourselves. Love should not be a cavern in which we endorse each other’s worst sides or suffer in silence around the difficulties the other is causing us. ‘What would you like to change about me?’ should emerge as the kindest and most mature of enquiries between partners. Rather than giving each other presents, couples should hand over the greatest gift of all, the sincerely meant question: ‘How can I change to make it easier for you to endure me?’ That would be properly romantic.
A good enough relationship should give us the bravery to confront our flaws. ‘I want you to change’ is not a sign of cruelty; it’s proof that someone cares. The right person isn’t someone without issues; it’s someone who is committed to getting on top of them. Let’s go even further: the natural response to being with someone who resists change, and who sees our attempts to change them as an insult, might be to wonder if it is time to make a serious change to our lives.