Minette

DON'T TRY TO CHANGE PEOPLE

Wednesday, 17. December 2008, 01:50:19

Why do some people insist they love you and want to be with you but want you to change major parts of who you are?
Aren’t those things part of what attracted them to you in the first place?
I don’t get that.
One man I had a relationship once agreed that he wanted to change everything about me that had made him fall in love with me because he never wanted anyone else to fall in love with me so I wouldn’t leave.
In the end I left because of that, of course.
Nobody should try to change others.
I’m not saying there isn’t compromise and change in order to make a relationship work but it should be voluntary.
If you’re engaged and there are problems, why would anyone think that those problems will be fixable once married?
And how many people get married knowing there are things they can’t tolerate in their partner thinking just that, that they will be able to make that person change?
My special lady who just died, her daughter sent me photos I got yesterday. Some were from my first wedding. I was 21 and we set the date the day my mother found my birth control.
My father was mad because she shouldn’t have been going through my bags and wondered if I really wanted to get married.
I never got to answer because she said of course I was getting married.
So I did. And I really didn’t want to. But there wasn’t anything about him that I felt I’d wamt to change after we were married…even then I knew better than that.
Why did I get married then? I don’t know. Maybe it was easier than not getting married? Wasn’t that what we were supposed to do at 21?
I still don’t know. I was a junkie then which didn’t help. He was too. Like that relationship stood a chance.
Years later I remember we ran into each other and I was looking at him and thinking as we were talking. He asked me what I was thinking and I laughed. I said, you’re a very nice, good-looking man but you’re totally different from what I am and I’m wondering how we ever got together in the first place.
He laughed and agreed, not bad, just different, too different, we didn’t share goals and how can a marriage last if there are different goals?
Actually I had no goals, all I was worried about was my next fix. He could see himself past that while I wasn’t able to see anything but that.
I never really believed I’d survive it. I didn’t really think about it, I just knew.
So nobody was more surprised than I was when I did.
But that’s a whole other story or even several stories.