How to deal when your significant other has changed
Here is the thing about love: it is never perfect. Even the most wonderful person in the world is going to have flaws. When you can accept them, flaws and all, that is love.Sometimes people change. Maybe you've accepted all of your significant other's flaws, but years go by and new ones come up that you never would've accepted in the beginning. Sometimes the person you love is going to change for the worse. What do you do when the person you're with is not the person you fell in love with? In the immortal words of Kenny Rogers, "you gotta know when to hold 'em and know when to fold 'em."
Ask yourself, is this a change I can live with? Let's say you married a vegetarian hippie like yourself, but now he's eating steaks and his politics are decided by Toby Keith songs. Can the two of you have a relationship full of lively, respectful debate? Or have things become hostile and bitter as you realize you're not on the same page anymore. Even a change for the worse can be something you can adjust to in time, you just have to really be honest with yourself about how it will affect your relationship.
Temporary changes happen sometimes, and in this case I think you've got to stick by them and get them through it. If your normally happy girlfriend gradually becomes sad and withdrawn, she could have depression, and it's something you can try to help her out of. Encourage her to go to therapy or figure out what triggered it in the first place. If it's a temporary setback, your relationship may be fine, if not stronger, when you get over the rough patch. Temporary changes can be brought on by stress, depression, change in work status, or many other things. This is the time when your significant other needs you the most, but you need to confront them about how they've changed. Waiting for them to fix it ,when they may not have even realized what was happening, isn't fair to them. Things like depression can come on gradually, and they may not know what was wrong until you point out specific things that are different.
If it's a permanent change, then it's up to you to decide if it's time to leave. How will you know? Talk to them about it. Do they recognize that they've changed, that it wasn't a positive change, and they want to fix it? Then stick by them. If they keep saying they want to fix it, but given time make no real steps toward doing so, then it's time to reconsider. This is never easy. You want to believe that they are going to make the changes you want them to, and you still love them very much. But if they keep promising to try to fix thing s but they make no attempt to do so, that is a problem. If they are really trying but it's not working, it may still be salvageable. The difference is when they are really trying, or just giving you lip service to keep you around. That can be one of the hardest things to differentiate when you're looking at someone with loving eyes.
When you bring up the change you've noticed, are they hostile or defensive, or do they see what has changed as a positive? Then it's up to you to decide if you want to stay. You never know, the change that you perceive in their personality may even be a reaction to a change in yours that you weren't even aware of.
Labels: communication, love, relationships
posted by Mia @ 10:26 PM
1 Comments:
There's also the problem of when your partner doesn't change. When you get together with someone you expect them to grow, to change a bit for the better, and to become more fluid in their give and take with you. You expect them to get to know you, to be able to notice things earlier, to help and comfort you when needed, and to be able to recognize trouble signals earlier the longer you are together. But if the longer you are together the less you talk, the less you communicate both verbally and non-verbally, then you are not growing. Woody Allen, in Annie Hall, used the analogy of how a shark dies when it stops swimming to illustrate that any relationship that stops moving, stops growing, is basically a dead shark and therefore doomed. If the two of you are changing together, growing more mature individually and as a couple and learning about each other as you go along, then things should be okay. But if the relationship is either not growing or, if it's growing but in fundamentally different directions, then a reanalysis is probably in order. Couples must be able to talk, to share openly and honestly and constructively without placing blame or guilt or shame anywhere near the relationship.
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