“You can’t change your partner; you can only change yourself,” is a truism that’s often trotted out when couples are working their relationships. Okay. Fine. But how do you translate that into something actionable? The first step is some pretty fucking uncomfortable introspection.
The whole assessing yourself part of rebuilding a broken relationship is painful. I hated it and I know my wife did as well but luckily, we both stuck with it. However, when the question came along “How open are you to changing yourself?” I thought to myself, this is a piece of piss. If there’s anyone open to change it’s me. I moved from Australia to the United States. I married a woman from California. I did a three-year work stint in the UK. I’ve owned and lived in five different homes in the past 35 years. I love to travel and experience other places. Finally, an introspection question I’ll be able to nail.
Wrong. There’s a line I remember from the movie Buckaroo Banzai — no matter where you go, there you are. I had to own up to the fact that despite the locational and career changes I had made throughout my life, emotionally I hadn’t changed since I was fourteen. When I thought, really thought, about the conflicts in my marriage many of them pointed directly to the fact that I was about as open to change as a concrete weathervane. There are dozens of examples of how I thought our relationship would be better if my wife changed, not me. Here’s just a few:
- I moved from Australia into an environment that was all my wife’s friends and family. So, all my wife had to do was to pay more attention to me and stop ignoring me at social events and our marriage would be fine. I didn’t see that I was the one being a wet blanket and not making more of an effort to establish my own relationships with her friends and family, who in the most part, are good people. I would sulk, and drink and couldn’t see that I was the one who was ruining the evening for her, no matter how hard she tried.
- My wife just needed to plan more so we would be ready to go when we agreed, and not run late. I didn’t acknowledge that it was my own stress and anxiety that made me so uptight about when we left or arrived somewhere. Most of the time I got upset and angry when it really didn’t matter if we were there on time or not.
- I was convinced we would be both be happier if we just had sex more often. I assumed that the things that turned me on turned my wife on, an assumption that was usually wrong. I assumed that even when we were not emotionally connected my wife would still want to have sex. My wife just needed to change and think about sex the same way that I did.
When I didn’t see the change I wanted from my partner, either I would be whining and annoying, or I would be angry and bitter. What a shock that that behavior didn’t improve our relationship. Over the years a couple of therapists and the Retrouvaille Program gave me a metaphorical kick up the arse and told me to get over myself. God knows I’m not fixed, but I’d like to think that I’m not as bad as I was.
I’m not a therapist and your situation may be completely different than mine. But I’ve presented and spoken to enough couples over the years to know that few people are genuinely open to change. If you’re one of them, good on you. For the rest of us it takes hard work and there’s no guarantee that your partner will respond in the way you want. But if you don’t try and change yourself, it’s unlikely your struggling relationship is going to get any better.
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This post was previously published on medium.com.
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