Having been a young woman (and regrettably am no longer) I remember vividly being under the delusion that whatever perceived faults my partner had could be fixed if only he would cooperate. I remember as a young wife being hurt when my husband wanted to go out one night a week to play sports. How ludicrous is that! But that’s what it’s like being a young woman with her share of insecurities. Fortunately I’ve never been a jealous person but I just couldn’t understand why he would want to spend time with anyone but me.
As I spend time with my younger female friends and hear of their relationships, it occurs to me that generation after generation we fall in love with who we think our mates could be rather than the real man who is standing in front of us. What a shame. This is doomed to failure or at least disappointment. The funny thing is that we are far from perfect ourselves but try to improve our mates to be more like our girlfriends. Perhaps this is the reason for the increase in lesbianism in later life. I just saw that Meredith Baxter has come out of the closet after three failed marriages.
Personally I love men and they know it. Most of my friends are men. In many ways I think like a man. Strangely enough as I get older however, more and more of my friends are women. Young women are competitive and I had no time for that. The only person I have ever competed with is me.
The difference between my first and second marriage is that I love Marc just the way he is. He appreciates this tremendously because he has been through the “young woman” change program in a relationship before he met me. My theory is that older women are more centered and comfortable in their own skin and therefore can let go and allow others to be themselves. They no longer feel the need or duty to control everything. Older women know that’s not possible anyway….
We fall in love with this little girl dream of prince charming who might just be a frog or maybe just a normal human being with qualities and weaknesses. That’s why it’s important to talk about the important things before imposing expectations on each other. It just depends on what you’re looking for. By the time a woman is 30 they are seriously looking for a mate and possible father for their offspring. I’ve seen girls marry people just so they wouldn’t be left out of all wedding excitement their peers were experiencing.
So before you decide to marry the man you want to change, take stock and find out if he is really the right one for you to avoid great heartache in the future for you both. Choosing the right mate is a difficult choice, often the guy who excites you beyond belief will not be the one who’ll hold a bucket for you when you’re sick. How romantic, I know. But I’ll tell you something, every morning I go to get in my car and regardless of how tight on time he is, my husband cleans off my car so I’m ready to go when I come out. I have never asked him to do this but I really appreciate the little demonstrations of love. Everyone needs a soft place to fall especially in our rat race lives. And although I am far from perfect my husband loves me for the person I am and does not try to change me.
Being in the wrong relationship is a hundred times worse than being alone. Do you know that 70% of married people confess to being lonely? Isn’t that sad! I’m sure they didn’t think that would happen. Do you know the most important thing element to a successful marriage? MARRY THE RIGHT PERSON. Everything else is just making up for the wrong decision in the first place. Did you also know that 10 years later, arranged marriages and marriages based on “romantic love” are equally successful? Having common values and aspirations are tremendously important for future happiness. I have been incredibly fortunate to marry twice for love successfully. I wish you the same good fortune.
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{ 16 comments… read them below or add one }
This sort of reminds me of a quotation by Antoine de Saint - Exupéry, “Perhaps love is the process of my leading you gently back to yourself. Not whom I want you to be, but to who you are.” I remember my younger days when I have perceived idea of the type of woman I want to be in love with. And yet time and again, I proved myself wrong in falling in love with women I thought I wouldn’t. I do not believe in changing the other person. When one truly love another, one will want to be a better person and thus the change comes naturally.
BK, well said. I will keep your last sentence for reference and I do believe this. When you love someone you do your best to support and make sure that they have the opportunity to have a fulfilled life. Thanks for sharing.
Very well said. In my case I married a man who said he was in love with me. I did change him. He had been agoraphobic but together we built a life where he was out at a job (which he still has and likes) we had our own apartment, I moved to the US so we could be married all legal and proper for the government. I wanted to be married too but it was not a romantic wedding for sure. After we married he kept changing. He began picking on me and alienating me. We had been friends a long time before he decided he was in love with me. When we divorced it was because he no longer wanted to be married, just over a year after the wedding. He is grateful to me for getting him out of his rut. However, I can’t say things turned out that well from my side of things. I moved back to Ontario with nothing and I felt like nothing too.
I think one of the big problems with “love” is that there are too many people in love with “love”, and not enough people using their damn heads. I have observed this kind of foolishness in people that believe pigheadedness is the same as being confident or assertive.
Oh sure, I have grappled with love the same as everyone. What I have taken away from all the bumps and bruises is that “love” is heavily overrated. I daresay it was invented by artists to justify lust and madness. There are much more profound emotions and concepts that can be shared by two people and used to forge real connections.
To me, love is respect. That is to say, they are one and the same. Then there is trust, something complex and very rare. If there is no trust, no respect, no consideration, and foremost, individuality, there is not much to talk about.
To me a relationship is made up of two individuals, two people with their own ideas, goals, and principles. They must chose to be together, not fall into each other like some insane Harlequin novel. They must be able to say to each other, “baby, I CAN live without you but I REALLY would rather not!”. Anything else is parasitic, unbalanced, and often founded in dishonesty or denial.
This leads me to my point. One of the glaring issues with bad relationships, in my mind, can be found in the terribly misleading logistics of courtship. We basically encourage couples to set unrealistic expectations from the start by insisting on these asinine games where we pretend we’re flawless. Suck in that gut! Hide that bald spot! Don’t mention your last disastrous relationship! Pretend you never feel attraction to others when you are in a relationship! In short, lies, lies, and more lies.
I wonder what would happen if more people began to take account for their choices and tried to make informed decisions about who they choose to frequent? Would we have less heartache? Perhaps not, but we just all might come away from them a little less scarred and a little more wise.
I will be celebrating 10 years with my girlfriend (and new son) in March of 2010.
Great Post!
This is a marvelous post! I wish young women everywhere could read it. I think one of the best reasons for young women having the influences of older women is for reasons such as you mentioned: marrying a man for who he could be and not who he is. It’s a travesty that young women do not realize this until it’s too late.
While I would never desire our culture to revert back to the old arranged marriages and “matchmakers,” I think our society misleads young people by making them believe that “love” will pave the way. The voices of loving, experienced older people are absolutely necessary, no matter at what “modern” age we think we’ve arrived. Young folks would be very wise to listen!
I am so glad I stumbled on your blog. Well I didn’t exactly stumble, you advertised on my blog via CMF and now here I am. I am so drawn to your writing and your wisdom. Reading this article on change couldn’t have come at a better time in my life. I so appreciate everything you say. Fortunately I did marry later in life, and although it was a bit touch and go in the beginning, I think my husband and I have finally both come to a place of acceptance…and that is true love. Thank you for sharing your life with us.
Such a well written post! I feel that as I get older (I am 45), I am definitely mellowing out a bit. Some of the stuff that used to bug me intensly (in my 20s and 30s) just doesn’t matter much anymore.
Hubby and I just celebrated 18 yrs. of marriage in November…great relationships don’t just happen overnight…they do take work but they are worth it.
Laura, I don’t know the whole story however it sounds like you tried to save him and you were successful and now he has decided it’s time to move on. I’m sure you deserve to be loved for the person you are. Next time try and establish some boundaries and ensure that you receive as much as you give. Not easy for a giver. Good luck, stay in touch.
Jason, you have a pretty mature view of love, impressive. Remind me to kiss you when I see you. I agree the romanticized view of “love” has screwed up many people seeking this and never finding it because they couldn’t see what is in front of them. My version of love is someone who loves me for whom I am inside and there for me without having to ask for it. As I am a giving person sometimes I exhaust myself and I need someone to take care of me. Marc does that. You are very fortunate which I think you’ve figured this out for yourself and I’m glad to see that. Many people go through life looking for more and more and finally in the end true happiness was right in their own backyard but they couldn’t see it. I’m glad this won’t happen to you. Congratulations to you and Lisa for your 10th in March. Perhaps a large celebration with rings involved would be appropriate.
On one hand, men would never change, so do women; on the other hand, relationship is all about compromise. I guess what we cannot change is the core, these stuffs define who we are, what we can make compromise or sacrifice about is these stuffs which make us fell less happy than being with a person we love.
Choose a person who shares same value with us and make compromise for minor issues is the key to get a happy relationship in my mid.
So true - I love this week’s article. It’s strange how women apply different logic when choosing a friend vs. choosing a partner. When you meet someone and consider making them a friend, you look at who they are, what their values are, what kind of lifestyle they lead, what their personality is like, who their other friends are, etc… You then consciously or subconsciouly assess whether or not this person fits in with you own set of values, beliefs, lifestyle, etc. You decide to make this person a friend and/or remain aquaintances. For some reason, when you meet a man and/or potential partner, wammo! All that logic goes out the window. It doesn’t matter about any of the above as long as he likes/loves you back. I think this stems from the way that young women were raised. If your parents were the traditional type who got married out of school and had 1.5 kids, the house in the suburbs, 2 cars in the driveway and the dream of freedom 55, as a young women you feel that if you do not attain this “status quo” that you have somehow “failed.” I think it’s important to like you said Kay, accept at FACE value what is in front of you. Take an honest inventory of your own needs, like, dislikes, dreams, goals, values, etc. and then match them up against your partner’s. Sometimes, it’s as easy on not balancing at the bottom of the sheet. Putting it on paper, and letting go of the “ideal” we were raised to strive for really helps to make an educated and informed decision about what to do when faced with a potentially innapropriate partner. After all, if we want to be loved the way we are, for who we are, and just as we are, we need to extend that same courtesy to the person we want to make a life with. Thanks for the inspiration.
Really great entry. They key is to find the person who loves you, all of you just as you are and vice versa. That way no one is trying to change anyone else, or at least those qualities in your mate that might irk you are small and bearable and do not become the biggest focus in your interaction. It might be a life long search, but the right person is worth the wait.
Mary-Lynn, I had never thought of it in those terms but you’re absolutely right. We do take more care in the choosing of a girlfriend. For guys we may go if they’re cute and they ask us. Then we project all the qualities we need on to them whether they have a hope in hell of fulfilling them. Our family dynamics are exceptionally powerful. Do you know that they have done studies about asking questions of grown children but first asking the same questions of their parents and the answers align to a ridiculous level (unless of course they are teenagers where the opposite applies). I’ve decided it’s exhausting being a young woman. The only advice I’ll give you is not to settle. What that saying, you have a kiss a lot of frogs……
TheAL, thanks for stopping by. We all have things to improve whether it’s leaving socks on the floor or the top of the toothpaste container but if the person loves who you are inside and care about making you happy, then these “adjustments” can be made quite easily. I know I annoy my husband from time to time but overall I’m pretty easy to live with because I really don’t give a damn about the small stuff. In fact my favorite book ever is “Don’t Sweat the Small Stuff”. He got commercial and started believing his own press but this first book was really good. I highly recommend it.
Your article is very lovely and I enjoyed reading it very much. I’m wondering if I can e-mail you and ask you couple of questions. I feel lost and need to find my way vey fast.
HM, you can send me an e-mail at thekayway@gmail.com. Please note I am not a professional, just someone who has lived a while and learned some lessons along the way. E-mail me before Monday and I will answer you as I will be out of town for a few days after. Take care.