"If he was only _________, he'd be perfect."
We've all said or thought something like this before. We start seeing someone and reason to ourselves that maybe, if we could just get them to change, they'd be the perfect partner. So we stick it out but there's growing resentment: we just don't understand why they won't change and they don't understand why we want them to. We claim we love them and so, we stay.
The problem? We don't actually love them - we love the idea of who they might be if they change to what we want or need. Which is to say: We love someone that they're simply not.
I can only speak from my own experience so this is not about men vs. women or women vs. men - this happens across all types of relationships. But I've certainly started seeing people who wanted me to erase everything about myself and just appear in their worlds. My interests, goals, and hobbies didn't matter - I was expected to take on theirs. Needless to say, that never worked nor did the relationships last particularly long. What is interesting to me now, though, is that when I'd end it, they were usually surprised. Someone even said to me once "I'm not convinced this can't work."
I don't know about you, but I'm looking for a whole lot more than not being convinced something can't work. To me, it was pretty clear that they weren't interested in me - they were interested in the idea of me, but not the reality. And that's fine - that's what dating is for, after all. We don't have to cling to a relationship that just isn't working simply because we're not convinced it can't work. Both parties deserve better.
This isn't to suggest that we shouldn't support partners who are seeking self-improvement. Of course we should. But we should never enter into a relationship with the goal of changing the other person. That's a terrible burden to take on and it's pretty insulting to them. There is no such thing as the perfect person - everyone has a quirks and eccentricities but that's what makes them uniquely themselves. Everyone also has uniquely stellar qualities so we need to consider the entire being. Personality traits can't be surgically extracted because they're inextricably bound to the entire character.
It's fair to ask of any relationship if it fulfills what we want and need. It's fair to think about the balance of give and take. And it's fair to consider how much we're demanding of someone else, or that they are demanding of us.
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