Relationships that assert Change

In my previous article about surviving relationships I had mentioned about the fact that how love is not the only factor that governs the success of a relationship. There were lot of queries to the fact that if not love then what. My article seemed to be a bit inconclusive; however, deliberately I didn’t want to conclude the article in any sense. This is because of the fact that I wanted to keep a thing that is not understood conclusively on the inconclusive side. There may be lot of theories that define the guidelines to maneuver a relationship to a successful directions, many agony-aunts and agony-uncles, but honestly speaking relationships are like finger-prints, they differ from person to person and from circumstances to circumstances. Hence, there cannot be a fixed formula to alleviate the pain, or envisage a problem that occurs in a relationship. I, for once, am not trying to be a guru, preaching any kind of formula to improve your love life. I am just addressing some of the things that I have come across and would like to document it, in case there may be any reference required from the experience that I may have had.


Today I would like to draw my attention towards the fact that how a partner (male or female) wants the other to change according to him/her. One has to understand that in every human being there is a factor that arouses the autocratic tendencies in him/her which only wants to rule over anything and everything apart from him/her. The softest target in case such feeling arises in a person is the partner that is close to him/her. The best thing by which one can assert himself/herself is actually to enforce a kind of change that is related to the characteristic of the other person. This is a thing that actually makes the other person really cranky. In the initial stages there is everything that is likable about the person and once the commitment is done, and there is no way to step back the other person always wants to change some of the characteristics that are inherent in the person and are the characteristics that actually define the person as an entity. I have mostly seen these things happen with people after marriage.


In today’s times marriage is a socially sanctified relationship that has a kind of social identity and recognition, however it also brings with itself its own limitations. I have often seen people trying to change the other person to an extent, which is not suitable for the other person. I have seen that the change is sometimes frustrating for the other person. It is true for husbands and wives. A husband, after marriage wants to see a different form of the girl that he actually loved. The same qualities, now become a kind of embarrassment for him and he asserts himself to the wife to change, to be a altogether different person, which may be socially viable but definitely not the person whom he had fallen in love with. Same is the case of wives, who, only after marriage try to find bugs in the life of their husbands. Sometimes I really feel that wives can make very good quality assurance executives because they have these uncanny habit and talent of finding errors in virtually everything and anything that their husbands do.


This is one of the reasons by which cracks develop in a relationship. As the time goes by the relationship reduces from being an emotional attachment to merely an official social bonding. The personal space is invaded by social obligations and preferences give way to adjustments. A relationship always requires a kind of adjustment. As I said in my previous article that a relationship doesn’t sustain on love but it sustains due to absence of hatred. It is about how you can actually live with the vices rather than endorse the virtues. So when you try to convert the vices to virtues just by asserting yourself on somebody or by merely giving some evidences of virtuosity then the other person is actually irritated and looks up at you as a kind of villain who has come to invade his/her life. Change is good, but when it is enforced upon it tends to get on the nerves. There is also this feeling in a person that for so many years he/she has been doing a particular thing but all of a sudden somebody, who he/she had loved, trusted and made a part of his/her life, is trying to invade the basic domains of his/her life. How can this be condoned or even tolerated. This antagonistic feeling further amplifies in the heart and finally comes out as an outburst. This results to fights initially then differences that are far from being met and finally there is a gap which is never filled. An obvious breakage in a relationship, which in any way is not desirable by any means.


So, how does one avoid this from happening? Let me give you one example. Taj Mahal, one of the wonders of the world and one of the most expensive and beautiful evidences of love is white in color. What if somebody wants to change this to a multi-colored minaret? Would this do any good to the existing Taj-Mahal? Would this add any kind of value apart from actually satisfying the ego of the person who is actually painting it red and blue? The answer is the mere attempt of trying to do this is a kind of folly that causes more harm than good. It harms the Taj-Mahal, establishes the person as a lunatic and drives away the people who are coming to watch the Taj-Mahal with a preconceived notion that it is white in color. Similarly every individual is like this monument of love; unique, unparalleled and distinct. Trying to change the basic characteristics itself is to be like the person who tries to paint Taj-Mahal red and blue. This brings more harm to the relationship, than doing good. There may be arguments that a person is trying to change the other person for the others good, however the fact remains that this change is carried out by means of assertion which is evident of the egoisitic intentions of the other person.


Conclusion: as many of my friends would want to have is as follows. Do not try to change things that actually are inherent. You have loved a person due to some qualities so try to be positive about that, rather than being negative about his/her vices. Because in the process of eliminating the vices you may as well eliminate the qualities that he/she might be having and then probably lose him/her.