Something you would like to change in your partner?

"Perfecting" those around us is a widespread and dangerous temptation that reveals insecurity and can cause the relationship to collapse: so fight this trend ...

When a love story begins, it seems that everything is fine, the two partners see each other as perfect or with completely surmountable defects. Many say that it is an idealized, unrealistic vision, and that time always reveals the truth, which is that the person you are with is "less" than you thought: less attractive, less gifted, less passionate ... One thing is certain: very often, after some time from the start, at least one of the two would like to change something in the other and try to do so. She begins to exert pressure, to make requests and to express criticisms, all oriented towards a modification of the loved one.

 Your fears don't have to spill over to your partner

Generally, this action is guided by a mental image of "how it should be" the partner, because the way it is is no longer good. Therefore, it is not he who has changed, but the gaze of those who begin to criticize that, as a poetic as he was, gives way to a reductive idea of ​​the partner. The latter, starting to feel inadequate or pushed to distort on the basis of something that he does not understand, becomes less spontaneous and becomes full of anger and so the couple takes the road to failure. What is behind this uncompromising request? In many cases it is a form of defense: the person wants to change the other because she is unable to make herself grow in the relationship or does not stand up to the intensity and sharing of the couple's life. The change request, beyond the individual situations, always subliminally asks the same thing: "I'm not yet ready for the life of a couple, I don't feel like an adult, but I don't want to give up our story, nor the idea to look mature. Therefore I enjoin you to meet me on everything and to embody what my insecurities need ”.

Is your happiness elsewhere?

And what does it need? That the partner embodies an "impossible character": he must be a serving knight ready for anything, but also autonomous so as not to make inappropriate requests; he must be ready to apologize, but he must not need to be apologized. The person who behaves in this way naturally does not notice the deep reasons behind it. But he does not want to change partners because he knows, deep down, that the problem is not in the other. To get out of this dead end, capable of ruining even the greatest loves, we need to refer to basic, simple but effective psychological rules: if the partner shows obvious changes compared to the beginning, the problem arises from him; if, on the other hand, the need for him to be different arises from us, the problem is first of all ours. Are we wrong then? Do we have doubts about the relationship? Do we have ambivalent feelings? Let's look inside and try to get to know each other more. And if, despite everything, the desire for the partner to change remains, we must give up: it is not him we want, it is someone else, or perhaps it is just an idea that has become fixed in our mind. It doesn't matter: you have to know how to leave when the time comes. We will save the happiness of both.