As a Coach I sometimes have clients ask me how they can change their partners or they tell me they want their partners to get help so they will change. I know, I know…. if they just stopped doing this they wouldn’t make you angry, or if you they would just do that you would be able to be happy. But you can’t change someone else and you can’t force them to change, and that’s ok because they don’t need to change in order for you to love them – or in order for you to be happy. You can decide to love them and be happy anyway! How? You change instead. Controversial? Maybe, but far more realistic a goal as you are in control of your thoughts, feelings and actions and no one else’s. If you wait around for someone else to change in order for you to be happy you’re likely to be waiting a long time!
You can change the way you think about your partner, what they do or don’t do and what you decide it means. It’s not our job to ‘fix’ other people or even to decide that they need fixing. It’s a distraction from working on ourselves. Like in the Matrix, forget trying to bend the spoon, bend your mind instead. We decide our partners need to change to suit us – we make them wrong for not complying and decide we can’t accept them as they are. We put our happiness in their hands and think we need them to change in order for us to feel good. When we try to control how other people behave we frequently end up disappointed and frustrated because it usually doesn’t work.
How does this work in practise?
If, for example, your partner goes out and doesn’t call you all night, and you then feel hurt or angry, think about why this is. Is it really because he/she went out and didn’t call or is it because you’ve made them not calling mean something deeper… like they haven’t called because they’ve forgotten you, or because they don’t care or love you enough OR because that they’re doing something they shouldn’t be? If every time your partner goes out they don’t call you and you make it mean something bad, get upset and shout at them and they still don’t call you when they go out, you have a choice. You can:
a) Carry on demanding they call you, get upset when they don’t, argue with them and continue to feel frustrated
b) Break up with them and decide to find someone who will always call you
c) Ask them to call you and if they don’t, ask them why – perhaps there’s a valid reason (they always forget to charge their phone, they get too drunk, they don’t like making calls when they’re out socialising). If they continue not to call, you can decide to think something different/make it mean something else. You could decide that not hearing from them means they’re having a good night and you’ll catch up with them the following day instead – or you may decide that it doesn’t actually matter if you don’t speak to them when they go out as you trust them and respect their space.
You can make requests of your partner of course, but it’s worth being prepared that they won’t always do what you want them to do and that doesn’t make them wrong or make them a bad partner. They may not always meet your expectations and that’s ok. Don’t allow whether they do or don’t meet your expectations to dictated your emotions. You can feel however you like regardless of whether they comply or not.
Peace comes from seeing that we can be content regardless of whether people do what we’d like them to or not. We are responsible for our thoughts and in turn our feelings and our actions, so focus on what you’re thinking and doing and how you choose to respond to situations. Bend your mind, forget the damn spoon.