People Can Change If They Love Someone Enough...

Is it true that people can change if they love someone enough? Maybe for a while...

I have pointed out that you have little chance of dating someone who is tailor-made to your particular personality.

The best you are likely to do is what we called "good suitability." Therefore, there will be many things about you both which the other would very much like to change.

We cannot emphasize too strongly that every person has to act in accordance with the kind of person he is. No promise, however sincere, whether made before, during, or after a marriage, can change the essential pattern of any personality.

This is why wise selection is so vital. The one you marry is the one you get. Of course, people do change with age and experience. The one you marry will not forever remain the game. Neither will you. Such changes will, in part, result from the experiences of marriage.

But such changes will be what they will be, not what you want them to be. They may leave the other less, rather than more satisfactory to you.

Can you influence this process of inevitable change in desired ways? Here are some of your possibilities.

In trivial matters unrelated to a basic need, you may be able to get some changes with little difficulty. The problem of changing a person is often like that of alterations in a house. A man bought a house which had a tiny bathroom which could easily have been larger had the builder used some of the waste room in the hall.

Before the house was built, such a change would have been simple. After it was built, the change would require a shifting of three partitions and two doorways. Such a change would have cost too much. So it is with the ones we date. If we could bring them up from babyhood, we would properly make some real changes.

But after they are grown, basic changes may prove far more costly than they are worth. Furthermore, a house cannot actively resist alterations, but a husband can; and usually does.

Finally, if you think people can change if they love someone enough, it may indicate that something is wrong with you, rather than with the other party.

Many people have personal deficiencies which they feel unable to overcome, and about which they feel insecure. If they can get others to adopt their peculiarities, they feel less uncomfortable about them.

Those who are too zealous in seeking to convert others to their religion or their point of view are rightly viewed with suspicion. Often what they are really trying to do is to gain support for their own abnormalities as a means of finding greater security for themselves.

Still believe people can change if they love someone enough?