I love you, you're perfect, now change

Do you know what one of the nicest things about being single is? I don't feel the need to change anybody. I feel at peace with the world.

That's the difference between a friend and a significant other. You can just accept your friends for who they are. But I don't know a single girl who doesn't want to change her significant other in some way or another.

Usually it is just little stuff like wishing he would take out the trash, say "I love you" without prompting, open up more.

I suppose it is because we are more attached to significant others so how they act affects us more. Or we spend more time with them/ live with them so their actions have more time to grate on us. Or because we have "chosen" to be with them, their actions reflect on us more.

Some of the best advice I've ever gotten is this:

Let them be their own person.

And find someone whose faults you can live with because they aren't going to change after marriage. Marriage does not fix things.

I think that second piece of advice was really important for me to hear. It came from one of my clients a few years back. He was in therapy with his wife who was insecure and jealous. He thought that once he declared his love and married her, proving how committed he was to her, that her fears and jealousy would subside.

But they didn't. Because marriage doesn't change who a person is. If they are insecure and jealous before marriage. They are going to be insecure and jealous after marriage. They will just be jealous of people talking to their husband rather than their boyfriend.

I'm sure I will start dating again at some point and find someone that I love and who drives me crazy. I just hope I can hold onto the piece of the single me who doesn't feel the need to change other people and let that person be who they are, faults and all.