Consider how hard it is There is a debate among scholars as to whether a person can really change as an adult. The points of view are as follows:
This page will show that there is some validity to all three points of view and we'll come to a conclusion about changes in yourself in the future.
You may have been dating someone who meets many of your criteria, but you are concerned about certain crucial issues. As a result, you may decide to go ahead with the marriage, and to change the spouse later.
That possibility raises an important question: Is it a good idea to enter into a marriage contract with the goal of changing your spouse? If so, how should you effect these changes?
Most people who enter into a marriage with the goal of persuading the spouse to change are disappointed.
Keep in mind that there are two clear options:
Both options are likely to lead to problems in your future relationship.
If you will not be able to change your future spouse, then you will have to live with those troublesome issues for the rest of your lives together. However, you had already established the fact that those very issues were crucial to your successful marriage. The failure to change the spouse effectively annuls part of the raison d'etre for the marriage.
If you do effect a change, then your future spouse will be different from before. However, these new differences have to work together with the larger system. Thus, any change in your spouse's behavior will necessarily result in a concomitant change in his or her personality, behavior, feelings, body, conceptualizations, qualities, skills, traits, or abilities. You cannot pull one aspect out of the whole, change it, and then expect it to fit back in the system as if nothing happened.
In other words, you may indeed be able to effect a change in your spouse, but you then have a different person in more ways than you expected. Those concomitant changes are quite unpredictable.
As a result, you may find that you have married one person, but you are left with a different person. Will all of the unpredictable changes be to your liking? There is no way to know.
There's more. Would you like to be manipulated or changed by your spouse? That's right. Even after making the changes to your satisfaction, your spouse may be bitter about the result.
It's a lose-lose situation.
Does that mean that you should find somebody who does not have to change? Perhaps, but that means that the person must be perfect and meet all of your requirements - without making compromises - before you get married. Again, that's not a very likely proposition.
People do change through life. Married couples come to be like each other with the passing of time. Partners to a marriage do affect each other.
Thus, the question is not whether you and your future spouse will change. You will. The question is whether you should stipulate a specific change as a determining prerequisite for a marriage.
Doing so entails a great risk, since you cannot force a change to occur in the precise way that you want it to happen without side effects.
And it is foolhardy to base a marriage on the need for a change in the future.
From dictation of May 5, 2005
People change all the time. That's because we think and we realize things. It's also because we grow older. We mature. We were exposed to different experiences and concepts.
One of the times that we change the most is when we are in our upper teens or our young twenties. We're old enough to understand more about life and we know what we want. We have more ideas. But we have not yet finalized these ideas.
Wouldn't you know it, it is also the age at which most of us are dating and looking into getting married.
However, the problem is that you don't really know what you want during the time that you're changing. That's the idea behind the concept of changing.
As a result you are in a situation in which you are trying to search for someone based on what you think you are and where you think you're going at the time, but you're not really all that sure.
This is a dangerous period of time. It's a time in which you can make major mistakes.
If you feel that you are in a period of time of change going from one set of ideas or concepts to another, that's the wrong time to go out on dates. It is probably worth waiting a little bit until you know where you're going.
You may ask, how is this going to help? After all, you are changing throughout your life. You are going to be changing again. What is the difference if you get married or date during a stable period of time or during a changing period of time? Either way at some point you are going to be changing again.
That's true.
However, there's a difference between the change that you make before you mary and the change that you make after you marry.
Before you marry the change turns you into a different person and you do not know what kind of person that will be and what your goals, feelings, thoughts, ideas, and philosophies will be when the change is complete.
After you are married, however, you and your spouse will change together. You'll be growing together. You'll be moving in the same direction together. Having the same experiences and ideas, sharing concepts with each other, and in that way you will be able to deal with the changes together as a unit, as a couple. This is extremely important. It does not stop the clock for the change but it makes you be able to deal with the change in a positive way. That is the change that is made after you are married.
How do you know if you are going through a period of change?
If you feel that you are rejecting all values or reconsidering them and considering new value, ideas, concepts, or philosophies and you feel that you look at the world differently than the way that you looked at it just a little while ago, then you are going through a period of change. This is a time to watch out. This is a time not to date.
to change yourself
and you'll understand
what little chance you have
in trying to change others
- Jacob M. Braude
Using persuasive or convincing tactics
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