You shouldn't want to change the person you are with. A fixer-upper is something acceptable to look for in a house, not a relationship. Personal growth is one thing, but it has to be desired and internal.
This is a really tough issue for me.
This was a big topic of discussion with my previous ladyfriend. (I don’t think she’ll mind me saying this.) We had long, emotional “philosowalks” talking about this very thing. My last post was about how I’m of the interestingness-over-betterness opinion, but back then I was all about personal development. I wanted to get better and I wanted her to want to get better—at diets, at TV consumption, at emotional regulation, at pretty much everything that is annoying to hear people talk about.
My theory was that if you truly love someone, then you’ll want the best for them, and you’ll do what you can to help them get better, even if that means being an irritating prick.
And so I was an irritating prick.
We were together for ~3.5 years, if you can believe it.
I’m not going to say that being an irritating prick “worked,” but I am going to say that it wasn’t necessarily counterproductive. She did make some big changes. Some might even consider them “improvements.” She got really into healthy eating, for example. And she stopped watching lame TV shows and started reading economics books, eventually entering a PhD economics program (this having had no previous background in econ).
I made some huge changes myself, but I credit that mostly to the culture I was consuming at the time; she wasn’t an irritating prick and didn’t need to be. The point is that we changed. We “improved.” And by “improved” I mean we satisfied more second-order desires—the things we wanted to want, e.g., being active and healthy and productive and whatnot. I’m glad we did. But at the same time I have big regrets.
My biggest regret is that I was so arrogant and pig-headed that I assumed I knew what was better for her. I assumed that One Tree Hill was a waste of her life and economics books were a good use of her life. Maybe she would have agreed with that, but I didn’t stop to ask. I didn’t think I needed to, because I knew what was better. If you’re not cringing right now, you should be.
The theory that I used to justify this behavior? That if you truly love someone, then you’ll want the best for them, and you’ll be an irritating prick if you have to to see to that end? I actually don’t disagree with it, but I think it’s missing something important. Besides wanting what’s best for them, you’ve also got to drop the pig-headedness and recognize that they have their own consciousness, that their idea of “best” doesn’t have to match yours.
That’s so painfully obvious, but it wasn’t to me back then.
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This respect-their-consciousness logic can be taken too far to something like “don’t try to change them and just let them be themselves in all their self-actualized glory.” That’s dumb for a couple of reasons, but I’m going to stick to one main one: People have things that they want to change about themselves and that they want help changing.
I, for example, want to be good at listening. My grandmother was an amazing listener, and it’s pretty clear to me that there is no better/more important skill than that. It’s also pretty clear to me that, compared to my grandma, I have, to put it delicately, room for improvement. This is something I care about, and so I want/expect a ladyfriend to help me get better.
It’s fitting that I mention listening, because I’m pretty sure that’s what it comes down to. Listening is probably the chief symptom of love. You listen because you care about what they care about, because you want to help them change what they want help changing.
And the masterful kind of listening, the kind my grandmother was capable of, is not just learning about what they care about, but helping them learn what they care about. It might mean asking probing questions like “is that really what you want, or is what you want to stop wanting it?” or “is that really what you care about, or is that what you think you should care about?” But more often than not, it means shutting up, giving them your full attention, and letting them figure it out themselves.
Here’s William Deresiewicz:
Introspection means talking to yourself, and one of the best ways of talking to yourself is by talking to another person. One other person you can trust, one other person to whom you can unfold your soul. One other person you feel safe enough with to allow you to acknowledge things—to acknowledge things to yourself—that you otherwise can’t. Doubts you aren’t supposed to have, questions you aren’t supposed to ask.
