Change Me (Revisited)

It would seem some clarification to my last post is needed. Let me make it perfectly clear that I am in no way suggesting I need to change in order to find someone. I merely realized that in order to have a successful relationship, I must be open to the idea of change.

This probably seems like a no-brainer to most of you and you are wondering why I would even need to blog about such an obvious realization (let alone blog about it twice). Maybe you are even questioning my intellect because it took me so long to discover this.

Let me explain. In the past, nothing has frightened me more (not even cats) than the idea of a guy changing me. Before this realization, I couldn’t stand when my friends changed for guys. I would gag when I got into a friend’s car and heard them blaring the latest CD from their latest boyfriend’s favorite band. I would roll my eyes when one of them would show up for a run wearing a ball cap from their boyfriend’s favorite baseball team.

Now mind you, the friend with the new CD loves music, and the band was pretty good. The friend with the baseball hat has no soul and therefore never followed baseball before she met her now-husband. So it wasn’t as if they were putting aside their thoughts and feelings on a particular matter to side with their current beau. But at the time I couldn’t see that.

Meanwhile, when I would declare to my mother that I would probably never get married, but if I did, it certainly wouldn’t be in a church, and she would ask, what if it is important to your fiancé? My response: well, I can’t imagine it would be important to my fiancé, but if it were, he would have to understand my feelings on the matter. If he couldn’t accept them – we wouldn’t get married.

My mom would counter: What if it is important to his mother? Or his grandmother?

Me: I think I would be concerned that he was putting his mother’s feelings in front of my own.

And no, I’m not kidding. This is taken from an actual conversation I had with my mother.

I even took it a step further. It was a personal affront to me when Douche Bag said he could never date a smoker. Never mind that I hadn’t had a cigarette in more than a year and DB knew I had been a smoker. I still saw red and remember those words ringing in my ears a couple nights later when I asked Bridie if I could bum a cigarette from her.

Yes, my fear of changing for a guy is so powerful, that I would actually pick back up a deadly habit just so I could then crow that I won’t let a man tell me what I can and can’t do.

Keeping this aversion to change in mind, I am sure you will believe me now when I say I have no intention of changing myself just so I can find someone. Instead, my post was about how I now realize that once I meet that someone special, I will probably change

I have even started my list of areas where I would be willing to bend. As predicted it isn’t very long.