Let Us Now Praise (Not So) Famous Men

I had the most interesting fight with my fiance today. One of those that blows away your conceptions of how you think you are and what you "know" about relationships and how you act in them.

There are several concepts of relationships that we all know very well. Maybe the best known is this: Do not try to change your partner. Something we've all heard time and again. We get the *concept* of it completely. OF COURSE I wouldn't try to change my partner. I love him just as he is blah blah blah. But what happens when the person you love looks you right in the face and delivers this line "Please don't try and change me." Well then, that makes you sit down a minute doesn't it? That makes you back up because whether or not you realize it, you have clearly been trying to change someone else (or at least they feel like you have, which is tantamount to the same thing) and you didn't even know you were doing. But clearly, obviously, you were.

So here's the scenario. It was the smallest, weeist, not so important issue. My fiance and I are dog sitting. Let me be clear: I love dogs. Love em. Have always had one and am itching to get another as soon as the dog we are sitting leaves our house and goes back to her real family. My fiance does not love dogs. He's not cruel or abusive or angry with them. He's just not a dog person. And I want him to be. In a nutshell, that was the basis of our little screaming match. I want to change the way he feels about dogs. Even as I type this, I realize the absurdity of it. But not then. No way. In fact, I was absolutely certain that if I just kept pushing, he would begin to feel exactly the same way about owning a pet as I do.

Which leads me to this. How do we stop ourselves, or even be self-aware enough to realize, when we are crossing a boundary as simple as "Don't try to change your partner"? You know it intellectually, but how do you not do it? I don't have an answer, I'm just posing a query. Self-awareness fascinates me in a way I'm sure is purely egotistical but fascinates me none-the-less. How do we cross the dis-connect between what we know and how we act?

I have no idea. But I am thankful for the minute of clarity. For having someone say the exact words to me to make me step back and re-evaluate. So let us now praise (not so) famous men for giving us exactly what we need when we are least expecting it to be delivered.