An Article About Trying to Change Your Partner

I hope you read this article with an open mind. Sometimes we're so busy trying to change others that we fail to hold the mirror to ourselves and see what we need to change. This article is "as written" except for the passages that I bolded for emphasis. Michelle

- BIDS TO REFORM PARTNERS 'FUTILE'The Press -- New Zealand
By JOANNA DAVIS
September 21, 2006

Is your partner not quite measuring up? In bad news for those unhappy in love, new research shows the time-honoured tradition of trying to change your partner may be futile. Researchers from Canterbury University's "love lab" have found that 90 per cent of people try to change their intimate partner, but their efforts generally make matters worse.

Psychologist Garth Fletcher and co-researchers Nickola Overall and Jeffry Simpson studied 324 people in couple relationships to assess the ways they tried to change their mates. Fletcher said people did not try to change small things, such as squeezing the toothpaste from the wrong end of the tube. Instead, they tried to get their partner to equal expectations in three main areas -warmth and trustworthiness, attractiveness and vitality, and status and resources.

The research found the more people tried to change their partners, the less happy both became with the relationship. The "target" person also resisted the change and moved further away from their partner's ideal. Fletcher said people reacted badly to being told they did not measure up. "The bottom line here was that when people start to try to change their partner - for example, to get them to listen more or be more sensitive -the more they communicate to their partner a lack of acceptance," he said.

Fletcher said it was not all bad news for people wanting to change their partners. He and Overall had begun researching whether some ways of attempting to change a partner were more successful. "If we can nail those down, it could have great implications for marital therapy," he said.
Hilary Smith, from Relationship Services, said she saw people trying to change their partners all the time. "What I see happen really often is that people have some sense of dissatisfaction or disappointment and they are looking to the other person to provide a solution," she said. Smith said her message to people feeling a need for change in their relationship was: "Change yourself first." She said being criticised made people feel unvalued and defensive. Change was not likely in those circumstances.

St Martins saleswoman Joan Smith has been with her husband, Edmund, a mechanic, for 29 years, despite their being what she described as polar opposites. Smith said she was interested in exercise and fashion, while her husband was interested in "automotive stuff". Trying to change each other was dangerous territory, she said. "You've got to do it cunningly," she said, adding there was always a need for compromise. Smith said she and her husband respected each other, despite falling short of the other's ideal. "You have to know the things you can change and the things you can't." Fletcher's research is to be published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology.