If You Love Them, Why Would You Want Them To Change?

I’m a hopeless romantic. I believe that love can help us overcome anything. Not because the people we love are so powerful, but because the love we feel for them is. It’s a drive that can motivate us to work harder, to get out of our comfort zones, to try. Along the same train of thought, I believe (or rather, believed) that if someone truly loves you, they would have that same drive to do anything in their power to make you happy.

It was a selfish thought for a selfless kind of love. It was the kind of love I wanted, to not have to ask my partner for anything because they would already know what I needed from them and they would either do it for me or communicate with me if they couldn’t. I would do the same. It was to have each other in mind always and show the other person how much we cared for them through little actions, be it offering a massage if they said their back hurt, or buying their favorite snack for them before going off to meet them. It’s not a lot; it’s the little things that say, “I noticed.” or “ I thought about you today.”

However, sometimes people don’t notice. Sometimes you meet someone who doesn’t fulfill your personal expectations of what it means to show someone you love them, and who doesn’t do the things you had hoped they would do. Sometimes you fall madly in love with them anyway.

Should you be worried though? Yes, and no.

Yes, it should be a cause for concern if what you want in them is so important to you, because the fact is, people don’t change unless they want to. You can’t force someone to be who they’re not, even if you think it’s for their own good. The whole “if you love me, you would do this” motif is troublesome, because yes, if they love you, they could change, but if you love them, why would you want them to anyway? If this is you, maybe it’s time to look inside and see if this is really the person for you, if who they aren’t turning out to be isn’t who you want to spend your life with.

But no, it also shouldn’t worry you if they aren’t who you had initially hoped for, if you can see other reasons why you love them so much. We can meet someone who isn’t anything like what we had said we wanted but find out they have certain qualities that we actually really needed in our significant other. Just because they don’t notice doesn’t mean they don’t care. People show love in many different ways, and perhaps they’re expressing it in ways we aren’t noticing. Perhaps we just have to look.

At the end of the day, we have to be hopeful romantics instead, that is, to be optimistic but real, and make up our minds. We can choose to stay true to our ideals, walk away and find someone else who we believe we are more compatible with, or we can choose to accept our partner for who they are, for all they are, and love them for them. There is no right or wrong here, it simply boils down to who we want in our lives. After all, we deserve to be happy, and we deserve a love that can make us so.