Whenever I’m single, I put a lot of effort into changing myself to attract potential girlfriends.
I go to the gym, imagining hot babes I’ll meet once I’m shredded.
I go to the barber regularly, fantasizing about compliments I’ll get for my perfectly manicured beard.
I make time on the weekends to go out and meet people.
But then something funny happens…
It works! I meet someone, and (sometimes) we get into a relationship.
Then I turn lazy.
The desire to get “shredded” suddenly disappears. “Why workout when I already have the hot babe?”
I stop going to the barber as often. “If she doesn’t like me with unkempt hair, does she really like me for who I am?”
I don’t make time for her on the weekends. “I’m a hard-working guy, and if she doesn’t get that then she doesn’t get me.”
In many ways, I stop changing myself for the better in a relationship, and in doing so I create an ethos of stubborn rigidity with my lover.
I think: “I don’t need to change myself for her. In fact, if I do, it’s only because she’s manipulating me and doesn’t accept me as I am.”
But that begs an important question:
Why am I willing to change myself for some nonexistent potential woman when I’m single, but not the real woman I love right in front of me?
I used to think it was laziness. But I’ve come to discover what it really is:
A lack of self love.
I valued the imaginary women I couldn’t have more than the woman I did have because I assumed if a woman was with me, there must be something wrong with her.
Like that Groucho Marx quote:
“I don’t want to be part of any club that would have me as a member.”
I devalued my girlfriend because I devalued myself. And because I devalued myself, I manifested that lack of self love in destructive, no-longer-improving-myself ways.
But when I love myself in a relationship, it allows me to love the other person fully — to see us both as flawed people just trying to do our best.
And if my best looks like working out to get a sexy body and going to the barber once a month when I’m single, then I’d be dishonoring the relationship if I didn’t maintain that effort to change (however it might manifest) with someone else. Even if they don’t need that to be attracted to me.
Mind you, what I’m talking about isn’t a self-centered desire to mold another person or myself to fit our desires. This is a byproduct of seeing us both as we really are, and using that unflinching perception as a springboard to bring more love into the world through each other.
In some ways I used to be right, but for all the wrong reasons: I don’t actually need to change myself just for another person. But I do genuinely want to change myself for the betterment of myself, our relationship, and the person I love.
