Tuning

The other night you and I broached a delicate issue: The degree to which we should want to change a person we claim to love. I've deliberately imbued that last sentence with a searing and pessimistic tone because I think it encompasses all of our fears:

Do we really love anybody for who they are, or do we fall in love with who they might become? If we claim to love someone, why do we struggle to change them? And, if we engage in that struggle, is it to help them flourish, and become what you've called, with slight irony, a 'fully actualized person'? Or is it merely to mould them, as Pygmalion did, into incarnations of our own suspect fantasies?

The answers, if there are any, are both slippery and unsatisfying.

At some level, it seems only sensible to love your partner for who they are - to accept them completely, and to eschew any urge, as you've described it, to 'fix' or 'repair' them. After all, if you really love a person – and if that love is genuine and can withstand the most withering scrutiny – then shouldn't you find that person perfect, just as they are? And by entering into a relationship with an agenda for changing them, aren't you exposing the speciousness of your putative 'love'? Aren't you proving that this is not someone you can love completely, but merely someone who meets a few of your criteria for love, and then ultimately falls short...unless of course, they concede to the renovation of their character?

Perhaps.

But, consider this: What makes you fall in love with someone is not just the congregation of their attributes; it is also their hopes and aspirations. And, since love is empathy, then to love someone is to share their dreams. It is also to share in their agonies and frustrations. So, by this measure, it makes sense that you would want to participate in their efforts to grow, change and succeed - to break with old, destructive habits and to build new, productive ones. After all, if we didn't need help to eliminate our unwanted and recalcitrant behaviours, then we'd do it for ourselves. Isn't a relationship about helping one another become better people?

Maybe. Or maybe that's what therapy is for. After all, love is about building and reinforcing self-esteem, not about highlighting weaknesses, problems and failings. And, at some point, help and encouragement become extended exercises in negativity and character assassination. So where's the line? What's the correct balance? How to tell when you've gone too far - from supportive spouse to badgering nag?

It's a pretty hard call because, as much as it sounds like common sense to love your partner for who they are, it also seems like a recipe for failure. Why? Because we all change, and it's probably a good survival strategy to adore your lover's current 'self' while, at the same time, preparing for their subsequent incarnations. That means understanding and, I suppose, participating in their struggle to become fully actualized.

A safe guideline would seem to be: Wait for them to solicit your help, and regularly seek assurance that your help is still wanted and needed. But even that simple dictum gets muddy and vague. Take our situation, for instance.

You’ve said, “I feel all anxious in my tummy when I think of the serious personal responsibilities that I’ve been avoiding" and you've seemed to ask for help in ending that avoidance. I say seemed because, admittedly, some of your signals were pretty cryptic and liable to misinterpretation - like opening your course calendar while we were bowling, and then suggesting that it was a significant that you’d let me peruse it with you. I would have preferred a more direct request - something along the lines of, "Darling, would you help me choose my courses? I'm really procrastinating and I need your companionship and support." But, I'm used to divining your intention from the most tangential of statements and actions. And so, we made plans to fulfill both your responsibilities and mine, and to settle your anxious tummy.

But you dodged those plans all week. And yet, after each subsequent dodge, I sought your reassurance that you still wanted my help, pressure, or encouragement. You claimed that you did. And yet, each time I offered it, you rejected it by dropping out of contact.

And so I am caught in a terrible dilemma. I'd like to see you. And, if you really want to continue avoiding things - and can abide the consequences for your tummy - then I'll steer clear of serious issues. We can just have fun. On the other hand, you have plenty of playmates with whom you can do that already - and fewer with whom you can face your responsibilities and, more importantly, take steps to achieve your desired goals. So, as someone who loves you deeply, how am I to proceed?

I don't want to dampen the joy and whimsy of our relationship. Nor do I want to contribute to a pattern that has so clearly made you anxious and unhappy in the past – and continues to do so. For obvious reasons, I don't want you to have to turn to other boys for amusement. I'd like our relationship to have broad reach and resonance beyond the mere confrontation of difficult issues - but it would be a tragedy if that weren't part of it too. Is there any way for us to reconcile these desires? Can we not work on our responsibilities and go camping, be silly, and play? Might not play be even sweeter if your tummy were calmer?

You often turn the tables on me, accusing me of hypocrisy because, like you, I have so many issues of my own to address. That's true, but there's a difference. If you were to block off a day to work with me on my issues, I'd turn up...willingly. I'd love your help, and I've requested it repeatedly. I know you want my help too – in your own way - but each time you get close to accepting it, you baulk. Although, I'm also fearful that your efforts to help me with my stuff might mutate into yet another way for you to avoid your own agenda. That's why I prefer to link them together in mutual action plans! Not that this has been successful.

So, Beauty, I need your help. I need you to show me how we can be good for each other - how we can do, for one another, what no one else can do. That's the real substance of the question that I asked you long ago: Is there something that you hunger to feel – or a part of you that you yearn to express - that none of your current relationships make space for, encourage, permit, or facilitate. I know that 'effortlessness' is part of your answer - and that struggling to confront your challenges and realize your ambitions must seem like the antithesis of that. But consider this: What if all the extended metaphors around self-actualization are flawed? Maybe, by using language like 'problems', 'fixing', 'repairing', and 'changing', we are obscuring the best of what loving relationships can do.

Maybe it's better to think of tuning a precious and delicate instrument. When the instrument is out of tune, it doesn't lack integrity or value. It doesn't need to be fixed. Or repaired. Or renovated. Nor does it need one single thing beyond what it already has...except, perhaps, the dedicated, skilled and gentle hand of someone intimate with its nature, design, and potential. Because, even with the most perfect shape, resonant wood, and finest strings, an instrument can still find itself discordant and out of tune. What's needed is not repair, but a restoration of balance - more tension on some stings, more slack on others, a realignment of pressure - until the instrument begins to express its harmonious nature... and hits its grace notes with ease and with effortlessness.

You've done this for me, Beauty. Can I do it for you too?