How come nobody marries an asshole but always divorces one?

How come nobody every dates an asshole, never goes steady with a (son of a) bitch, but when it comes time to break up, guess what? Our soon to be ex is a professional full time asshole, (son of a) bitch and probably eats his or her buggers, is addicted to pornography, and lies all the time.

How is it that we choose wonderful, fun, exciting, charming, witty and warm people to invite into our heart and then they either a) change into or b) were always evil troglodytes, albeit carefully disguised evil troglodytes because they did seem pretty damn cuddly when we first fell in love.

Let’s consider the first premise: they changed. They were cuddly love muffins and they evolved into evil troglodytes. I guess it’s possible that the person has a degenerative neurological disease that has rendered them incapable of controlling their behavior, or it’s possible that they were seduced by a cult of narcissists who brainwashed them, yet if either of these were the case I don’t think you’d be sitting there wondering how this happened, you’d have them get a brain scan, or you would have noticed them going out to the cult meetings.

Now it can be that you married a sociopath, someone who lies with the ease of Martin Burney… we’ve all seen “Sleeping With The Enemy” and there’s no doubt that these people exist and they suck people into their poisoned lives and the only thing you can do is get the fuck out of the house and while you’re recuperating in a small Midwest town start making notes about what things, in retrospect, should have warned you off that freak so you’ll never go there again. In all honesty, the Martin Burney’s (of both sexes) are the exception and not the rule but if you contend that you are living with a crazy person then you best go take a look in the mirror and remember this: water seeks it’s own level. Healthy people get the fuck out of unhealthy relationships. Crazy people live with crazy people. Decide which you want to be and act accordingly.

But generally, if your partner truly has changed it’s because someone helped them change. Nothing happens in a vacuum. A five year old will act like a five year old until someone expects the five year old to act differently. By the same token, a normally healthy child will start acting out in all sorts of alarming ways if that child has been abused by an adult. So if there was a change, my point is simply this: you, as their most significant other, their attachment figure, probably helped.

Maybe you helped by being distant, maybe you helped by being passive-aggressive, maybe you helped by ignoring the problems, maybe you helped by creating problems, but in some way, some how, you helped.

But finally, here’s the thought that’s going to blow your mind: your partner has not changed, the way you see your partner, the way you experience your partner and the way you treat your partner has changed. And as sure as god made little green apples, your partner thinks you’re the one who has changed and doesn’t realize that you are still the same wonderful, cuddly little love muffin you were when you married, and that what’s changed is the way s/he sees you, experiences you, and treats you.

This is how it happens… imagine your relationship is a nice new pair of rose colored glasses. You meet someone and as you look through those glasses everything about your new honey seems wonderful. A great smile, a fantastic sense of humor. A good work ethic, inteligent… and anything that you don’t like about your new favorite person, you tend to overlook. Smoking… well, they’ll probably quit. Politics, well everyone is entitled to an opinion… and that laugh? Well, it is a little loud but it’s sincere and kind of cute.

Give a few years and those rose colored glasses that you’ve been wearing have lost a little of their tint, worse they’ve become scratched. Each one of those scratches is a hurt that you experienced at the hands of your beloved. Hurts that you held in and did not resolve, hurts that you allowed to accumulate and fester. Whether it was a bona fide mean spirited hurt, or an unvoiced and unmet expectation, or an accidental slight, or a joke you didn’t think was funny, it doesn’t really matter because now the way you view your beloved is a lot less rose colored (i.e. less accepting) and it’s as obscured as granny’s cataract clouded eyes.

And now as you look at your beloved you don’t notice the great smile you notice s/he hasn’t brushed their teeth, the humor seems bitter or juvenile. What used to be a good work ethic is now seen as never being home, and that intelligence seems more like intellectual bullying … and those things you don’t like about your beloved now seem insurmountable obstacles. S/he is committed to suicide by tobacco and is stinking up the house and poisoning the kids with second hand smoke. Politics have morphed from a considered disagreement to fanaticism… and that laugh? God, it’s obnoxious and embarrassing.

And thus we stay in a bad relationship and blame our partners for changing, because we know… I mean it’s as plain as day… that it’s not our fault: s/he changed.

And as long as you keep thinking it’s not your fault, as long as you don’t accept 100% responsibility for your relationship, as long as you keep demanding that your partner get better you are going to either stay in a bad relationship or move on to a bad divorce which will become a prelude to another bad relationship because perfect people are doomed to being surrounded by losers.

Now, if you’ll accept for the moment that you are not perfect, and if you’ll accept just for a second that your partner probably has as many hurts, doubts, and fears as you do, and if you will accept that in order for your relationship to improve you will both have to change… for the better, then the question becomes simply this… why are you waiting for your partner to change?

 If you aren’t perfect, if you need to grow, if you can find some small area where you can do better why aren’t you doing something about it?

And that is not a rhetorical question.