Usually we hear that snippet in the context of raising children: “Train a child up in the way he should go and when he is old he will not depart from it.” (Proverbs 22:6). However, it’s been a point of discussion between myself and friends both online and in the real world as of late that we “train” people how to treat us every day, moreso in the context of romantic relationships, and to a lesser extent, in the overall company we keep, in the vein of the behavior that we allow them to manifest in our common interactions.
One rather dramatic example is the scene in “What’s Love Got to Do With It” where Angela Bassett flips the script and stomps the snot out of Larry Fishburne. It’s pretty safe to say that THAT particular day began ole Ike’s retraining on how Tina was going to allow him to deal with her.
Thus opens our discussion. I have found that in the time since I have changed/narrowed the company I keep I’ve become a lot happier. Kinda on that “frolic with wolves and learn to howl/fly with eagles and learn to soar” tip, even. Before I meander too far away from my original point, let’s talk about romantic relationships first and foremost. Is it required (hell, is it even possible) to train your man or woman “how to act”? Is the more important question linked to “why” one would have to do it?
I’ll go a bit further and add that sometimes the attempt to ascertain the “training” a new puppy needs is clouded by the fact that when you meet a new someone, often for a certain period you get their REPRESENTATIVE. Everything is hunky dory until you start dating the REAL person rather than his or her agent.
Oh… but Y’ALL don’t hea-me doh… LMAO
Back to the point.
It’s difficult to address that with your significant other… that something that they’ve been doing grinds your ass to the bone. (It is for me at least… I don’t have a tactful bone in my whole body!) But it’s tricky, underneath the surface, because it’s unfair to expect someone else to change their habits or behavior just to suit your needs – it then becomes time to either fish or cut bait.
I’ll complicate the matter further and draw from a previous relationship. Once we started to settle in lovely, there were (seemingly) small things that we both saw in each other that didn’t quite work. Because we communicated so well with each other even in a non-verbal, we picked up on the other’s cues, and started to make subtle changes.
DISASTER. What started off as subtle adjustments because this sick dance in circles around each other. I’d changed certain elements trying to make HIM happy. He’d tweaked some things trying to make ME happy (but since he was WAY out of his normal mode it was just ALL way off). The most screwed up part about it all is that in the aftermath we were happiest in the beginning just being ourselves. *sigh*
(Originally posted August, 2006)
Relationships are such a study in human psychology…You become interested in someone, and conventional wisdom says that we are to accept them as they are. Going deeper with that one, for someone as mercurial as myself, certain behaviors might be acceptable one week and totally off the mark the next, and it’s not fair to expect someone to keep up with that. (Even *I* know that!!) And on the real for real, I see very little that’s attractive about having a person around that would jump through whatever hoops I set out just to please me.
As Justy said in my comments yesterday, you can either bitch about it, or you can make it better. But what happens when making it better (for yourself) means ending the relationship and hurting the other person? You can’t go on indefinitely making excuses for other people when you know that the shit is twanging on your last good NERVE.
In the end, do you continue sitting the puppy on the paper, or do you take him/her back to the pound? How do you draw the line of compromise? When does accepting a person “stock” become just too much?
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