Nobody needs to change for you? Very good. But if it should ever be desirable – for example your partner, a friend or roommate -, according to a study, these two rules can be useful for you.
True love means appreciating and accepting someone exactly as they are. With all its flaws and weaknesses. Not wanting to change anything about him. Whenever it rains, we dance with this person through the neighborhood streets with swinging black umbrellas between sparkling puddles, then share a plate of spaghetti at Mario, the Italian place on the corner, and end up pushing the last meatball to the other to. This is what love looks like. If we live in a Disney movie.
However, if we have taken a wrong turn somewhere and accidentally crashed into the real world from the rainbow, it usually behaves differently. Then there is typically no table available at Mario’s when we get there completely annoyed and soaked after a strong gust of wind has broken our umbrella. It’s also possible that we love someone, but still want them to change. And the closer we are to this person and the more time we spend with him, the more likely that is. Having intimate, close relationships usually means, among other things, making compromises and adapting. To do this, change is usually essential. But how do we make a person adapt for us? When it’s already hard enough to change ourselves – for ourselves. Canadian psychologists from the University of Toronto have investigated this question and may have found an answer.
Psychologists compare two approaches to change
In their study, the scientists focused on partnership relationships, but the results should also be applicable to friendships, platonic partnerships and other close social connections. The researchers compared two common approaches people take when it comes to change (for the sake of another person): repression and re-evaluation.
In this case, suppression means that both parties involved ignore, deny or play down negative emotions such as anger, being offended, fear or injured pride, which trigger one person’s desire to adapt the behavior of the other. Reassessment, on the other hand, means that they took an alternative perspective on the situation, for example taking into account the perspective and intention of the other, and thereby saw meaning and meaning in the change.
Now who wouldn’t have thought it? In couples who took the reappraisal approach, the person who wanted to conform was much better at actually changing than the other couples.
“Being asked to change may evoke negative feelings in people, as it can be interpreted as a signal that the partner does not live up to their expectations or that the partner is dissatisfied with the relationship,” explains psychologist and one of the study’s authors, Natalie Sisson, “If they also disagree and aren’t convinced that they need to make the effort to make the change they want, that will fuel conflict and anger for the demanding person.”
In other words, if we want a person to change for us, it is strategically unwise to state our wish and expect the person to do so without being hurt or offended. On the other hand, it makes more sense to offer people something that helps them to understand us: what it does to us when they behave the way they do. What it would mean to us if he tried to change. Why we want this change in the first place – because we have a serious interest in continuing the relationship to the end of the rainbow.
Those responsible for studies recommend two rules when initiating change
For their conclusion, after evaluating the results, those responsible for the study were able to derive two rules which, if we follow them, increase the likelihood that a person will want to change for us and that they will succeed:
- Formulate our request as concretely as possible and explain its background. For example, instead of saying, “You could really get tidy,” we could ask that the person wash their dishes or put them in the dishwasher as soon as they’ve finished eating. Because crockery lying around is extremely stressful for us. And we get annoyed when we (have to) put it away ourselves in the end. If one day the dishes are no longer left standing, maybe we can gradually tackle the closet or the bathroom. Better to encourage small, concrete changes than to demand a big rethinking all at once.
- Supporting the other person in the process of change. Once we see that the person we desire to adjust to our needs is making an effort to accommodate our desire and accommodate us, it is helpful to show or express our gratitude and appreciation to them. And to be patient. Because change takes time and energy. But a person who cares about us is usually willing and able to muster both.
In fact, love lends itself to being romanticized and sometimes confused with a Disney film for this very reason. Sometimes it makes us do amazing, wonderful things. In the middle of this imperfect, stormy-rainy reality.
Source used: psychologytoday.com