The Changing Woman In A Relationship

Women who are in long term relationships and marriages tend to hear about how they have changed since they first got together with their guy. Well, of course things have changed. She was looking for a guy who would want her for who she was and then found him. If you weren't able to support the growth of women, in her mind, then why were you out there looking for anything longer than a two weeks fling? Women change because they consider it growing. And we have benefited from that growth.

When women were only expected to stay home, cook, clean, and raise the kids, women were often unhappy and they often wanted more. We made them dependant upon us and then resented the fact that we felt we didn't have enough options in our life. As women changed, our lives improved. Now we no longer have to bear the sole responsibility for a family's financial wellbeing and we don't have to be totally independent and emotionless either. We still have a nurturer in the house who spends a great deal of her time taking care of those around her while spending very little time taking care of herself, especially after the kids are born.

Yet we still want to complain because she changed after we decided to get married or to invite them into our lives for the long haul. Why? Men are as confused as ever about what they are really supposed to be doing in their relationships. Women are trying to grow and change and men are trying to keep everything static and secure. What happens when a woman lands a job that pays more than ours? We resent it. What happens when they want to stay at home and we are now completely responsible for providing for the family? We resent it? What happens when we are in danger of losing our jobs and we need to ask them to help support us? We resent it. If we are so busy resenting their life and their choices and the way they adopt to change as a positive goal oriented task, the more we dig ourselves our own resentful hole.

We look at women with so many different lenses that they often don't know how to fulfill the roles that we lay on them. We expect them to stay in their relationships and work it out and yet we find that we are so willing to toy with the theory of the married woman affair. It is exciting to us and then we are so surprised when they want more because they were never really happy in their relationship to begin with. Now what we thought was just a little excursion is turning into pressure for a lifetime commitment. Look before you leap or you might end up with two black eyes.

Half the time we don't even really know what we want from women and then we simply accept that what they want is better than not knowing. So we go with it. We don't always think it through and we don't always stop to consider their motives. They seem to be totally into us and we discard the fact that they are financially broke and that they don't have a father for their kid and they are drowning in their financial mess. We are a ticket out and we never see it coming because we never looked. Women are only doing what they were taught. We aren't doing anything because we don't think beyond what we see. Women are much more complex than men. We like things just spelled out for us so that we can meet whatever the expectation might be. Women are not taught that spelling it out leads them into a better life and that they will be alone forever if they approach us that way. How confusing!

Here's the positive twist. Both men and women are actually looking for the same thing, they are just going about it in totally different ways that the signals just keep getting crossed. We both want someone who loves us. We both want growth and excitement in our lives. We both want to feel as though our lives are a fabulous adventure and that we have the capacity to keep it up. We both want respect and an equal partnership. We both want to be nurtured, even if that happens in different ways. And we both want to live in an honest and devoted relationship.

Knowing that we are all going after the same things makes it easier to determine what really works for each of us. If we want to go after a woman because she looks like she has it all together and we find out that she doesn't, does that mean that we chose wrong? No. It means that she is very good at keeping the balls she is juggling in the air and they are likely to let them drop a little when they first get involved. Women should change. So should we. When we are changing we are growing. Growing means that we are learning and structuring our lives to be more successful. All we really have to do is enjoy the ride and participate fully.