Something about change is weird. I’ve blogged about it on my other blog, but before I digress… The more things change, the more things stay the same. What a paradox.

Without getting into the physics or meta stuff around this concept, love has it’s own funny spin on change and how it works out. Let’s just take a quick look for a brief moment, before it changes us, and examine how change works.

Let’s start with a Change Paradox story

The joke many have said over the years is that when people get into relationships, change has a weird warping effect on people. The time line seems to bend the most around the conversation of the altar. And that is the place where change alters things the most, it is said.

What is this warp thing…

When a man looks for a wife, it is often said, he looks for that perfect woman he can bring home to his mother. Then, when everything checks out, he puts a ring on her finger and prays to every possible deity in the universe hoping she never changes, because he found perfection.

Conversely

When a woman looks for a husband, it is often said, she looks for the ideal suitable man to bring home to her father. Then, when everything checks out, and a ring is placed on her finger, she enacts all the various plans she’s made to change him into the perfection she envisioned.

Assuming this spoke comedy holds any truth…

We’ve not got two sets of change agents here at work. Fighting to be the winner. A man who doesn’t want to be changed and doesn’t want his bride to ever change. A woman dead set on changing her groom who is reluctantly trying to prevent her from changing.

While this gives me so much material to write about for a long time, the sad part of this picture is that most times, the participants in the change paradox are convinced they’re not in need of change and the other is in desperate need of changing.

Fights break out. Tensions build. While both parties are not aware that they’re changing into versions of themselves they’d not date at all, because they’re too busy trying to shove change down the throat of someone else instead of keeping up with their own needed changes.

The kicker of this paradox

If both parties were focused on keeping up with their own necessary changes and improving themselves, they would notice that their perfect partner was rather constantly present.

wait… explain… please

If the guy was diligently working on changing himself to become the best husband he could be, the wife would quickly take credit for having worked hard to make him better, even though she knows she had precious little to do with it. The need to enact her most aggressive plans would not be needed. She’d be more of his cheerleader assisting his journey of discovery. And she’d be honored to say that her man is different from all other men. He doesn’t need fixing. He’s not an overgrown boy. But a man.

If the gal was diligently working on changing herself to become the best wife she could be, the husband would proudly show off how his wife has never changed from the perfect bride he met and married. He’d be elated to show how awesome his woman is. And if he’s the gentleman he claims to be, he’d be working right along with her to inspire her to keep working on herself. He’d accelerate his own work on himself to be of better service to her as she worked on maintaining her awesomeness.

That’s the funny paradoxical thing about change. It happens. No matter what you do. No matter how you try to stop it. However, how you play along influences how change will happen and how it will impact you.

Two choices

You can take a gamble and leave time change things for you and hope for the best. Last time I checked, entropy was still a witch. Things will breakdown if not up-kept.

You can actively use your intelligence to work on improving and maintaining things. Keeping momentum up. And over time, you’ll be as you wished you were when you first started.

So, the more things change, the more they stay the same. A couple who works smartly to improve will find that after all the changes are made and all the work is done, they’re still madly in love because in their eyes, nothing changed at all.

Now that’s paradox at work for you!