NEW YORK, NY – Alarm clocks are often shrill, loud and discordant. They have several wake up options but I have yet to encounter any that I would describe as pleasant. From the high pitched beep to the steady buzz even random music it is all designed to do the same thing…wake us from slumber. What’s so amazing about the concept of the wake up call is that as meticulous as we are about setting them to rouse us from sleep we don’t pay attention to the same wake up calls in our relationships. The wake up call in our relationship is the constant ringing of behavior that just doesn’t change despite how much you might want it to. Now follow me here. All of us enter into our relationships as fully formed people with our share of expectations, wants, desires, faults, weaknesses, frailties, etc. In short, we all naturally constructed to be perfectly imperfect. Being that we are imperfect, it is an annoying trait of human nature to try to change another person’s behavior. The intent does not have to be insidious but we all do it. “I wish she was a little neater…if only I can get her to make the bed”. “Man, why is he always late…he told me 300pm and its 315pm”. They can be small enough that we learn to live with these quirks. At other times, these traits are more significant and become a challenge to whether our relationship will survive. That is where problems can begin to arise.

Now for the record, I am of the belief that you can’t really change people’s behavior. They are who they are and they were that way before you met them. It is highly dubious that you’ll be able to change them. You can tweak, mold a bit through compromise, but outright change is doubtful to damn near impossible. Failures to accept that means we are failing to hear the persistent wake up call of behavior we do not like. Instead, we hit the snooze button thinking that we can work on it more later…we just need five more minutes of sleep. Unfortunately hitting that snooze button in relationships is more like five more months than it is five minutes. We would rather sleep through what we know…that this might not be the right fit…than heed the alarm and wake up to the situation and deal with it accordingly. Those alarms are there for a reason. The beginning of the day might be a little painful and we’re more than slightly groggy but we’re always better off heeding that wake up call. Dreams and fantasies are terrific but our relationships don’t exist within them. They exist in the waking world…one that comes with calls that might be shrill…might be unwelcome…but are incredibly valuable…when we choose to listen.

The FREE Man