You Can't Fix Relationships, But You Can Change Them.

Often, when we think about fixing a relationship, what we really mean is "make the relationships be like our idea of the relationship".

This usually involves changing the other person in the relationship so that things just go the way we imagine they should go. Very few people think about fixing a relationship as "working on themselves" or "changing the relationship".

The truth is that fixing a relationship always requires both.

The first problem to recognize is our utter lack of control over other people. You can never change another person. You can nag them, talk to them, lobby them, bully them, explain to them, manipulate them, influence them, beg them, plead with them, negotiate with them, and work with them. But you can not change them.

They can only change themselves.

And you can only change yourself.

So, fixing a relationship is not so much about getting the other person to change their behaviour as it is about changing your behaviour towards the other person.

Sure, a change in your behaviour might, in turn, result in a change from the other side, but you have to go first.

The change in your behaviour can be speaking up for yourself more directly and communicating your boundaries more clearly. It can be about curbing your drinking because you're really mean when you do or participating in an anger management course because you have issues there. It can be committing more fully and communicating more openly, but it can also mean disengaging and letting the relationship fade.

While altering your behaviour in a relationship is something you have to consciously work on, the change in the relationship itself is inevitable.

There is no "fixing" a relationship because the "not broken" relationship never really existed. There is nothing to go back to because, try as you might, you can not go back to "before" or change things into whatever ideal you have in your mind.

Besides, when something broken is fixed, by definition, it is also changed.

What's more, "fixing" implies that there is an ideal relationship and that at some point, things are fantastic, and BOOM, you're finished because everything is fixed.

That might work for the kitchen sink, but it doesn't work for the whole house. Just like it might work for small problem in a relationship, but not for the entire relationship.

We're humans. We change constantly, and so does the world. This affects our relationships. So no, you're never done "fixing" things.

Like every other project, relationships require maintenance and work. They grow and change. Sometimes you like the changes, and sometimes you don't. When you don't like how the relationship is, you can work on changing it, but don't get hung up on the idea of "fixing" it.