Are you in the overhaul business? In These High, Green Hills,by Jan Karon, one of the characters is asked why he doesn’t like women.
‘They’re in the overhauling business,’ the man replied.
What did he mean by that? Sometimes what happens is one partner, and it’s not always only women, falls in love with a person and then sets about trying to change them. But what happens is that as the character in this book found out, once they’ve changed them into what they thought they wanted, the person still isn’t happy and ends up leaving anyway.
It’s a bit like moving furniture. A number of women, me included, are compulsive furniture movers. We live with furniture arranged one way for a while and then suddenly get the bright idea it might look better if we changed the furniture around
Many a time, Mick and I have struggled to lift and move furniture around, only to find that when we get it in the new position it doesn’t look as good as I thought and so we try it another way. Of course, what often happens is back it all goes, the way it was.
To try and alleviate this back breaking problem and heavy lifting, I tried what some home decorating books suggest and drew it all to scale on a piece of graph paper. It doesn’t work. What looks good on paper looks quite different when it is bulky furniture in the room.
Similarly we can start trying to remodel our spouse, only to find that when we’ve made the changes they are no longer the person we fell in love with. The very qualities that endeared them to us have been lost somewhere along the way.
So, next time you’re tempted to start on the overhauling business, stop and think about whether that is really what you want. Maybe you just need to rethink your attitude and accept your spouse they way they are, loving them for their good qualities and making allowances for their faults.
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