Relationship Changes

 People change. They grow, they mature. It's a fact of life.

We all go through stages in our lifetimes. Primary school. High school. College. Adulthood. Parenthood.

Along the way, we collect new friends, family. And, if we're lucky, at some stage, we find someone to fall in love with and someone to love us back. But we never stop growing, we never stop moving through the stages. Maybe we slow down, maybe we breeze through it. But we all grow, we move through the stages, we change.

So what happens when that person you  loved changed? What if the person you were changed?

One of those break-up cliches people use is that You/I have changed. We're not the same people anymore. Does that mean that if we want to hold onto someone we love, we're not allowed to change? Anyone who says yes to that, is, frankly, an idiot. You expect someone not to change, to be the same person they were six months ago, or even sixty years ago? But can you guarantee that in that time, you, yourself, have not changed? You haven't lost interest in your favourite t-shirt, or forget the songs that you used to play on repeat? No, of course not. You've changed.

But change isn't a bad thing. It isn't about pretending that you're okay with these changes in yourself and in that other person. All it means is that the love, the relationship, the dynamics have to change too. All it means is that you need to re-evaluate yourself, your life and see them for who they are now and not what you saw in them before and not what you think they should be. See the changes you've made in yourself, and see their changes and accept them. All change means is that its time to change the way you love them. Let the new you, love the new them.

P.S. This kept popping into my head while writing: As we mature, the relationship matures with us. HIMYM