When you are in relationship with someone for a long while, that person gets to know your flaws and deficits very well. This can be startling at first because everything seemed so right in the beginning. They can decide to play “gotcha” and point out these deficits to you which leaves you rather exposed. Their intent may be well meaning but the tendency when this happens to you is to get defensive because of the exposure, and then either run and hide, or attack back. We all know this does not lead to a good outcome.
The person pointing out these flaws may very well be trying to help you, or seemingly help the relationship, by providing you this knowledge naturally thinking you’ll turn around and correct them. It doesn’t seem to work this way, but you can look at that for yourself. Seeing your spouse or significant other’s flaws (as you define them) can be very, very frustrating.
What’s a person to do? There is the change option, but you need to remember that the other person has probably perfected these flaws and deficits over a lifetime. They do not leave easily even if the other person agrees that it would be good to get rid of them.
Some of the more persistent themes are anger, criticism, lack of emotional engagement, procrastination, surface compliance, numbing oneself through addictions. Perhaps surprisingly, these tendencies have a lot to do with how one copes with the anxiety of living. Outright selfishness also makes the list and is usually related to immaturity. Mature people realize that giving oneself is a great gift but also a great satisfaction. This is where the quality of a relationship is often determined.
Many people don’t seem to understand that selfishness is a problem, and of course it is not if you are living on an island by yourself. Otherwise, it is. It is not easy to grow oneself up and think about other people’s needs. Oftentimes, there is a gap in the relationship between one person who is more giving than the other. This can lead to a tension as this difference is highlighted. If you look deeply into it, selfish people are busy protecting themselves and gathering in. People who are self centered are like hoarders who falsely believe there is “not enough” so they continually take for themselves. Its a conditioned response to their anxiety of living. They often feel like they are going to lose out. It isn’t always the moral failure we tend to think about it as.
This doesn’t make it any less of a problem just more of an understanding of where its coming from. Most of these flaws we see in the other come from deep within and take a lot of work to make progress with. The challenge is to know how to respond to these flaws that seem so apparent to the other.
In many ways, this is like a riddle with no easy answers. A lot of it has to do with working with yourself and your own internal well being. This is in contrast to getting frustrated wishing the other person would change, especially after repeated suggestions to that effect.