You can’t change anyone but yourself.

A major thing that I’ve learned from my relationship with my kid’s dad is that you can’t change anyone. You can change yourself but another person is only going to change their point of view or their actions if they decide to. Even if you present the best defense it is ultimately up to them.

With the kid’s dad, there wasn’t a lot that I was asking of him to change. I wanted him to get a real job, which to me, didn’t seem like a big deal to me. Everyone I know has a job or has worked before. But he flat out refused. He definitely has to be the most stubborn person I know. He wanted to follow his dreams of being a musician/designer and I never once had a problem with that. I loved that he dreamed big and outside of the box. But if those dreams aren’t providing for your family, then you gotta do what you have to do.

The other major thing that I wanted him to change was his attitude towards everything. He was such a major hard ass about everything. Here I am working, going to school and taking care of my household and he’d just want more and more and more. Design this, draft that, help with this. I was so insanely stressed. Not only was he rough on me but also the kids. Mind you, they just turned 3 and 5. I really could not handle the constant bickering, nagging and yelling from this dude anymore and no matter how much I would express that it bothered me, he just didn’t get it.

Now, I’m not saying I’m perfect, no one on this earth is. He had quite a few expectations of me that I just refused to do. One thing is, I’m not a super neat person. I’m not going to come home after 9 hours at work and clean the house. If I was by myself, it would be easy for me to maintain. But seems how I had someone that stayed home ALL day watching kids, why is it my job to do that? I have no problem sharing chores and would try and set some chore lists but they never worked. He also wanted me to be this like super vixen all the time. Excuse me? I have kids and I’m not going to change up my style for anyone. I wear what is comfortable to me and what I feel good in, I can’t wear the same stuff I used to wear before we had kids.

I guess the point that I’m trying to make here is that both of us had things that we didn’t necessarily like about each other and though I wanted him to do things differently and vice versa and we spent 6 years together trying to make things work, eventually one of us had to decide whether it was worth it to keep going. You either chose to put up with the bull crap if it really is worth it to you because you love that person and can’t see yourself without them or you decide that it’s too much of a headache and you don’t want to put up with it anymore, which is what I did.