The dating phase is when people are on their best behavior.
“Men marry women hoping they won’t change and they do; women marry men hoping they will change and they don’t.”
Many women see their boyfriends as projects. They see an idealized version of what they wish him to be, and believe that by dating them they can change him.
Bad idea.
Boyfriends are not projects
Remember, single and dating people, that the dating phase is when people put forth their BEST. The dating phase is when your man is putting on his best behavior. He’s taking you places to eat that he won’t when you are married. He’s buying flowers for you. He’s dressing up. That typically doesn’t continue in marriage.
So, people (ladies especially)- during the dating phase you ARE seeing the idealized version of him.
Marriage typically doesn’t change people very much. For sure, we grow and mature as we age, but that happens with or without marriage. Many young people believe that going through a thirty-minute ceremony enacts lifelong change in a person. It doesn’t.
If he’s rude, demanding, immature, has a wandering eye- that doesn’t change with a ring on his finger, ladies.
If he has trouble keeping a job, if he’s dismissive of your needs, if he is selfish and thinks of himself first at all times- that doesn’t change because he puts on a tux and says, “I do.”
I heard a very sobering statement from a pastor who was counseling a young woman in his church about her toxic boyfriend she would soon marry. He said, “You can cry now when you lose him, or you can cry later when you have him.”
Ladies, if you are having to make excuses for your boyfriend, if you are constantly having to explain things about boyfriend to your friends and family, if phrases like, “He didn’t really mean that,” or “He’s really got a good heart,” or “You just don’t understand him,” it might be time to start running away.
Don’t enter a relationship hoping to change someone. The person you date and marry shouldn’t need your “help” to be the person you need him or her to be. Remember- during the dating phase you are seeing them at their best. People aren’t projects to fix. Dating someone you see as a project will only lead to heartbreak (and possibly worse) down the road.