In today’s post at ‘Catholic Match,’ I give advice on when you should ask your significant other to change:

In the first place, let’s be clear that you do have the right to ask your significant other to ‘change’ in some way.

When you enter a relationship with someone, your life is no longer quite your own, and thus what you do affects the other person and hence they are well within their right to ask you to be a certain way.

That is, to an extent. It must be remembered that intentional change is difficult and stressful, and so basic charity requires that it should only be demanded in important cases. If you find one of your girlfriend’s habits to be mildly annoying, or if she occasionally does something embarrassing or silly, then you should really let it go at a comment or two and not insist that she alter it. If you try to get her to correct every minor fault or quirk as it arises, she’ll feel badgered and stressed, and what is worse, she won’t be as inclined to listen if you ask her to change something serious.

Just as human laws do not, as a matter of practicality, cover the whole moral law, so you should not try to ‘fix’ every flaw in the other person. Everyone has flaws, and some flaws you simply have to learn to live with because the cost of removing them isn’t worth the pain and effort.

Read the rest here.