Changing values in relationships

Changing our behaviors changes our values and our feelings. It doesn't matter, comparatively, what we think consciously when we actually make different or new behavioral choices. The change in behaviors powerfully shifts our values, and with them our feelings.

Couples make many compromises in their preferences in order to "fit" better together. Each compromise shifts the person's internal value set, even when the change is clearly not for the better. One member of a partnership may be abusive; to the extent that the other partner changes their own behavior to be more compliant with the abuser, the compliant partner's values and emotions change in the direction of Victimhood. They find their own submissive behavior less and less ego-dystonic. If enough time passes, the Victim may hardly remember being assertive or self-protective.

Couples then begin to resemble each other to the extent that they have compromised and adjusted to the preferences and values of the other. In clinical psychology we recognize a mental disorder (folie a deux) in which a healthy partner married to a person with a paranoid disorder becomes more and more paranoid themselves, even to the point of delusional beliefs.

Older couples become more similar over time, for better or for worse. It's important to remember that our compromises, even healthy and adaptive compromises, change us in the direction of our new choices. "Temporary" changes become permanent. We can't change our behavior without our values and ideology changing with them. So people that enter a dysfunctional relationship, hoping to "change" it, will certainly find themselves changing as well, in the direction of the dysfunction.