I have known this for quite some time. I bet you know it too.
We behave our worst to the ones we love most.
We snap at our boyfriends. We make our girlfriends wait.
We never bother to try to be at our best behaviour – we don’t hide our dislikes about their stupid dinner choice or pretend to go along with their movie taste.
We don’t put our voice level down. We don’t think it’s inappropriate to be grumpy at our partner in public because hey, it’s our partner. If he does something wrong, he needs to know and repent straightaway. We throw tantrums when they do things differently than what we expect. Although we would never do that kind of thing in front of our friends.
We never try to agree with them. In fact, it seems like they are always wrong, and we feel the need to put our points across again and again, again and again until they totally get it.
…Or until they are tired of arguing and let us win.
We don’t respect their opinions the way we respect other strangers’. We don’t put enough smile in our faces and certainly we don’t bother to dress up nicer than usual to impress them.
We might even call them names, sometimes, when we are angry. We don’t have a filter anymore – when we are mad, we are mad. We don’t say enough ‘thank you’ because we think the things they are doing are part of their job description.
We don’t hide our bad moods for a second to ask what they are going through today. We become less understanding and more demanding.
We never say, ‘It’s okay,’ when they are late. We never say, ‘That’s totally fine,’ when they break a promise.
We take longer time to forgive them, and even then we never really forget what they’ve done. We bring it up during future arguments.
We are less patient. Our favourite phrase is, ‘I have told you this a dozen times before!’ We become really, really angry when they forget a story we’ve told them, and refuse to tell them a second time.
Sometimes, we take our loved ones for granted.
Because it’s easy.
Because we’re too lazy to be nice, and being nice takes a lot of effort.
Because we think this is their occupational hazard anyway.
Sometimes, we behave our worst to the ones we love most, when we should have been at our best.
Photo by Mindaugas Danys
