Dear Scott:

You wrote that “unless somebody goes through a life experience, a hardship, they do not have reason to change”- I would amend it to: unless somebody feels ongoing internal conflict, they are not motivated to change. If a person goes through hardship and finds a way to frame it rationally in a way that comforts them, however incongruent with reality, they will not be motivated to change. A common example: people going through breakups blaming the other party, relieving their distress by venting about the other person being guilty, not looking at their own behavior:  no internal conflict, no motivation to change.

Reads to me like she relieves any possible guilt feelings by short and quick apologies, and so: no internal conflict. You would like to know if she will grow out of it- no, we don’t grow out of our brain connections. We grow out of our skin because it sheds and we grow new skin. But we don’t grow new brains.

Will she change? Check and see if she is experiencing an internal conflict, if she is struggling with guilt, if she is fighting within herself. If she does, she has a motivation. If she doesn’t, she doesn’t.

If she had a good enough childhood where she received adequate empathy and attention, where she was not criticized, she would probably not be criticizing you. Hardly anyone has this kind of childhood, seems to me.

You wrote: “part of me is persistent and optimistic”- a good attribute, most of the time. Not when optimism is incongruent with reality over time. Regarding a wife, not yet, you are way too young to consider a particular person for marriage, I believe. But not too young to think about it, and having a critical wife, and worse: a critical mother to your children, that is no reason for optimism.

anita