Expecting your GF or BF to change? Spoiler alert: It will never work. You’re just incompatible.
Over the past few years, listening to friends during late-night supper sessions at the local kopitiam, I’ve noticed a constant recurring theme in Singaporean relationships.
It’s always the same story:
- “He’s very introverted and prefers playing games at home, but after we get BTO and marry, I’m sure he will become more outgoing.”
- “She’s terrible with money, buys branded bags every month and spends half her salary on café hopping, but once we have kids she’ll definitely become thrifty.”
- “He doesn’t get along with my parents, but once we sign the option to purchase, he’ll try harder.”
Bro. Sis. Please wake up.
People do not magically rewrite their core personality, financial habits, or lifestyle preferences just because a marriage certificate is stamped by the ROM or a key collection date arrives. If someone is an avid gamer who needs quiet time to recharge, forcing them to turn into a social butterfly who attends weekend brunch with your entire extended family will only build resentment. If someone’s definition of self-care is high-end luxury consumption, expecting them to suddenly adopt an extreme frugal mindset overnight is pure delusion.
What most people call “hoping my partner will mature” is actually just project management applied to human beings. You are treating your partner like an unfurnished BTO flat—looking at the raw concrete floor and thinking, “I can renovate this into what I want.”
Except a human being is not a floor plan. They are already a fully finished product with years of upbringing, ingrained habits, and personal values.
When you fall in love with someone’s potential rather than who they actually are today, you set both of you up for failure. You spend years dropping passive-aggressive hints, fighting over the same recurring issues, and feeling constantly disappointed. Meanwhile, your partner feels fundamentally unaccepted, constantly measured against an imaginary blueprint they never agreed to fulfill.
If their core values, ambition, lifestyle, or financial philosophy clash with yours right now, that is not a temporary phase. That is basic incompatibility.
True compatibility isn’t about finding someone flawless; it’s about finding someone whose existing flaws and default lifestyle you can genuinely live with every day for the next 40 years. Stop waiting for the transformation arc. Either accept them as they are today—unfiltered—or have the courage to walk away so both of you can find someone who actually fits.