Teaching an old dog new tricks

In the personal discussions I had leading up to my post about cheapos, one of my friends’ husbands admitted to being cheap until my friend taught him otherwise. He reasoned that some of those traits may have stemmed from being broke in college and never quite adjusting to the fact that it was five years later with a decent income.

My response was that as we get older, fewer people have the patience or the time to “train” a potential significant other to be more…courteous. It's an immediate turn-off for many.

Even after I decided to write this post, two sitcoms addressed these issues this week. Scrubs recently featured JD breaking up with Mandy Moore’s character because she said “that’s so funny” and never actually laughed.

Courting Alex with Jenna Elfman (someone told me that I reminded him of her…behaviorally, obviously) featured Alex becoming annoyed with her new boyfriends ticks, like his extremely loud exhale every time he drank something. She brought it up so it didn’t turn into a big issue and invited him to make a list about her. His response was that kind of stuff didn’t matter in the grand scheme of things, and his list was comprised of “you’re too gorgeous.”

I recently met up with a guy that talked with his mouth full to the point where I literally saw food tumbling around as he was speaking, and I couldn’t bear to look at him. It doesn’t seem that unreasonable to expect good manners, does it?

Do we ever have the right to ask anyone to change for any reason or are we supposed to accept them "as is?"