love out loud: the taming of the player

Pretty much every journalist for a women’s publication in the past couple of years has asked Katy Perry how she tamed Russell Brand. And pretty much every journalist for a women’s publication has been met with the same response: Perry’s insistence that she didn’t tame the former sex addict, but rather that she met him at a time when he was ready for change, and wanting to settle down.

This is kind of like therapists saying that you can’t force someone to change, but rather that they have to want to make that change themselves (though particularly destructive behaviours often prompt the force). And people often tire of whatever it is they’re doing; a former serial monogamist might decide they want some no-strings sex, while a Tucker Max wannabe might eventually decide he or she no longer wants to trawl their local drinking hole every weekend. Whoever they meet next that they have an above average compatibility with (or not, as the case may be), is going to fall into whichever role that person has decided they want an “other” in.

I’ve often wondered if bad timing isn’t at the crux of most relationships-that-never-were, and I suspect it is. If you’re going through a period in your life where you simply have no interest in a relationship for whatever reason, you’re probably not going to even want to get to know someone well enough to determine whether they’re a suitable partner. For the most part, you have to be open to having a relationship to have a relationship; as if it weren’t already hard enough to find someone who a) you like, and b) likes you back, this is made exponentially more difficult when you’re batting off prospects before they’ve even made it as far as “prospect”.

That’s not to say that meeting a certain person can’t catalyse change, as we’re constantly being shaped by our experiences/environment/whatever, but for that change to be permanent, it usually has to be something less fickle than another person. And I know you all know someone who was a total player until they met the right person, and I know that because I know a couple of people like that too, but this is a stupidly small proportion of all the relationships and almost-relationships I know of that weren’t successful because one or both people needed to be tweaked if it was ever going to work out.

But don’t take my word for it; become a journalist for a women’s publication and ask Katy Perry!

(Image credit: 1.)