What so often happens, of course, is that after you've made a Big Point of trying to change your man, he'll come to think: "Hmm. [Your name here] doesn't like me riding a motorcycle. But I've always ridden a motorcycle; I love riding a motorcycle. I have no choice but to keep the fact that I ride a motorcycle away from [you]. That way she'll be happy, and I'll get to keep being myself. I certainly don't like deceiving her, but what choice has she left me? I love her, and want her to be happy. She's made it clear that the only way she's going to be happy is to believe that I don't ride a motorcycle. So I can't let her know I do. It's not so much that I'll be lying to her; I just won't be telling her something she's told me she'd rather not know anyway. Cool. That works. Are we out of ham?"

And there you'll be, stuck in that nasty little loop so many couples do get stuck in, where the woman's either constantly nagging at her man to stop doing something he keeps doing anyway, or is sometimes being deeply upset at discovering that her man's been lying to her about something he's been doing all along that he's not "supposed" to be doing at all. You know how that resentment-acting out cycle goes. Everyone does; we've all seen or lived it. It's awful.

Avoid it now by realizing that when it comes to a relationship partner, what you see is what you get. If you love your man, then love all of your man, or be clear on the fact that you're signing up for more trouble than you can possibly want. Men aren't homes women (or anyone else) can redecorate to suite their taste. They come as is.

If you try to change your man you will, in effect, become his mother. That's a role you do not want to substitute for "wife." And if you believe anything in this world, believe that if you turn into your man's mother, he will turn into your son. Tell him he needs to eat more vegetables, and as sure as the day is long, he'll start sneaking pizza.

Life's too short. You want a man, not a boy. Successful relationships are built on respect, not the kind of co-dependant, mutually dyfunctional craziness that necessarily grows and develops whenever one person in a relationship is convinced that they always know what's best for the other person in that relationship. Women shouldn't act like that toward their men; men shouldn't act like that toward their women.

If you think you're in love with someone, you're not. When you're in love with someone, you know it. And one of the ways you know you're in love with someone is that nothing that person does or says ever really bothers you at all.

(By the way: I'm not saying men can't change; of course they can. I'm saying that you can't make your man change -- or predict when he'll change, or how, or why. People only change from the inside out, never from the outside in.)

Remember: Love means never having to say they're sorry.

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(For related posts o' mine, see Six Tests To Determine If He's Mr. Right, and Top 10 Tips For Becoming A Better Husband. But, really, Pick-Up Lines of Famous Men in History is just stupid. Funny, but stupid. So ignore that one. But it couldn't hurt to go see What's In A Word: The Truth Behind Men's Personal Ads.)