What your girlfriend thinks about you and your life should be important to you. Your girlfriend is the one who will stand by you and love you and be that other part of your life that makes each day more enjoyable. Part of any commitment is openness. This means a sharing of opinions and values. Any person in a relationship should feel comfortable enough to let their thoughts be known. However, there may come a time when you begin to think that your girlfriend thinks too much about your life – and not in the best of light. She may ask you to change your ways. She may ask you to change your values. She may even ask you to change the way you look. Your job is to consider where she’s coming from and make educated, impartial decisions on what she has to say. Doing what your girlfriend thinks may or may not be right, but you have to decide how to proceed.

Sometimes your girlfriend will ask you to change for the better. They are the person who should be closest to you and know you the best. In relationships, we should only want what’s good for the person we’re with. A change for the good might mean treating friends better, putting more time into schooling or work, handling problems differently or changing the way you manage your finances. Often when a girlfriend asks for good changes they might appear to be difficult or wrong. They may disagree with your values or your beliefs. Changing might even be so difficult that it seems impossible. But a good change is something to embrace. The hard part will be identifying it. To do that, you’ll need to measure the worth of the idea. Whatever the case, if you judge a change to be good, no matter how hard it is, you need to act on it and make it happen.

"You need to determine where the problem is coming from. Look to the basic principals of right and wrong for the answer."

Other times, what your girlfriend thinks might mean a change for the worse. This could be a request to go against your principals, the alienation of good friends or the undertaking of an act that can cause others you care about to feel pain. The close relationship you share with your girlfriend might seem like just cause to do as they request. Not acting may lead to the downfall of your relationship and you certainly don’t want that. But following a lead that no good can come from is a senseless act. Life should be lived with good reason and purpose. Satisfying the needs of others is a wonderful part of life, but only if those needs stand up to a test of higher power. If their needs fail the test, then you owe it to yourself and the greater good follow your own path.

Testing the validity of a request or idea can be done by looking at the principals that should guide humanity. These are the basics of determining right from wrong. Whatever you do should bring pleasure to yourself and the people around you. If what you’re doing is causing people pain or causes you pain, then it needs to end. If your girlfriend is asking you to change, she is somehow feeling pain or she’s experiencing an irrational thought. Asking you to stop sleeping over at an ex girlfriends place would be a just reason for her feeling pain. Asking you to cut down on your visits to your parents, on the other hand, could be an irrational thought. You need to determine where the problem is coming from. Look to the basic principals of right and wrong for the answer. Does it conflict with the primary underlying values of a valued society, such as equality, charity, compassion and truth? Or does it come from someplace darker, a request made out of spite, anger, envy or contempt? Take her small request and put it next to the larger values that should guide a great life and you should see where she’s coming from and whether change is required or not.

The best way to ensure that you can overcome any problem with what your girlfriend asks is to communicate. Be open about how you feel and how what she’s asking of you makes you feel. Sometimes her opinions come from a desire to do good while other times it may be for her own benefit. You need to judge where she’s coming from and decide if it – and maybe even if she – is right for you.