Fear of change

As a rule, people strive to be better, not worse, than they are now. But many times, we do not want to improve our ways, we want to stay where we are. This is the place of safety. We know it well. We are familiar with its good and bad points. Any change, for better or worse, is accompanied by this strange feeling of loosing yourself. This is true about individuals living alone, and the more so about couples who share their lives, experiences - in short, life paths.
There is no need to add, that if we resist any change, we just stay on the same place for the rest of our lives. We remain alone in the landscape of our childhood, instead of becoming part of the landscape of someone else - our children (in the same way our parents had to leave their landscapes of childhood in order to create a setting for us).
There is even more tricky thing about the fear of change. When we are alone, we have absolutely no problem to improve our ways. That is at least what we say. And we even do that. And we bear all responsibility for the decision and for making it happen. And nobody intervenes. This change is purely voluntary. And we feel the piece of cake is just ours! Congratulations! Free choice.
What happens when we are two? We also change. Some changes are inevitable (when two people start to live together, they both adjust a bit their daily, weekly, yearly routine), some are the result of being together. Maybe the better word would be transformation - we both are being transformed as a result of being together. Hey! But if this is a psik reisha, where is my free choice? And here comes the more difficult part. As if there was a contradiciton: The transformation is inevitable, but we still freely choose to undergo it. Sounds familiar? Jewish people received the Torah on Mount Sinai freely (na'ase ve-nishma), but at the same time Hashem held the mount Sinai above them, saying: If you do not receive the Torah, I will drop on you this mount and you all will die. We need to understand, that this act did not exclude the free choice. The Jews freely chose to receive the Torah to keep it, but sometimes we need a little reminder (not direct one maybe, but also the fear of punishment might be this 'negative' drive to fulfill the mitzvot, that we have hardships with). Sometimes we do mitzvot with enthusiasm and smoothly (na'ase ve-nishma), sometimes it is hard and we need to remind ourselves there is a covenant and we are obliged to keep it even when it is not so convenient (har ke-gigit, Hashem holding the mount above us).
I dare to say this is true also in relationships and therefore there is no contradiction between inevitable and voluntary. When we choose to spent the rest of our life with someone, we do so freely. When we are together we still have choice to make the life of our partner and ours better. Sometimes we have a lot of enthusiasm, sometimes less. When we have no drive, then we can remind ourselves, that this is a covenant (as opposed to a business contract). Like between Hashem and Jewish people  - it is no accident, that this relationship is described in terms of marriage. But in order not to put the partner under stress, it should function as a self-reminder: I recall my part of the covenant. And I trust the partner to do the same. Trust (in Hebrew emun, which is directly related to the word emuna, usually translated as belief) is the essential part of the covenant, both between a man and a woman and between Hashem and Jewish people.
Now, the process of transformation in marriage has an interesting aspect. Little changes we undergo are indeed our success, but as opposed to being single, our partner has his or her merit in this, becasue our change was enabled by being together (of course we do not talk about continual criticism and cynic remarks, that rather have devastating effect). It is our success, and we should be thankful for that. It is our spouse who traced the potential in us, and helped us to make the best of it, just by the fact, that he/she stands by our side, nothing more. The piece of cake is shared.
The fear of future change of ours might be also stemming from our false self-perception, that we actually are  already now perfect. If we think so, than our fear of change is bigger, because if the change happens, it means we were not that perfect.
So lets abandon all fears, lets admit that we are not perfect and lets keep in mind our partner want the best for us, as we want for him/her.