Sometimes you need a good slap in the face. To wake you out of old patterns, and make you realize you should be doing something different. It's hard to guide yourself out of a rut. It's inertia, you keep going in the same direction. When you introduce another player on the field, realties change. Suddenly she puts her foot down and you stumble and fall, out of that old pattern.
Your tendency is to roll back in, and start taking the same track, but then you realize, you have a great opportunity to do something different, change course.