My answer to, "Will my partner ever change?"

Good evening, everyone. I'm Jenny sweeten. I'm a clinical psychologist in the Kansas city area. And right now, you might be able to see a little bit behind me. I'm actually in downtown brisbane in Australia, because I'm giving a workshop tour here. But I wanted to try something a little bit different tonight and make a video answering a really common question that I've been getting from clients for the past couple of years. And I've been getting it more and more. So I wanted to take a minute to try to just answer it to a wider audience, because I think it's something that a lot of us can really relate to. And the question, the way it was posed by a recent client, was, is he gonna change? Is my romantic partner going to change? And I've been asked this question by both men and women, but recently, I've noticed it coming a lot from women, especially with male partners, and wondering if they're gonna essentially stop behaviors that are unhealthy or unhelpful to the relationship. So this one client asked me recently, am I foolish for believing that maybe he might change? Am I just foolish for having that faith in him? So let me answ the answer is absolutely no. You are not foolish for believing that people are capable of profound changes. And maybe that's just part of me being a clinical psychologist is that I believe people are capable of change, big change in their life. However, here's the thing. Change requires effort. And we know this because this is essentially just a rule of neuroplasticity. It's a rule of brain change. To change your brain to change your life requires sustained effort. And a lot of times, it's really hard, and it requires a struggle. So it can be a difficult thing, but it is possible. So what you have to ask yourself is, what prompts somebody to be willing to put forth the tremendous amount of effort that's required to make lasting change? And I think a lot of times the answer to this is that whatever they're doing is just not working very well for them. So it's costing them something. It's making them suffer something to that effect to where they decide, you know, I can't keep going like this. That is what's required for change. If you notice that your partner keeps doing the same things over and over again, and you're really wanting them to change, but somehow they're not changing, then the reason is probably that somehow, on some level, what they're doing is still working okay for them. And so, at the end of the day, we can't change anybody else. We can only change ourselves. But understand that, yeah, people can change if they're motivated to. And while it's not your role, and it's not even something you can do to change people, and it's not your job to try to prompt someone to change, one thing that you can do is you can explore, maybe even just with yourself, what this dynamic is that you're stuck in, what it looks like, and when they do this behavior, how do you respond? What are you doing in response to that? Because sometimes, and this is not always the case, but sometimes it's the case that the way we're responding by doing that, we're accidentally reinforcing the bad behavior. So here's a classic example. Classic example is a woman that will come see me. And her complaint is that she feels like she's doing everything around the house. All of the housework, all of the laundry, all of the cooking. And I ask her to describe how this happens in this dynamic. And what she says is that she will tell her spouse, hey, can you help me? Can you get up? Can you do the dishes? Can you do a load of laundry? But then what happens when the spouse doesn't do that is that she ends up doing it. And so in this case, it's that she keeps doing the things that she's asking her spouse to do do. And what that's doing, unintentionally, of course, is reinforcing that bad behavior of not helping. So that's just one example. It's not always the case that we're doing things to reinforce certain behaviors, but that is something that you can at least check in with yourself about and ask yourself. And remember, the one person you can always change is you. Have a good night.