If You Love Them, But They Won't Change... | Rewind

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If someone says that they would like to change and are willing to do what it takes. If someone isn't even doing that, it's science fiction. The idea that they're gonna change foreign. It's Matthew Hussey with the Love Life podcast. Thank you so much for being here. I think you're going to enjoy this clip. It's a classic from the archives. Check it out. And don't forget, if you can leave us a review on itunes, it would mean the world. It helps us spread the word about this podcast. All right, let's get into the episode. I had a really interesting situation where someone said to me, they were. They were talking about how their ex. They felt like their ex was right for them, but they just broken up the week before. And, And I was saying to this person, I see no reason why he's going to change. Like, what. What indication has he given you that he's going to change? And my friend said, well, well, I just, you know, we, we argue about this stuff. I said, but has he actually. Has he actually acknowledged these things that you have a problem with? Has he acknowledged them and showed a genuine commitment to changing them? And she said, well, he. No, he. But, you know, like, he's so many of the things that I want and so on. I said, okay, so firstly, there's no, there's not even evidence from his side that he wants to change or is willing to or is making a plan to change, is committed to change. And change is really, really hard. Right? There's that Jacob M. Broad quote, consider how hard it is to change yourself, and you realize how foolish it is to think you can change other people. It's hard to change ourselves. So expecting that somebody else is going to change, especially when they're not even motivated to, Especially when they're even committed to that change is fallacy. And then I said, look, this person's not showing any signs they want to change. And even right now in the breakup, he's not rushing back to you saying, oh, my God, I want to change this, I want to change that, and let's try this again. And by the way, in that case, you'd still have reason to be suspicious because you haven't seen the change yet. It's not proven. This might just be a panic because he thinks he's losing you and he's now saying all the right things to get you back. Now, you might give him another chance, but it doesn't mean that he's actually going to change. It just means you're giving him another chance that you feel like, okay, there's a certain level of certainty in his voice. There's a certain level of commitment in the plan that he's given me about how he's going to change or what, how, you know, how he's going to address these things in the relationship. There's enough there for me to say, I'll give this a shot, and then I'm going to watch carefully to see if that's backed up by real action and real change. But he's not doing that. And it was so funny because she said to me, so, Matt, like, in. In situations in your past where, you know, there's someone you really wanted to be with but you broke up, if they came running back to you and saying, like, I really want. I really want this, you wouldn't be back with them. And what, here's what, here's what's really telling. I said to her, but he's not even doing that. You're literally giving me a hypothetical right now as a way to con yourself into going back to this person by you for the hypothetical. You've had to say, this person is rushing back to you, wanting you back. He's not even doing that. And you're coming up with this hypothetical. So it's. It's indicative of how people con themselves, how people create a reality in their mind that's not actually happening, happening in real life as a way to justify giving someone more time and energy.

Right? Yeah. I spoke to someone recently who was doing a similar thing and talking about a guy who clearly had no intentions of changing at all. And. And she was saying, like, well, what should I say to him then? To, you know, get us back together? And, you know, we talked it through, and it was clear, like, she was doing all the work here. And this guy had shown no intention that he even thought these behaviors were a problem. But it was her saying, well, I said these were a problem. So what do we do? You know, what do I do now to keep him?

I want People to consider, especially anyone who's been through therapy or intensive coaching or has been on our retreat program. I want anyone to consider when you've been through a process like that, just how much it took on your part to actually change. Even though you'd committed to a process, even though you'd paid money down for a process, that it was still required you to really show up and give your all to that process in order for it to work. So then you imagine the mountain that you have to climb for someone who you're with to not be showing that they, that they firstly, they even have a deep awareness of what's going wrong, of what's bothering you, a true understanding, and then not saying, I'm sorry and I want to change and here's what I'm going to do to change, and then following that plan. If you're in the stage of just arguing with someone about something that's wrong and none of those things have happened yet, all your work is ahead of you. In fact, all the work is ahead of you. If someone says that they would like to change and are willing to do what it takes, still the work is ahead of you. If someone isn't even doing that, it's science fiction. The idea that they're going to change that is a made up story so that you can continue to hold on to something that is terrifying to lose. For whatever reason, whether you're afraid of being alone, whether you've convinced yourself you'll never find anybody else, or more specifically, you've convinced yourself you'll never find anybody else with these qualities, or you feel like you can't handle the pain of losing this person.

And that's one thing we do right. We think the qualities are amazing. And that's the real truth is people think there's enough good things in this person. And then they try and sell themselves on the toxic behavior or the behavior that they know they hate. They try and keep reselling themselves. Or maybe that's all right, maybe maybe I'm being too much or maybe that's, it's okay because they think they're smart. They have this, I'm attracted to them, I have a good relationship with their friends. And you know, it adds up. And it's like, oh, this is too painful to walk away with. Maybe I can just live with this really bad thing that doesn't meet my needs.

See, I'm, I have come to believe that we, our emotions get very heavily involved in the people close to us. Whether it's the person we're dating or in love with. Whether it's our siblings, our parents, our best friend, even our boss, we, and even sometimes the people we employ. There are things that, that we may deeply want to change and, and may even get to the point of saying I, I need to change this or I can't have a relationship with this person. But there gets to be a point in life where we've communicated calmly and in a neutral way what it is we would like to change about the dynamic where we have given many opportunities for that change to happen and space for that change to happen. And where we're. We have it confirmed over and over and over again that this change just appears to be too big of a shift for this person. Either the shift never happens at all or it, it's never sustainable. It's a five minute shift. And then they always end up snapping back into their default position and behavior. And when that happens, we have hard decisions to make. We can either say I have to remove this person from my life or from the level of proximity to me at the very least that is making me this unhappy. You know, maybe they can't be in my inner circle. Maybe they can stay in my outer circle and I can choose to have them as someone who's in my life but who I don't rely on or who I don't have such an intimate connection with, but they can't stay where they are now. Or you can say I am going to make peace with this part of this person because I am continuing to complain about something that I knew about, I have known about for quite some time and is not changing and I'm still here. Which means the, the kind of, the, the, the point of the problem has shifted over from them to me. That's always a. There's a truth of any relationship. There's a point at which the source of the problem actually shut it jumps. It transfers from that person to us because that person is who they've been. Yeah, that should no longer surprise us. They are who they've been. We're now the person who's continuing to complain about old information and we have to then look at ourselves and say what's, what's going on with me? That I either can't leave this person and can't seem to shift my. Or can't stay with this person and shift my expectation of them. Because if we stay with someone who won't change and we're unwilling to shift our expectation, then we become the reason we're complaining. We still speculate on the expectation of what they can be.

Yeah. Yeah.

And that's when we have to look at our ourselves and say, I've look, I've only got three options in life is either that they change to be more of what I need, or I leave or I stay and I revise my expectations of this relationship and this person. All right, everyone, that's it for today. But before you go, I have news. Our next live retreat is coming up in October. From the 9th to the 15th, we're going to be spending six days days together diving deep on your biggest life challenges, whether they're to do with your confidence, your relationships, or just past trauma that you know is still getting in the way of you creating the life you want or experiencing the kind of happiness and peace you want to experience. To apply, go to mhretreat.com and it is my sincerest hope that you and I get to spend those six days together this October. Thanks for listening, as always, and I'll speak to you in the next episode of Love Life.