My entire work, both personal – inner-work and the work I do with my clients, is focused on seeing through the recoils of the mind around its own mischievousness. More clearly, I focus on seeing for myself and show other people how and where they are lying to themselves. This is one of the most obvious themes that I see in people in a form of a spoken or hidden question: “is s/he going to change?”

HE/SHE IS NOT GOING TO CHANGE!!!

Here is me, saying it like it is, being direct, because I know many, many people need to hear this from the outside. They even say it to themselves, but I know from personal experience that it’s so easy to ignore or run from this intimate understanding that’s rooted so so so clearly in reality!! People need to hear this phrase again and again and again and there’s reasons for that which I’ll explore further!

Wake up!! Stop pretending that something will be different and someone, somehow will learn some amazing new skill or have some epiphany or ah-hah moment or really be able to discover a completely different way of relating and finally be able to give you what you need or what you want and offer the dreamed emotional connection you seem to be after! This is not happening and is never ever, ever going to happen!

If this feels obtuse to you, if there’s a NO arising from you, know that that’s your inner trauma that’s covering the reality. Look around you! Look at your own life and at your own relationships and understand how, even though each of us knows what’s wrong with our relationships, we’re utterly incapable to change them!! All we do is we jump from one relationship to another, repeatedly looping within a predictable cycle of an unhealthy relationship with a partner that we knew from early on and still know today: this is not the right partner for me!!
Even though we have a series of evidence that “he does this”, “she doesn’t do this”, “this is not working”, “she is an angry person”, “he is cold and uncaring”, etc – we still can’t come to a healthy conclusion that this is not something we want to stay with, or get involved in ever again!! We seem to keep looping in our own dysfunction where we come back with the ever dishonest type of question: do you think s/he can change? And the answer is NO, s/he’s not changing! This is who s/he is, this is who you picked and you have known this from the beginning!
I’ll give you a bit of an unorthodox advice: YOU change into the person your partner desires! Can you? Do you want to? And even if you do, will you be happy that way?? Will you be You?

The thought process is ridiculous!! Yet, most of us are unable to look it straight in the face, and also unwilling to let others show it to us. This situation is related to our unintegrated, unresolved attachment trauma and this profound longing and fear of abandonment where we are willing to pick someone who’s just not the right person for us, because we can’t fathom being alone!!! We’d much rather be linked to the longing of the potential of one day connecting with this person that we’ve chosen, rather than be honest with ourselves that we need to drop into our own aloneness and not to be attached, not be in a relationship with the wrong partner!!!

Simply inventory the last 10 days of your emotional distress, or inventory the last year of how frequently did you feel disappointed and disconnected, look for how often your emotional needs were not getting met, look for how the other seems to not even know you, let alone like you, let alone love you! Look at how they seem to not even be interested in your needs and your wants! Look at how they are stuck in their own paradigm of dysfunction, or unhealthy relating! Look for how you feel rejected, left out, unknown, unheard – if you really look at it and you’re being honest with yourself, that this is not a helpful situation to you, that this is not a meaningful, nourishing situation for you, you’ll realize that that’s just not what you want in your life!!

Instead of taking control of your life and saying: I don’t want this, I’m going to be alone, I’m going to take a break from relationships, I’m willing to go through the grief of the ending with this person that we have this on-again-off-again dance… if you’re not able to really embrace and look at that history of the unmet needs and the CAPITAL writing on the wall that says: THIS IS THE WRONG PARTNER FOR ME – instead of looking at that honestly, your brain returns to well-known schemes on “solving it”, making things different, coming up with a new plan, waiting for this or the other to still happen before you just END IT! Your unresolved trauma is weaving a plan so that you can prolong this – maybe this, maybe this, maybe this… and included in that, is “maybe he’ll change, maybe she’ll change… if I could just get him/her on board with this or the other improvement technique…”

Here’s something for you to ponder: if s/he wanted to change, s/he would take charge of her/his life and do her/his own thing!! The fact that you want to try to work so hard to transform your partner or your prospective partner, says more about your co-dependency and that you’re meddling in their life because you cannot look at your own profound grief and disappointment translated in the fact that you have picked the wrong partner!!! That doesn’t mean they’re a bad partner, that doesn’t mean that they’re an evil person – or even if they are, it just means you’re not being honest with yourself to give it a rest and to end, you don’t know how to end something that is unhealthy for you, that isn’t conducive to your well-being.

When we go back and forth to a partner that is obviously not good for us, something in us knows that we don’t really want to be with that person, it’s that we can’t manage our own loneliness, we can’t manage our own longing… and so we reach out and we’re yet trying again to pull this person into a relationship and then the moment that we think that we’re back together, or even the moment when we’re trying to make something work with a new person, we’re going to be disappointed and we’re going to be frustrated… and now we’re even more justified in being angry and bitter and frustrated and then we’re going to have to tell him/her once again how he/she needs to change!?!?!

So wake up! He’s not changing! She’s not changing!!! And it’s time to be honest with yourself and make other plans for your life, quit wasting your life, quit trying to make something happen and to be in charge of someone else’s healing process so that they might suit you!! That is not your job!! Focus on yourself and learn some skills that will help you focus on yourself so that you are able, once transformed to pick a better partner for you, one that feels suited for you, one that flows with your life, not make a battleground out of it!!! It can be painful to hear this, it can be incredibly difficult to hear that you need to walk away from this fantasy-land by accommodating deep inner self-healing, but we have to realize that that in and of itself is the way that we’re lying to ourselves, we’re being dishonest with ourselves and keep ourselves and others in the loop!!

One last word: I am in no way implying that people never change. My point is that not many do. And if you are being really honest with yourself and look around you, you’ll see that very very few people have. And those who did, underwent a very very serious process of self-scrutiny and self-evaluation.

Have you been inspired by this post? Then please