Expecting Someone To Change For You Is The Recipe For Suffering

Waiting for someone to change for you is, at least in most cases, a form of pointless suffering.

This reality often occurs in love relationships, where one of the members wants the other to live up to their expectations, their behavior to improve, and one day learn to love in exactly the way they expect. However, that kind of expectation rarely comes true.

If we stop to think, believing that someone is going to take a 180º turn in their life, changing attitudes and behaviors, creates the foundations of an emotional dependence that is as damaging as it is exhausting.

It’s living waiting for a miracle, it’s believing in the other when he says he’s going to change, that what happened in the past won’t happen again. But in fact, at one point we realize that we’ve fallen once more into the prank of blind and passionate hearts.

This kind of situation is more common than we usually think. It is even normal for this to occur, because when a person loves, she trusts, since the first cannot walk apart from the second. So we end up giving it a second, a third, or even a fourth chance hoping the relationship will work.

We fight with conviction, because to love is to believe that every effort will be worth it in the end. This is until, at a given moment, the person opens his eyes to understand that, as much as the wish is huge, it will not come true.

Waiting for someone to change for us, a frustrated desire

Psychology uses the term personality to define a series of traits that are more or less stable over time. So, if someone exhibits a combination of introversion and shyness, it’s hard to expect them to show extraverted behavior overnight.

Now, showing a tendency towards personality does not preclude the fact that we can achieve some changes against the current, that is, against the natural tendencies of our personality.

Furthermore, if we do not believe in the possibility of change against inertia, psychological intervention would be meaningless. In this context, people, in addition to seeking to implement changes, undergo improvements and obtain new mental and behavioral patterns.

Therefore, something that different studies show, such as the one carried out by Dr. Walter Roberts, from the University of Illinois, United States, is that change occurs more frequently within a psychotherapeutic context.

That is, when a person is aware that there is a problem that must be faced, the clinical intervention itself mediates the possibility of realizing these personality changes.

Is expecting someone to change for us okay?

We expect constant changes in others. This hope comes even in the family environment or in raising a child. When their behavior is not as expected, we call the child’s attention and let them know what we want or expect in that context: respect, attention, affection and responsibility.

Within the context of education, it is normal to expect change. In the end, educating is reorienting, suggesting, dialoguing, being a good example and showing a path that, for us, is the best option for our children.

Now, as we reach adulthood, most of our personality patterns are already very ingrained. If there is not a lot of willpower, hardly any change will happen.

Thus, it is common in love relationships that the other has some behavior that does not please us. The ideal is to accept both the good and the bad part of the other, since the defects, quirks and singularities are nuances that form the person as he is, his essence and his authentic being.

Therefore, wanting to change the other to fit what we expect is not a correct idea. However, other more serious situations can happen.

Abusive, contemptuous and lying behaviors, for example, are neither allowed nor acceptable under any circumstances. In these last cases, the attempt to generate a change is not only recommended, but also a condition for the relationship to continue.

What to do when someone hurts us and change is not enough

In Dr. John Gottman’s book, The Seven Principles for a Relationship to Work , he says something very important. The Love is, above all, acceptance ; it is to appreciate the other for who he is and vice versa.

Now, if harmful behaviors appear, such as what he called the four horsemen of the apocalypse (contempt, evasion, criticism and defensiveness) the relationship is doomed to failure.

In the latter cases, it is essential to seek and generate change. And it’s not about waiting for someone to change for us, it’s about realizing that there’s a problem. Because when there is suffering, attitudes and behaviors must be changed not only so that the bond is maintained, but also so that there is something essential: well-being and happiness.

Thus, two situations usually develop in these cases. The first is that the other person tells us that famous phrase: “I am like that, either you accept me or you don’t stay with me”.

The second situation is one in which we are caught in a mental and emotional trap of thinking that the other person will really change for us when he says he will get better, that everything will be fine from now on and that what happened will not happen again . However, things not only repeat themselves but sometimes even get worse.

What to do if we are in the middle of one of these situations in a relationship? The answer is simple: if we are unhappy and the other person does not mobilize to change or improve the situation, the change will have to be made by us. It will be necessary to turn the page and overcome the sadness and carelessness that they had with our feelings.

Finally, it is worth saying once again that the ideal in this type of circumstance is to seek help from a professional. Couples therapists and psychologists are an extraordinary help in these cases.