We can’t really change people, even if they offer us the control

By David McElroy · March 28, 2021

People rarely change. Not really.

Our movies and novels and self-help books all seem to be based on the idea that personal change is common. Without serious character development in fiction, movies and novels would be boring. If a self-help book said, “Don’t bother, because you’re probably not going to change anyway,” nobody would buy it.

We’re culturally conditioned to believe that substantial change in a person is common, but reality is far different. And it’s even more rare when a person changes someone else — because humans aren’t puppets who can be controlled on the inside.

If I try to change someone else — even if we both agree the change is for the better — I’m very unlikely to succeed. It’s a foolish thing to try. Even if you do succeed, the person who’s forced the change will always hold a superior position — and that will never allow for a healthy and equal relationship.

Even though I know all this, I’ve tried it anyway. Not consciously, but I’ve done it, thinking I had the best of intentions. As recently as about five years ago, I tried to change a woman I dated — and it was a miserable failure for both of us.

We’re going to call her Angie. She had known me casually for about seven or eight years, I guess. We had met at a place she used to work, but I hadn’t seen her for something like four or five years. She had followed me on Facebook, but I rarely noticed her.

She got in touch with me out of the blue and wanted to talk. We met and she confessed that she had always been romantically interested in me but hadn’t ever made it obvious — and now she wanted to know if I’d be interested in dating her.

It was a mistake from the start, but I agreed.

I had been trying to get over the end of a relationship that had left me bitterly disappointed and confused, so I selfishly thought that spending time with Angie would help me. I was wrong about that, but even that error wasn’t the biggest problem.

Angie was a terrible match for me. Or maybe I was a terrible match for her. Whichever way you see it, the pairing wasn’t good. I knew that, but I allowed myself to think things would somehow be different — that she might change because of being with me. I don’t think I really believed that, but I wanted to believe it.

Our interests were very different. Our backgrounds were very different. Although she had been to college, she wasn’t nearly as bright as the women I’ve typically dated. She wasn’t well-read. She wasn’t interested in the ideas that fascinate me. She was even from a very rural area — and had the accent and grammar to match.

Angie is a sweet and attractive woman who would have been a wonderful match for a lot of men. She just wasn’t a good fit for me.

When I look back on the few months when I went out with her, I realize that I was unconsciously playing Professor Higgins to her Eliza Doolittle. I exposed her to ideas and information that she had never heard of — and she tried to understand. She could tell which things were important to me, so she tried to make herself more like what I wanted. She even tried to change the way she spoke.

After four months or so, I had to end something which never should have started. Things didn’t end well. She was angry. Some of her anger was simply from normal rejection — and some of it was the painful feeling that she couldn’t be what I wanted her to be.

I was upset with myself after the relationship ended. I was upset with my bad judgment in letting the relationship start and I was even more frustrated with how poorly I handled ending things. On top of that, I beat myself up for allowing the relationship to rock along for months — even though I knew immediately that it had been a mistake.

Angie wasn’t going to change me — and I certainly wasn’t going to change her.

There are times when we start relationships with the expectation that something can be great — and we’re simply wrong. I can’t give myself that excuse. I just used terrible judgment from the beginning — and I was selfish not to consider the inevitable effects on her.

I’ve thought a lot about this mistake over the last five years. In several cases, I’ve turned away from similar mistakes since then, so maybe I can at least say I learned something.

I was flattered when Angie first told me that she wanted to date me. My ego liked the fact that an attractive young woman was pursuing me. I’ll confess that it made me feel good about myself.

But that momentary ego satisfaction was a terrible bargain. The months I spent with her were unhappy. The ending was ugly. She was angry and I felt guilty.

Angie would have been very happy to let me change her. She told me that. But despite her good intentions, I wasn’t going to change her. If she was going to change, those changes had to start inside herself.

She offered me the strings with which to control her. Just like a puppet. But the would-be puppet and would-be puppet-master were both left unhappy.

I’m never going to change anybody else. Improving myself is already a full-time job.

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I’m seeing a lot of simplistic and dishonest explanations right now for the current rioting in France. Those on the populist far right claim it’s all about Muslim immigrants to France disrupting the culture. Their message is that this sort of thing is going to happen in the U.S. unless “we defend the border.” On the far left, socialists and their fellow travelers claim the riots are all about wealthy people in France not paying enough taxes, resulting in cuts to government services. The truth is far more complicated, but it’s rooted in the decline of population growth in Europe. There simply aren’t enough young workers paying into the tax system anymore, so cuts in social services were inevitable. There is genuine cultural tension as more and more people immigrate from other countries, but government cuts to education and other services are even more important to what’s happening. The situation is complicated, so don’t let dishonest people with U.S. political agendas tell you that it happens to support whatever they were already promoting for partisan reasons.

Here’s another reason to appreciate the cats in your life: New research involving 93 countries found that places with more cats per person also tended to have happier people. The researchers say the finding fits with previous evidence that living with pets can reduce loneliness and stress while providing companionship, emotional attachment and social support. The study doesn’t prove that cats cause greater happiness, but it certainly adds to the evidence that sharing your home — and your life — with a cat might be good for you.

The company that owns Facebook and Instagram is heavily promoting its new AI-based software assistant called Muse, but people who are using it as it was designed are incredibly foolish. An early adopter of the software discovered that a few days ago when he advertised an item for sale on Facebook Marketplace — and he inadvertently gave Muse full authority to act on his behalf. The software agreed to a lowball offer made by another Facebook user and then gave that man the home address of the man for whom he was an agent. The software told the buyer that the seller was home and waiting for him. When the buyer showed up and waited angrily, the would-be buyer left an angry review for the man. And this angry man had the seller’s home address. It was only well after that that the software reported what it had done and admitted it had made a mistake. I won’t be putting that much power into the hands of any software. I think anyone who agrees to such terms is a fool. And the software’s user agreement says you’re responsible for purchases the software makes in your name. Nope.

Meet my new girlfriend. Her name is Meg. And she’s my little sweetheart. A couple of months ago, a neighbor across the street told me about a new stray in the neighborhood that she and I were both soon feeding. The cat had been very skittish about contact and she had a lot of scabs and parasites in her fur, but a trip to the vet last week revealed that she was otherwise in good health. The vet estimates her to be 1 to 2 years old. I named her for Meg Murry, the 13-year-old protagonist of Madeleine L’Engle’s wonderful book, “A Wrinkle in Time.” (Please read the book. Don’t watch the horrible movie.) Since we lost Lucy almost a year ago, it seems appropriate that we finally have a new little girl to join the household. She’s already captured my heart, but Alex, Oliver and Sam aren’t there quite yet.

There’s nothing socially acceptable that’s as dangerous as drinking alcohol. Most people grow up being told to “drink responsibly” — and all of us see people abusing this drug in one way or another — but the truth is that drinking alcohol is always a terrible risk. The alcohol in these drinks is toxic and the human liver has to work hard to filter the toxins out. What most people don’t realize is that alcohol is classified as a known carcinogen by the World Health Organization — because of the well-established connection between imbibing and various cancers. Many people have taken refuge behind the idea that light or moderate drinking might be safe, but a new study shows that drinking even one drink a day increases the risks of 10 types of cancer. When I was a teen-ager, I looked around and saw the negative effects that this behavior had on a lot of people and decided not to start drinking, so I’ve never even tried this poison. The evidence keeps piling up that I was lucky to have come to that conclusion early.

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