When people’s actions show you who they are, accept that reality

By David McElroy · August 30, 2026

About 20 years ago, I met and dated a beautiful and charming woman. She was the stereotypical California blonde. Tall and beautiful.

I could tell she was impressed by money and material things, but I ignored that. And I quickly noticed signs that she wasn’t entirely trustworthy. I ignored that, too. Why?

Because she was beautiful and charming and intelligent. She had so much potential. If she could just change in a few specific ways, she would be the perfect woman for me.

The relationship ended quickly. She acted badly in ways that were entirely predictable. I had allowed myself to be blinded by the things that attracted me to her. If you listed all of her pluses and minuses, she might’ve scored a 90 or 95 percent. But the parts of her that were completely wrong for me were the non-negotiables.

I let myself be swayed by what I wanted to be true. She showed me — very early — who she really was. I just didn’t believe her.

Our culture loves redemption stories. We love it when we hear about people who have serious problems and then reform themselves in serious ways. The terrible human being who is saved by someone showing him or her true love is a trope of our movies and romance novels.

But the truth is that people rarely change, not in fundamental ways.

That doesn’t mean change can never happen. There can be times when a person has a dark past and experiences change on his or her own — some epiphany or religious conversion or other change of heart — and then turns his or her life around.

There can be times when a person lives with terrible values or habits for decades and then realizes this isn’t who he or she wants to be — and has the character and willpower to find the tools to fix his or her life.

Those changes happen, but far less frequently than our movies might make you think.

When real change happens for a person, it happens because that person decides — for internal reasons — that he or she wants a different life. The motivation for the change comes from a deep desire to change values or habits.

It almost never happens for a man because he is in love with a woman who wants him to be something different. If he’s selfish, he’s going to continue to be selfish. If he’s a deadbeat, he’s going to continue to be a deadbeat. If his values are all out of order, he’s going to continue to value the wrong things.

When a person is motivated by wanting to win another person, he can temporarily change how he acts. If his beloved points to his selfish act, he might remember to change that thing the next time — and then he might say, “Look! Aren’t you proud of me? I did what you wanted.”

The end result of this sort of reform is almost always the same. As soon as the supposed reformed man gets angry or frustrated or annoyed with the person for whom he’s been trying to change, he’s going right back to his old habits and values. In many cases, he will gleefully return to things he claimed to have abandoned for the sake of love.

Such externally motivated change doesn’t last because it’s not a true change of the heart. It’s just an attempt — possibly a well-meaning one — to manipulate a partner into accepting him.

In the case of my beautiful blonde girlfriend from years ago, the story was even simpler. She didn’t even get to the point that she wanted to change. She was so charming and beautiful to men that she had an endless supply of suitors. She saw no reason to change.

This isn’t really about her, though.

That woman had no obligation to change for me. Even if she had wanted to change to suit me, it would have probably ended the same way. Why? Because her core values were fundamentally different from mine.

The things I saw in her — things that came out through her behavior — were who she really was. She showed me very clearly who she was. And I ignored it, because it wasn’t what I wanted to see.

If you find that a potential partner — romantic or business or otherwise — has fundamentally different values than yours on any one of the things that are non-negotiable to you, don’t try to change that person. Don’t get mad at the person. Don’t scream or beg or manipulate.

Just accept reality.

Stop trying to change people. You’re almost certainly just creating chaos and heartbreak for both of you.

Share on Social Networks

It hasn’t happened yet, but there’s a possibility that I might be taking in a fourth feline. A couple of months ago, a cat-loving neighbor asked whether I’d seen a “tuxedo cat” hanging out in the neighborhood. I hadn’t, but this guy eventually wandered past my house a few weeks later — and we haven’t been able to find evidence that he has a home. I’ve been giving him water and food for the last week and he finally let me pet him two nights ago. He’s purred for me two nights in a row and he let me take a low-quality selfie with him Thursday night. Tonight, though, he let me pick him up and bring him inside to look around. This went surprisingly well, as you can see from this photo. I don’t know whether he’ll be joining the family, but I’m certain that Alex, Oliver and Sam would vote no, at least until they get to know him. I’m trying to make certain he doesn’t have a home, but if he does join us, what do you suppose his name will be?

It turns out that the radical far left has been training “Antifa cats” to sabotage anything important to Donald Trump. Everything he did was perfect. Honest. It was all the cats’ fault. Arrest all the cats! This is the latest of my ridiculous satirical shorts. Please go watch it. Then “like” it and subscribe. Please. I’m begging you. (Too much?) Although a couple of the previous videos have had views in the hundreds, most have still been seen by fewer than 20 people. So I seem to be having trouble letting people know that page exists.

Here’s the latest of my ridiculous parody shorts. It crossed my mind Tuesday to wonder what a slick and fast-talking car dealer might do right now to try to turn the high price of gasoline to his advantage. So I conceived of a fat and lovable character who tried to sell cars that don’t use any fuel — and then I started wondering if it would be funnier if all the characters were felines. Designing the King Cashpaw character took about four hours, but the rest took only another four hours, so this was a relatively quick piece that virtually wrote itself. I know it’s almost impossible for these parody videos to find a larger audience, but at least they amuse me — and there are 19 of them on my YouTube page now. The first few were very limited, but they’re getting more complex.

The Republican Party is dead. It still exists in name, of course, but it’s nothing but a shell. All that’s left are idiots and stooges and con men of the MAGA party. When Donald Trump is gone — which won’t be long — those populist idiots and pragmatic fools will have no one to follow. Democrats will thrive. They will take more power than ever and they will push the federal government further to the radical far left than ever. When that happens, don’t just blame Trump if you’re a conservative. Blame every person who has claimed to be a conservative and has given up on principles, character and everything else that Republicans once claimed to stand for. As someone who worked as a GOP political consultant for many years, this is disgusting and disturbing to me. Those who have enabled Trump to have almost unchecked power are going to be shocked when they see what they will unleash in the long run. It’s been plain all along what this narcissistic con man is. It’s your fault that you chose to pretend not to see what he really is.

We are ruled by the dumbest and most incompetent people among us — and we have a system which allows stupid and irresponsible people to force the costs of their idiocy onto smarter and wiser people. Can we get away with that? Yes, for quite some time. But we eventually reach a point at which the dumbest of the dumb — who are habitual liars and mentally ill fools — lead us to the disasters and destruction that some of us have seen coming for years. We are approaching that point. And yet most of the idiots around us still wave their rhetorical banners of support for the evil people who are leading us to ruin — and all of them point their fingers at someone else, never noticing that their own enthusiastic support of evil is to blame. When things finally fall apart, blame yourself for your blindness to the evil, not whoever happens to be in power when it happens.

Related Posts