the pros and cons of trying to change someone

Cathy Josefowitz

If you’ve ever changed someone accidentally or on purpose, you know that it’s very much possible for people to change, sometimes in dramatic ways. If you’ve ever set out to change someone, you know that it’s unlikely to work, and likely to be a huge waste of time.

If the question is “Is it okay to want to change someone?” my answer would be, Of course. We are allowed to want people to be different. If the question is, “Is it prudent to try to change someone?” I would say, Definitely not.

Your life will probably be better, and definitely be more straightforward, if you take people exactly as they are. This is classic dating advice for a reason. It is good practice to note somebody’s flaws as they are revealed to you and presume that each flaw will remain intact until the day the person dies. This is because people are stubborn. If you’ve ever tried to convince a friend to breakup with a bad girlfriend or boyfriend, you know exactly what I mean. Someone can tell you of their own accord they want to make a change, suffer from their equilibrium, and then proceed to not make a change for five years. Or twenty-five years, even.

Unfortunately, some of us suffer from a condition—the condition of wanting to change other people. This is a incurable condition that many of us contract from our parents. It’s not all downside—this is why people become therapists and self-help writers and teachers. Most of my favorite people in the world suffer from it. I often hear this discussed in the language of codependence (hi Ben!) and the two are certainly intertwined, but I don’t think it’s just about that. We all want people to change, even if we don’t need them to—who doesn’t want their loved ones to make better choices? But whether or not it’s healthy often depends on the degree of investment.

(By the way, in this post I’m presuming that we’re talking about people who at least claim to want to change. I do not endorse trying to change someone who explicitly wants to stay the way they are. Don’t do that!)

Here’s how it plays out: you meet someone who’s great, really great, but they just have this one Big Problem. I mean, maybe it’s not even a Big Problem, just Medium-Sized. And it’s so, so obvious to you that they will be so much better off if they fix it. They just need to stop [yearning for their dad’s approval/chasing after unavailable women/valuing external validation over their internal feelings/working a job they hate and find something they’re actually passionate about/dating people who like the wrong things about them]. And you just… you get invested. It’s not like you’re really even trying to do something, you just start caring. And you try to give them some (solicited!!) advice, try to help them think things through. Sometimes they make a change pretty quickly. Most of the time, nothing happens for years.

Pros of this:

• sometimes people really do change. And then they’ll say, you were right all along. It’s very satisfying

• most people want to talk about things a lot before they act. You are providing value by being someone they can discuss things with

• helping people is personally gratifying. You are satisfying your urge to be a Good Helpful Person

• you will become more observant if you do this a lot. Your ability to recognize patterns of behavior will improve

Cons of this:

• often people don’t change. That can be frustrating if you’ve sunk an incredible amount of time and effort into trying to help them get better

• sometimes people change, but in a way that’s inconvenient to you. A classic example in our culture is the guy who’s noncommittal in one relationship, and then gets married six months later. Or the ex who proves five years later that they can be stable and supportive and loving… just not with you. It’s important to be honest with yourself about what your motivations are and what outcome you’ll actually be satisfied with

• sometimes people resent you for wanting or needing them to change

• you are very possibly focusing on someone else’s problems as a way to avoid taking responsibility for your own

• people don’t know what’s on the other side of a change. Sometimes trying to revamp your life can have bad consequences. You might think you’re helping someone, but you really never know for sure. Proceed with caution

The last point here is important. Do you have some level of detachment from other people’s problems? It’s okay to care a lot, but it become a problem when you start conflating someone else’s choices with your own.

I think the classic Bad example of trying to change someone is when a girl has a terrible boyfriend and she’s trying to fix him, ruining her own peace over his indifference or bad choices. Whenever someone is in this situation I always want to refer to them to this immortal Ask Polly column:

I was depressed. I thought love would give me the boost I needed to figure everything else out. But when I had love, what did I do? As far as I can tell from this journal, I mostly pouted in the bedroom while my boyfriend got high and watched TV with his friends in the living room.

When you’re depressed and needy, love doesn’t save you; it buries you. Unless you happen upon someone who understands you and loves parsing your emotional landscape (guys like that do exist!), you’re not going to get what you need.

When you’re specifically trying to change someone else so that you can get something you need, everything gets dicier. You’re no longer being altruistic or supportive, you’re trying to control someone else because you think you know what’s best for them. And people generally do not like to be controlled. Being too fixated on helping another person can literally change you for the worse—instead of them becoming more like you, you might become more like them.

One consideration is whether you yourself are acting like a person someone else would want to be like. Are you modeling sane judgment and secure attachment and great relationships? Or are you behaving like someone who’s obsessed with changing another person because you’re bored or dissatisfied with your own life?

When I think about the people who’ve been close to me over the last 10 years, both friends and former partners, it’s clear that they’ve all changed a lot. They grew up, and so did I. But we didn’t all change at the same time or in the same way. Just because someone can or will change doesn’t mean they can or will change with you. That’s a sad thought but it’s also freeing. You can do your best, both for yourself and for the other person, and the rest happens in its own time.

Housekeeping: if you’re interested in the kinds of conversations we have on this Substack, I’m doing a workshop on conflict and friendship in SF on May 18th. ​We will explore our personal relationship with conflict, experiment with initiating and receiving conversations that invoke conflict, and learn together about how conflict brings us towards better relationships. I would love it if you came!