Love Life with Matthew Hussey - (Rewind): If You Love Them, But They Won't Change...

Episode Date: September 15, 2023

Should I leave or try to fix this relationship? Not a day goes by that someone doesn’t ask me this question in one form or another.   Why? Because few things in life involve more gut-wrenching second-guessing than deciding when to quit a relationship.   With heightened emotions and conflicting intuitions, it’s no wonder this situation gives our hearts and minds disorienting whiplash . . . all while wasting our most precious resource: time.   Today’s clip could end up saving you months or even years of pain by providing you with the questions you should be asking when making this big decision. ►► FREE download: “9 Texts No Man Can Resist” → http://www.9texts.com ►► FREE download: “5 Compliments to Get Him Addicted to You” → http://www.SayThisToHim.com

All the work is ahead of you if someone says that they would like to change and are willing to do what it takes. If someone isn't even doing that, it's science fiction, with the Love Life Podcast. Thank you so much for being here. I think you're going to enjoy this clip. It's a classic from the archives. Check it out. And don't forget, if you can leave us a review on iTunes, it would mean the world. It helps us spread the word about this podcast. All right, let's get into the episode. I had a really interesting situation where someone said to me, they were talking about how their ex, they felt like their ex was right for them, but they'd just broken up the week before. And, and I was saying to this person, I see no reason why he's going to change.

Like what, what indication has he given you that he's going to change? And my friend said, well, well, I just, you know, we argue about this stuff. I said, but has he actually has he actually acknowledged these things that you have a, he, he's so many of the things that I want and so on. I said, okay, so firstly, there's no, there's not even evidence from his side that he wants to change or is willing to, or is making a plan to change, is committed to change. And change is really, really hard, right? There's that Jacob M. Broad quote, consider how hard it is to change yourself. And you realize how foolish it is to think you can change other people. It's hard to change ourselves. So expecting that somebody else is going to change, especially when they're not even motivated to, especially when they're not even committed to that change is fallacy.

And then I said, look, this person's not showing any signs they want to change. And even right now in the breakup, he's not rushing back to you saying, oh my God, I want to change this. I want to change that. And let's try this again. And by the way, in that case, you'd still have reason to be suspicious because you haven't seen the change yet. It's not proven. This might just be a panic because he thinks he's losing you and he's now saying all the right things to get you back. Now you might give him another chance, but it doesn't mean that he's actually going to change. It just means you're giving him another chance that you feel like, okay, there's a certain

level of certainty in his voice. There's a certain level of, of commitment in the plan that he's given me about how he's going to change or what, how, you know, how he's going to address these things in the relationship. There's enough there for me to say, I'll give this a shot. And then I'm going to watch carefully to see if that's backed up by real action and real change. But he's not doing that. And it was so funny because she said to me, so Matt, like in situations in your past where, you know, there's someone you really wanted to be with, but you broke up.

If they came running back to you and saying, like, I really want this, you wouldn't be back with them and what here's what here's what's really telling i said to her but he's not even doing that you're literally giving me a hypothetical right now as a way to con yourself into going back to this person by you for the hypothetical you've had to say this person is rushing back to you wanting you back he's not even doing that and you're coming up with this hypothetical so it's it's indicative of how people con themselves how people create a reality in their mind that's not actually happening in real life

as a way to justify giving someone more time and energy. Right, yeah. I spoke to someone recently who was doing a similar thing and talking about a guy who clearly had no intentions of changing at all. And she was saying like, well, what should I say to him then to, you know, get us back together? And, you know, we talked it through and it was clear, like she was doing all the work here. And this guy had shown no intention that he even thought

these behaviors were a problem, but it was her saying, well, I said, these were a problem. So what do we do? You know, what do I do now to uh keep him i want people to consider especially anyone who's been through therapy or intensive coaching or has been on our retreat program i want anyone to consider when you've been through a process like that just how much it took on your part to actually change even though you'd committed to a process even though you'd paid money down for a process that it was still it's required you to really show up and give your all to that process in order for it to work so then you imagine the mountain that you have to climb for someone to who you're with to not be showing that they that they firstly they even have a deeper awareness of what's going wrong, of what's bothering you, a true understanding, and then not saying, I'm sorry, and I want to change, and here's what I'm going to do to change. And then following that plan.

If you're in the stage of just arguing with someone about something that's wrong and none of those things have happened yet, all your work is ahead of you. In fact, all the work is ahead of you if someone says that they would like to change and are willing to do what it takes. Still, the work is ahead of you. If someone isn't even doing that, it's science fiction, the idea that they're going to change. That is a made up story so that you can continue to hold on to something that is terrifying to lose for whatever reason, whether you're afraid of being alone, whether you've convinced yourself you'll never find anybody else, or more specifically, you've convinced yourself you'll never find anybody else with these qualities, or you feel like you can't handle the pain of losing this person. And that's one thing we do, right? We think the qualities are amazing. And that's the real truth

is people think there's enough good things in this person. And then they try and sell themselves on the toxic behavior or the behavior that they know they hate. They try and keep reselling themselves. Or maybe that's all right. Maybe I'm being too much or maybe it's okay because they think they're smart. They have this. I'm attracted to them. I have a good relationship with their friends and you know it adds up and it's like oh this is too painful to walk away with maybe i can just live with this uh really bad thing that doesn't meet my needs see i'm i have come to believe that we our emotions get very heavily involved in the people close to us, whether it's the person we're dating or in love with,

whether it's our siblings, our parents, our best friend, even our boss. We, and even sometimes the people we employ, there are things that we may deeply want to change and may even get to the point of saying, I need to change this or I can't have a relationship with this person. But there gets to be a point in life

where we've communicated calmly and in a neutral way what it is we would like to change about the dynamic where we have given many opportunities for that change to happen and space for that change to happen and where we're we have it confirmed over and over and over again that this change just appears to be too big of a shift for this person either the shift never happens at all or it it's never sustainable it's a five minute shift and then they always end up snapping back into their default position and behavior. And when that happens, we have hard decisions to make. We can either say, I have to remove this person from my life or from the level of proximity to me at the very least that is making me this unhappy. You know, maybe they can't be in my inner circle. Maybe they can

stay in my outer circle and I can choose to have them as someone who's in my life, but who I don't rely on or who I don't have such an intimate connection with, but they can't stay where they are now. Or you can say, I am going to make peace with this part of this person because I am continuing to complain about something that I knew about, I have known about for quite some time and is not changing and I'm still here which means the the kind of the the the point of the problem has shifted over from them to me that's always a that's the truth of any relationship there's a point at which the source of the problem actually shut it jumps it transfers from that person to us because that person is who they've been. Yeah, that's right. That should no longer surprise us.

They are who they've been. We're now the person who's continuing to complain about old information. And we have to then look at ourselves and say, what's going on with me? That I either can't leave this person and can't seem to shift my, or can't stay with this person and shift my expectation of them? Because if we stay with someone who won't change and we're unwilling to shift our expectation, then we become the reason we're complaining. We still speculate on the expectation of what they can be. Yeah, yeah. And that's when we have to look at ourselves and say,

look, I've only got three options in life. It's either that they change to be more of what I need, or I leave, or I stay, and I revise my expectations of this relationship and this person. All right, everyone, that's it for today. But before you go, I have news. Our next live retreat is coming up in October from the 9th to the 15th. We're going to be spending six days together diving deep on your biggest life challenges, whether they're to do with your confidence, your relationships, or just past trauma that you know is still getting in the way

of you creating the life you want or experiencing the kind of happiness and peace you want to experience. To apply, go to mhretreat.com. And it is my sincerest hope that you and I get to spend those six days together this October. Thanks for listening as always. And I'll speak to you in the next episode of Love Life.