Essays on loving someone who will not change
What would you do if you knew they would never change?
Some partners are charming in public and cold at home, and you have spent years waiting for the warm one to stay. These essays are about seeing the pattern clearly and then deciding, without judgement, whether to stay or to go.
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Beginnings · The Pattern
What Did You See in the First Three Months?
He sent the dal back twice and then said you had beautiful eyes. On the signs that were there from the start.
Read the essay · 3 minBeginnings
Is It Chemistry, or Is It Just Familiar?
With the kind man you felt nothing. With the other one you feel everything. On what that feeling may be made of.
Read the essay · 3 minHope · Leaving
Why Is It So Hard to Walk Away From a Bad Bet?
Two perfect days in Coonoor, twice a year. On slot machines, sunk costs and the weight of hope.
Read the essay · 3 minSelf-Doubt · Staying
Why Is It Never Enough?
A second job, a new flat, no more Sunday cricket. Then she mentions the neighbours’ terrace.
Read the essay · 4 minSelf-Doubt
Are You Losing Your Mind?
You used to run a team of forty. Now you write down what you said, with the date. On being told it never happened.
Read the essay · 4 minStaying
How Do You Stay Without Disappearing?
Every article says pack a bag, and you are not going to. A rule for good news, bad news and the weather.
Read the essay · 4 minLeaving
What Happens When You Say You Are Going?
On Sunday she told him. By Wednesday her cousins had heard his version. On Friday the lilies came.
Read the essay · 4 minLeaving · Afterwards
Will They Ever Say Sorry?
Two years on, he has remarried and never apologised. On the apology that is not coming, and some baboons in Kenya.
Read the essay · 3 minAfterwards
How Do You Not Do This Again?
A second date, a charming man, and a quiet thought: I know this. On choosing differently without closing up.
Read the essay · 3 minAbout
You cannot change another person. You can stop waiting, and decide from there.
Plain Sight is a collection of essays for people living with a partner who is grandiose, entitled and short on empathy, and for people recovering from one. Each essay ends with questions to sit with and one small thing to try.
The ideas come from Should I Stay or Should I Go? Surviving a Relationship with a Narcissist (2015) by the psychologist Ramani Durvasula. She uses the word narcissist throughout. Nothing here diagnoses anyone. She says herself that nobody can diagnose a person they have not met, and that what counts is how the relationship leaves you feeling.
Her central claim, that such partners do not change, is her clinical opinion, and she expects it to be disputed in her own field. These essays present it as hers. She does not tell readers to leave, and neither do they.
The letters and stories that open each essay are composites. Names and details are invented. The essays do not replace counselling or legal advice. If you are being hit, threatened or frightened, that needs a different and faster response: contact the police or a domestic violence service near you.