What If They Never Change?

After the last time, Tushar cried. He said he had been a terrible husband, that he would see someone, that he could not lose us. For six weeks he was home by seven. He asked about my day and waited for the answer.

Last Thursday I was telling him about my presentation and he was looking at his phone. I can feel it going. We have been married eleven years. Do I wait for the man from those six weeks?

Ritu, the book I want to tell you about was written to answer that question, and the answer is not a comfortable one.

The premise the whole book stands on

The psychologist Ramani Durvasula has spent years treating and studying people who are grandiose, entitled, hungry for admiration and short on empathy. At its extreme, the diagnostic manual calls that cluster narcissistic personality disorder. Her book Should I Stay or Should I Go? rests on one sentence. People like this do not change.

She knows how that sounds from a therapist. Her trade is change. She compares it to a garage hanging out a sign that says it cannot repair your car, and she expects colleagues to be angry. She says it anyway, because a personality is a settled way of responding to the world, and what is settled is also predictable.

What the evidence shows

Durvasula says she has gone looking for a treatment that works over the long term and has not found one. There are a few hopeful case reports. Some studies show better self-reflection or behaviour for weeks or months. What she does not see is change that lasts, or change that reaches the marriage.

Her example is exact. A partner who used to arrive late for dinner and then ignore you may, after therapy, arrive on time and then ignore you. Behaviour can be trained. Empathy, she says, cannot be taught. She adds that the punctuality may be enough for you. Only you can know.

She is fair about the exception. The Harvard psychologist Elsa Ronningstam has written about what she calls corrective life events. Sometimes a success, a disappointment or a steady relationship does shift a person, and it happens through life more than through treatment. Durvasula’s worry is what you will do with that news. You will decide that your love is the corrective event. She thinks it mostly comes down to timing. Timing is luck, and you cannot make luck by trying harder.

Why the six weeks happened

People like Tushar are not arrogant all the time. After a real fright, such as being found out or facing a loss, they can become fragile. They listen. They lean on you. For once you feel useful to him, and close.

Durvasula says these spells are what keep partners in place for years, thinking that he cried and so he must be different. Her verdict is four words long: “Same song, different key.”

I do not think the tears were false. I think they were real and they were temporary. Both can be true.

The story you were raised on

She spends a chapter on Beauty and the Beast. A good woman is patient with a raging man, and her love turns him into a prince. She calls this the rescue fantasy and says it has kept more of these relationships alive than anything else. We have our own versions. How many films have you seen in which the heroine’s patience reforms the hero by the interval?

If love and effort were going to do it, eleven years of yours would have done it by now.

Informed acceptance

None of this makes him a monster. Durvasula is firm that he is a whole person with real feelings, and that you probably love him for reasons. She also does not tell you to leave. Her book is written for both roads.

What she asks for is acceptance with your eyes open. This is the pattern. It is very unlikely to change. Your choices are to stay with different expectations or to go. The one thing that does not work is the thing you are doing now, which is waiting.

So the question is not whether to wait for the man from the six weeks. It is this. What would you do if you knew he was not coming back for good?

Durvasula is clear that her book is not a guide to a violent relationship. If you are being hit, threatened or frightened, your safety comes first. Contact the police or a domestic violence service near you.