#231: Why You Can't Love Someone Into Changing
One of the most painful stories we can get stuck in after a relationship ends is this one:
“If they really loved me, they would have changed.”
“If I were better, more lovable, more patient… they would have done the work.”
This episode was prompted by a question I received on Instagram from someone who couldn’t stop replaying that exact thought about their ex. And if you’ve ever found yourself spiralling around why wouldn’t they change for me?, you’re far from alone.
It’s a deeply convincing story — but it’s also one that quietly keeps us stuck in self-blame, unworthiness, and patterns of self-abandonment.
Let’s unpack what’s really going on beneath it.
The Saviour Complex at the Core
At its heart, this pattern is rooted in unworthiness.
When we don’t feel we have inherent value — when we believe our worth needs to be earned, proven, or demonstrated — relationships can start to feel conditional and unstable. From that place, we often find ourselves drawn to partners who mirror those internal beliefs back to us.
That can look like:
Emotional unavailability
Inconsistency or unpredictability
Struggles with addiction or untreated trauma
People who “have a lot going on” and can’t fully show up
And for someone with anxious attachment or codependent tendencies, these dynamics can feel strangely familiar — even compelling.
When Caretaking Becomes Identity
If you grew up in an environment marked by emotional instability, inconsistency, or addiction, you likely developed an extraordinary ability to read other people’s emotional states.
You became:
Highly attuned
Deeply empathetic
Skilled at anticipating needs
Good at holding space, soothing, accommodating
These are beautiful qualities. They are not flaws.
But without boundaries, they can morph into a saviour complex — the unconscious belief that rescuing someone is how you become lovable.
Instead of seeing someone’s struggles as a potential limitation to a healthy relationship, you might think:
“That’s not a problem for me. I can handle that.”
“I’ll love them through it.”
“I see their pain in a way no one else does.”
And somewhere underneath that is the quieter belief:
“Someone who’s fully secure wouldn’t choose me — so I have to make myself needed.”
Compassion vs. Self-Abandonment
There’s an important distinction here.
Compassion says:
“I can see your pain, and it makes sense.”
Self-abandonment says:
“Your healing is now my responsibility.”
When a relationship becomes centred around rescuing someone, the balance disappears. One person becomes the “high-needs” partner, and the other adapts by becoming “low-needs.”
You might find yourself thinking:
I won’t bring this up — I don’t want to upset them.
I’ll just accommodate this — they’re struggling.
If they’re okay, then I’m okay.
And when they pull away, shut down, relapse, or destabilise, you go into overdrive — trying to fix, rescue, and restore the connection.
At that point, your sense of worth starts rising and falling based on how they are doing.
That’s not love. That’s enmeshment.
The Impossible Standard You’re Holding Yourself To
Here’s the hard truth that can be incredibly freeing once it lands:
People don’t change because someone loves them enough.
They change when they’re ready — when their capacity and timing align.
Yes, healthy relationships can support growth. But deep changes — healing trauma, addressing addiction, committing to emotional work — are driven by someone’s internal readiness, not by how perfect or patient or loving their partner is.
Holding yourself responsible for someone else’s healing sets an impossible standard:
If I could just be better, they would change.
That belief quietly reinforces unworthiness and keeps you stuck trying to earn love instead of receiving it.
And if you’ve ever worried:
“What if they change for the next person?”
“What if I leave and then they finally do the work?”
That, too, is not a reflection of your value. It’s about their timing — not your worth.
Why This Pattern Feels So Sticky
For many people with anxious attachment, rescuing becomes an unconscious insurance policy against abandonment.
If you don’t believe someone would choose you freely, making yourself needed can feel safer than trusting you’re enough as you are.
But the cost is high:
Chronic self-abandonment
Emotional exhaustion
One-sided relationships
A sense of never quite being chosen
And ultimately, it prevents the kind of reciprocal, grounded connection you actually want.
The Way Out
This pattern doesn’t shift through more effort or more generosity.
It shifts through:
Building genuine self-worth
Learning to tolerate being chosen — not needed
Letting go of relationships as “projects”
Expecting reciprocity, responsibility, and balance
When your worth no longer depends on rescuing, you stop trying to prove yourself through suffering. You start meeting people on level ground — where care flows both ways.
And that’s where secure love actually lives.
If you notice this saviour pattern in yourself, let it be information — not a judgment. It developed for a reason. But it doesn’t have to run the show anymore.
Take a breath.
Soften your shoulders.
And remember: you don’t need to save anyone to be worthy of love.
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[00:00:30]:
Hey everybody, welcome back to another episode of On Attachment. In today's episode, we are talking about the saviour complex and the trap of why wouldn't they change for me. So this episode was prompted by a question I got a couple of weeks ago on Instagram from someone in my storeys saying, I can't get over telling myself that my ex would have changed for me if I were different, better, more lovable, whatever, any of those stories. I'm sure that many of you listening have experienced that in one form or another. This storey of why wouldn't they change for me? If they loved me, they would have changed. If they cared, they would have changed. If it really mattered to them, they would have changed. They would have done the work.
[00:01:18]:
And it can be such a convincing storey that we can tell ourselves. But as we're going to talk about today, there's a lot more in that than meets the eye, and it tends to be rooted in our own sense of unworthiness and in adaptive patterns that we've probably had in place for a long time around needing to caretake others and this sense of like, if I can rescue them or keep them stable or make them happy, then I will have demonstrated my worth and I'll know that I am good and lovable. So there's a lot to it. And we're going to talk about why this pattern might show up for you, what some of the underlying pieces are that often give rise to this pattern, what it costs you to tell yourself this storey and to enact this pattern of trying to rescue people in your relationships, and some hard truths around the reality, which is that people change when they're ready to change, that it's so much more about timing and capacity than it is about how much someone loves you or how much you matter to them. So that's what we're going to be talking about today. Before we get into today's episode, just a note that if what we speak about today resonates with you, I really encourage you to cheque out my free training on how to heal anxious attachment and finally feel secure in life and love. It is a really helpful one. And certainly if what I speak about today resonates, then I'm sure the free training will as well, because I share a lot about the why of those patterns alongside what it takes to really shift them and why the things you've been trying may not have worked, might have been kind of skimming the surface.
[00:03:00]:
So So there's lots in it and it's really worth checking out if you're someone who struggles with anxious attachment and is looking to understand what it really takes to shift those patterns. So you can register for that free training via my website, or I'll also put the link in the show notes underneath this episode. Okay, so let's get into talking about this trap of why wouldn't they change for me? So at its core, I see this as an unworthiness. Problem. When we feel like we do not have inherent value, when we feel like our worth is something to be proven and demonstrated, when we feel like relationships are inherently conditional and kind of unstable and unreliable and unpredictable, that can lead us to be drawn to people who mirror that back to us. And as I've spoken about many times before, we can unconsciously seek out partners who have not you only, know, emotional unavailability in the sense of not really being able to show up to the relationship, not knowing what they want, not being able to commit. But also people who have, you know, significant burdens, whether that's past trauma, whether that's a struggle with addiction of some form. All of these things can kind of register in our system in a way that feels familiar.
[00:04:21]:
And certainly if you've had any of that in your family system, particularly patterns around addiction, this saviour complex, this sense of getting someone to change for you, can feel really alluring. And that makes a lot of sense because when we have that in our background, whether it's addiction or whether it's just inconsistency, unpredictability, unreliability, then we typically develop a really, really heightened sense of attunement to other people's emotional states. We get really good at perceiving their pain and tending to it, understanding it, working around it. Accommodating it, being really compassionate, holding space, all of those things, which don't get me wrong, are beautiful qualities. It's not to say that that's some sort of pathology that we need to make wrong. But we do need to be really mindful of the shadow side of that and recognise that while it may have developed in one environment, continuing to lean on that as a strategy can lead us into places that we maybe don't want to go. But particularly for folks with anxious attachment patterns and codependency and all of those other dynamics in their relationship history and as part of what they keep coming up against, I think there can really be this strong pull to people who have some sort of ongoing darkness, who have their demons, who are really struggling in some way. Whereas another person might see that and go, oh, I don't know that this person has the capacity to be in the kind of relationship I want.
[00:05:57]:
The anxiously attached person or the person person who has this saviour complex might go, that's no barrier for me. Like, I will redeem them with my love. And whether you say that consciously or whether it's just this kind of underneath the surface drive that you have, we tend to step towards that rather than maybe stepping back from it. And we continue to invest. We don't see that as a deterrent. We actually maybe see it as a drawcard because We have developed this skill set around seeing people's pain and attuning to that pain and responding to that pain and making them feel seen. And we maybe tell ourselves, if we otherwise feel unworthy or unlovable, that's a major value add. That's how I can make myself lovable and valuable to someone is by seeing their pain in a way that no one else does and by really making them feel seen and safe.
[00:06:52]:
Then they'll love me. They'll really see me as special. And if you notice some of that, that's a really good sign that it's coming from unworthiness because it is coming from this base assumption of I don't have that much to offer unless I'm rescuing someone. You know, someone who's standing on their own two feet isn't going to choose me. So I have to kind of make myself be needed rather than trust someone would choose me from their own volition. So there's a lot in that, as you can hear. And in the last few minutes of me talking, maybe you're noticing some of that in yourself. And if that's true, rest assured, I have that within me as well, very much so.
[00:07:31]:
And certainly went down that rabbit hole in the past. And it's a really tempting one when we've learned to associate our value with our ability to rescue people. You know, I even look back at relationships like in my teens, not even proper relationships, and I see that pattern so clearly. The pursuit of people who were kind of dark and mysterious rather than the people who were just secure and available. I think I always perceived that I would be able to bring value there in a way that others couldn't, and that allowed me to feel more confident than I otherwise would. So it can run really deep, and we can maybe trace that into lots of different relationship dynamics along the way. And as I said, I do think that it's that combination of unworthiness and, you know, being very empathetic, being very attuned to other people's emotional states and having a really good read on other people's pain and trauma and trusting in our ability to understand them and make them feel seen and how that feeds back to our perception of our own value. So I want to move now to talking about the distinction here between compassion on the one hand and codependency and self-abandonment.
[00:08:48]:
So While, as I've said, I don't think that this is bad, it's not something that we need to cut off within ourselves or really keep a lid on, we do need to have boundaries around it. And the point at which we move from compassion being, I can see your pain and that makes sense, into I am going to make redeeming your pain or rescuing you from your pain my sole purpose and guiding force in this relationship, like, that is a very, very different picture. And it's one that is almost always going to come with some degree of self-abandonment. Because I think in that latter scenario, the whole relationship becomes about the person who has the pain, who has the burdens, who has the struggles, who has the trauma, who has the addiction. They tend to be on this pedestal, and you start orbiting around them. And you start accommodating them because they are, you know, the high needs person. And so in order to find balance, you become the low needs person and you tend to put away all of your concerns or boundaries or whatever. And it's just this sense of like, I'll take care of you.
[00:10:00]:
I don't want to trigger you. I don't want to upset you. I don't want to destabilise you. If you are happy and good and we are connected, then I'm not going to do anything that could jeopardise that in any way. And if we aren't, if you are pulling away for whatever reason, or if you are unstable in some way, or if you are withdrawn or whatever, then I go into my rescuing mode and I roll my sleeves up and I make it my job to bring you back and bring us back, right? So there's a whole lot of over-functioning there. And again, while there is a selfless, loving, caring part to that, potentially, if there's this person that you do really care about and you see that they are struggling and you want to help them, there is also a selfish part that I only feel safe when we are connected, or I only feel worthy when you are doing okay because I've made it my responsibility to keep you stable, right? To kind of keep things in balance. And so because I've put myself in that self-appointed role of coach or therapist with respect to you, then I see it as a direct reflection on me how you're doing and whether you're happy and thriving and feeling safe, or if you're, you know, depressed and withdrawn and self-sabotaging, then I see it as a personal failing and I make it my mission even more so to, to make things right. So we can see how what might start as empathy and attunement very quickly devolves into imbalanced patterns of self-abandonment and codependency, the sense of enmeshment where I'm taking responsibility responsibility for you and your choices and your emotions.
[00:11:46]:
And to the extent that that doesn't go the way I would like it to, then I feel like I am responsible for that and I failed in some way. And my sense of worth and value kind of rises and falls based on what you're doing or not doing. So that's a really fraught way of being in relationships. It's not healthy, it's not sustainable, and it really costs us so much. And it sort of brings me to the crux of all of this, which is telling yourself this storey of like, if I can just be lovable enough, if I can just be the perfect partner, if I can just make you feel so safe and seen, then you will be healed, or you will do the work, or you will make changes, or you'll stop doing this thing or start doing that thing. You'll start going to therapy, you'll stop engaging in patterns of addiction or whatever. The idea that your capacity to make changes— when we're talking about changes of that magnitude and that gravity, things relating to someone's like deep emotional wounds, that they're going to make those changes based on how good we are as a partner. That is an impossible standard to hold yourself to.
[00:12:54]:
And of course, like, secure relationships can be beautiful containers for growth and healing. And whether someone does that work has very little to do with how great of a partner you are and is overwhelmingly a function of timing, of capacity. Yeah, maybe someone might be inspired by a partner to make changes, but only because they're at a point in their life and they've been through enough experiences where they're ready to do that. It's not just the partner, it's so much of their inner world that's saying like, enough is enough, I'm not going to keep self-sabotaging in this way. And you know, as a side note, I think it's important to recognise that in the context of often people will say like, either I'm scared to leave a relationship after doing all this work because what if they change for the next person? Or if that does actually happen and you've ended a relationship and then it seems like they are changing for another the person, again, that's not a function of like your value relative to someone else's. It's a function of this person's capacity and timing and, you know, where they're at in their lives and the choices that they're going to make. That's not about you and your value. And the fact that you're making it about you and your value says so much more about your inner relationship and your patterns of self-devaluation than it does about the other person.
[00:14:15]:
And that's where your work really has to start. Because once you build self-worth, build genuine self-esteem, and draw boundaries around these codependent patterns of rescuing, saving, that inevitably are rooted in self-devaluation, that's how you ultimately shift away from these patterns. Because you stop seeing relationships and people as projects that allow you to prove your worth, and you actually come to relationships on a level footing and expect reciprocity and balance and individual responsibility alongside mutual support. But it's not this really skewed dynamic where you're the carer to a person in need and you just keep telling yourself that your endless generosity of flexibility and accommodation is going to be the thing that suddenly makes them become somewhat different or do the work or change their patterns or whatever it may be. So I know that that's a lot and there's a lot in it. This is something that I do go into more in my Healing Anxious Attachment course because It really is just such a deep pattern for so many people with anxious attachment. And it does really tie into a lot of those core wounds, not only around unworthiness, but also abandonment. I think sometimes when we make ourselves needed by someone, we are unconsciously creating an insurance policy against them leaving us.
[00:15:44]:
Again, if we don't feel like someone would choose us, all else being equal, sometimes we'll try and make ourselves be needed so that they can't leave. So there's a in it. I hope that today's conversation has given you at least something to think about and notice if that's a pattern you've historically had. If you do gravitate towards those sorts of dynamics and notice that rescuing streak within you, it is something to be mindful of. And as with so many things, I do think a lot of the work is in building our sense of self-worth so that we're not acting out all of these different scenarios as a way to prove something or demonstrate our value and protect against abandonment, which I think is a lot of what's at play here. Okay, going to leave it there, guys. I really hope that that's been helpful, and I look forward to seeing you. Close your eyes, exhale, feel your body relax, and let go of whatever you're carrying today.
Keywords from Podcast Episode
saviour complex, anxious attachment, unworthiness, relationship patterns, codependency, self-abandonment, rescuing in relationships, emotional unavailability, trauma, addiction, caretaking, boundaries, self-worth, self-esteem, insecurity, abandonment issues, compassion, timing in change, capacity to change, partner accommodation, self-devaluation, enmeshment, over-functioning, emotional attunement, healing relationships, therapy, personal growth, imbalance in relationships, conditional love, creating value in relationships