I Tried To Fix A Broken Woman, But She Wouldn’t Change

Why it’s not your job to fix or improve a broken or low character woman.

In this video coaching newsletter I discuss an email from a viewer who was dating a woman from a broken home who had a truckload of issues. She didn’t respect her father, displayed toxic behavior and treated him poorly. Now that he’s finally out of that relationship, he’s shocked he put up with it for so long and is wondering why he did so when he knew better.

My comments are in bold italics like this below in the body of his email.

Well, you may have heard me say many, many times over the years that people don’t change who they are, but they may become a better version of themselves. Basically a liar and a cheater, typically, that’s just the way they are, because character is destiny. By their deeds shall you know them.

So this particular email is from a viewer who spent basically most of the last year with, I’m sure, a hot 24-year-old. He was trying to change her and her toxic behavior. Now obviously, he’s finally broken up and realized that he also, as he says, he lost himself in the process, but he’s wondering why did he stay so long when, quite frankly, he knew better.

So again, we tend to project our fantasy of what we want onto the person that we’re with, we’re dating, or we’re trying to date. Since human beings, we make our decisions based upon our emotions, then we use logic and reason to justify those decisions. So when you meet in the beginning and you project your fantasy, it’s disconcerting to find out that they’re not going to actually live up to your fantasy. Then usually by the time the average person finds out about it, their past or in the honeymoon period, the infatuation period, it starts to wear off, and now they’re just many months or years down the road, and they realize that this person is not going to change who they are. They may become a little bit better.

Like in this case, she’s toxic, she yells, she screams, doesn’t respect her own father, didn’t have a good relationship with him. He says he noticed red flags early on. He caught her in lies, yet he dated her anyways. He was thinking, “Man, I can fix her. I think I can save her.” So Captain Save-A-Hoe rides again.

Viewer Email:

Hi Corey,

I’ve been dating a woman (age 24) for about a year and wanted to share my experience and get your perspective. In the beginning, I treated it casually like I do with most women. I was aloof and took it casually without committing. We hooked up on the first date and saw each other about once a week after that. She quickly became very invested, talking about wanting a future together and wanting me to “claim” her as my girlfriend. I liked her because she was affectionate, giving, and loving. However by asking questions and watching her behavior I quickly recognized red flags early on: A terrible relationship with her father, lying to him, running away from home to live with an ex, emotional instability, impulsiveness, and an inability to communicate without screaming, interrupting, and becoming reactive.

Well again, what’s modeled at home is what she learns. How could she be any different? That’s what she was taught. So you come along and you know her barely a year. She’s 24, so she’s almost got two-and-a-half decades of this vibe, this environment, and this behavior. So that’s who she is. Your job is to recognize that, see reality as it is, not better than it is or worse than it is, but as it is. Unfortunately, he chose to see reality as better than it was.

Instead of walking away, I stayed and tried to “fix” her and teach her emotional maturity. My mistake.

Well again, if I teach this stuff and point out, because there’s so many other emails of guys that are in similar situations with women that come from broken homes, and it always ends the same way. Then you come along and you’re like, “No, Corey. I’m different.” Well, you can ignore reality, but you can’t ignore the consequences of ignoring reality.

Over time, the relationship became more toxic. She blamed me for her bad behavior…

Remember, no one will ever do or say anything to you that isn’t a direct reflection of how they feel about themselves in the moment. We all tend to project what’s inside, so it’s just natural that she’s going to basically say it’s your fault.

…Took no accountability, and became increasingly argumentative and emotionally volatile when she didn’t get what she wanted like my commitment and the missing girlfriend title she wanted.

Well, she has to earn that. If she acts like a fuck buddy, friends with benefits, sex playmate, that’s it, because her character is low. You’re not going to commit to somebody that hasn’t earned it.

I’m normally calm and stoic, but I tolerated her behavior by giving into it.

So in other words, you basically allowed her to drive the fun bus. She basically yanked you out of the driver’s seat and you let her take over. So she drove the fun bus right off a cliff.

The more conflict we had, the less intimacy there was between us.

Yeah, you got to be with a woman who makes your dick hard, not your life. When a woman is making your life hard and you stick with her, you’re not going to feel like having sex with her, no matter how hot she is. The more difficult she is, the more argumentative, the more she’s a pain in the ass, the more she’s challenging you and your leadership, you’re just not even going to want to sleep with her. That’s just a fact of life. It’s hard to want to have sex with somebody that you can’t stand and who abuses you.

Eventually she developed a close relationship with a co-worker she claimed was “just a friend,” which led to the breakup.

So I would look, because he never really committed to this girl, it’s like a year-long vetting process, and her behavior never got better and never changed. I believe if I remember right, he never gave into a commitment, which pissed her off, but at least he held that back from her, because you don’t give a commitment to a woman unless she’s earned it.

Again, she’s supposed to be making your dick hard, not your life. When a woman is continually making your life hard, well fuck buddy, friends with benefits, sex, playmate, practice squad material. That’s it. If her attitude doesn’t change, the idea is you’re supposed to replace her as quickly as possible so you don’t put up with this shit. Life is hard enough without having a woman that’s just constantly browbeating you and making your life difficult. It’s just not worth it. The juice is not worth the squeeze, my man, no matter how hot she is, because eventually you get tired of it and you don’t want to fuck her anyway.

During that time she dated him while I dated other women, but we reconnected after meeting up to pick up her clothes in my apartment and ended up sleeping together. The second round of dating was even worse.

“Current events form future trends,” as Gerald Celente of the Trends Research Institute says. So what? What could you expect? She’s not going to change. Why should she? You gave her another chance, you put up with it, and she disrespected you even more because, quite frankly, you should have walked away. She knows you should have walked away. You know you should have walked away, but you didn’t. So the reason why she became more disrespectful is because you were soft and you put up with it. No one will ever do or say anything to you that you don’t invite them to do.

She constantly dangled the co-worker as competition while criticizing me for seeing other women.

Well, she’s clearly trying to manipulate you.

She complained that I didn’t pick her, that I didn’t chase her and didn’t text her everyday like her co-worker did. There were endless arguments until I finally snapped and told her she had serious daddy issues and was only good for sex and nothing serious.

Well I mean, quite frankly, that’s a true statement. So she backed you into a corner and eventually you told her what you really thought, which was the truth. The truth is a nasty pill to swallow, and she didn’t like that pill, but it was the truth, after all.

She exploded and got physical and I left her and went on to date other women. 

My biggest regret is not losing her, but losing myself in the process. I ignored my instincts because I got attached to the loving version of her and kept hoping that version would become permanent.

Well, sounds like she was a bit of a narcissist. You can look that up online and see the behaviors and the patterns. Again, you can ignore reality, but you can’t ignore the consequences of ignoring reality. She was consistently a head case.

Instead of judging her by her behavior, I judged her by her potential…

Again, I teach you not to do that.

…And by the moments when things felt great instead of judging her by her worst behavior. I’d appreciate your perspective on how a normally stoic and experienced guy like myself with many dating options could get into this shit show when all my logic told me to run away, but I stayed to try to fix her and mold her into something she could never be. 


Greetings from Europe,

Bob

Well, you were ignoring reality, number one. You were doing the opposite of what I taught, and have you been paying attention and following me for a period of time, you’ve seen enough of these kinds of emails where it’s like, you just can’t fix this. The reason why you get into a relationship is because she makes things so awesome for you, and she never did that, but I would have ventured to guess that she was probably pretty hot and the sex was really good.

I mean, at the end of the day, most people don’t like being single. They wonder or worry about the next person being worse, so they stay with mediocre or, like in this case, somebody that’s toxic. So you were basically undisciplined because it was easier in your mind to stay and put up with this and hope that it would get better eventually, that you could fix her. Maybe you could use the book to fix her. Again, the book is meant for healthy women, not nut cases like this.

The idea is that when you apply the book, it brings out the nutty behavior really fast so you can disengage, but you chose not to. So typically, if somebody comes from an environment where they have experienced co-dependent type behavior, like they had an addiction issue, maybe a parent had an addiction issue, “Oh, dad’s really sick. He can’t come to the phone right now.” In other words, they’re covering for their parent, their addiction issue or their mental health issue, so they grow up in an environment where they make excuses for the people around them and their bad behavior, and don’t really do anything to fix it or change it.

So again, if that was modeled for you growing up, then that would be normal. You would have a, “I got to save this person” complex, and you would put up with things that you wouldn’t normally put up with under normal circumstances, but because of the family that you were raised in, and you saw that or everybody was trying to cover for the family member that just couldn’t get their shit together, that’s a possibility.

At the end of the day, people do more to avoid pain than they do to gain pleasure. When you have those really good moments and you’re going over there to see her and you’re thinking “This is it. I’m going to dump her,” and you go over and she’s nice and sweet and you’re like, “Well, maybe she’s changing. Maybe it’s getting better. Maybe I can work with this,” but you just have to get burned enough, and you have to experience enough pain to recognize that this is not fixable. It’s not your job to fix her or to save her. As Jim Rohn used to say, “I’ll take care of me for you and you take care of you for me.” She wasn’t doing that, and you were ignoring that.

So again, this is what human beings do. We make our decisions based upon our emotions, and you were just too emotionally wrapped up. In other words, there was more pleasure with your fantasy, your delusional fantasy, of who you wanted her to be, and too much pain associated with breaking things off, “Well, maybe the next girl’s not going to be as hot. I’m not going to click with her as much or have as much fun with,” whatever it happened to be, you associated more pleasure with staying with her than paying, even though she was constantly torching your ass. You were self-bullshitting.

So these are the kinds of things that make you go, “Never again.” So the next time you spot this kind of behavior, you’ll be able to disengage quicker, hopefully. Again, it really comes down to self-control and being disciplined. If you’re following me, watching me do these video newsletters, and dating somebody that’s behaving this way thinking, “No, no, Corey, you don’t understand this. I’m different. I can work with this. I can fix this girl.” It’s like again, it’s not your job to fix her, to save somebody. You want a girl who’s easy going, easy to get along with, and who’s nice to you, that’s essential for an easy and effortless relationship. Again, I’ve written about a few of my relationships that were easy and effortless and some that weren’t in the book.

So at the end of the day, success leaves clues. If you date a woman who’s easygoing, easy to get along with, who’s nice to you, loves her father, loves her mother, comes from a good home, she’s pretty chill, and she makes things good for you, she makes your dick hard, not your life, and she communicates like an adult, she was raised right, that’s something you can work with. You can’t make good wine from bad grapes. Unfortunately, in this case, she had all the red flags, and you chose to give her the benefit of the doubt. You kept doing that until it just got so painful that you left. Quite frankly, she became nastier, like I said earlier the second time around, because you gave her a second chance, and deep down, she knows she didn’t deserve a second chance, and she resented the hell out of you for the fact that you were too soft to walk away. That’s why. That’s why she abused you, because you let her. You allowed her to get away with it.

So again, all I can do is suggest, but if you want to reinvent the wheel or think that you’re going to be different, you’ll be right in one of these emails in the future, but there will be other people and probably the majority of them will watch this and go, “Holy shit, dude, I would not want to put up with that.” Especially woman putting her hands on you, that’s a deal breaker. The most dangerous situations for police officers when they go on calls is domestic violence calls. That’s where they’re most likely to get fucked up or to get shot, get in a gunfight or something like that. So they’re just dicey situations. If you come across somebody who has no self-control because they weren’t raised properly, well if you ignore that and you date them anyways and you get fucked up, well you only have yourself to blame.

So again, part of being a man is having the determination and the discipline just to say, “No, this doesn’t work for me,” and then walk away and never look back. It’s pretty simple.

So, if you’ve got a question or a challenge and you’d like to get my help, go to UnderstandingRelationships.com, click the Products tab at the top of your screen on any page, and book a coaching session with yours truly.

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