Has anyone tried to change you?

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My family has tried to change me, in small ways.
I don't take much notice though.

Well onto my second marriage on the one thing I have learned is you adapt and do as you are told, not fun but makes for an easier life. Yes they want to change you to meet there expectations of you.
Just glad my parents just learned to deal with me as just being shy and immature.

My dad said that my inability to look him in the eye made me guilty of whatever transgression had happened in my family (5 kids) and the irony is I was the "respecter of authority" and none of the others were, and I could never learn to lie convincingly so I never would go that route in any event.

A current work partner (in my band) says I am aloof, distant, a know-it-all (the irony is I am the keyboard player and have the best memory of the actual chords in songs from the past and it is on me to know them accurately- it's all jazz and pop standards - yet they are frequently wrong and say that I care more about being right than in maintaining harmony {pun intended} to which I re-state for the 1,000th time Socrates and the Hemlock - that they wind up shooting the messenger yet the public will catch on if I yield to the wrong chords and think we're all a bunch of bad musicians if we can't even get the chords right). They also complain that I don't like wasting time socializing during rehearsals - they all want to spend 30 minutes of a 2 1/2 hour meeting on talking BS from their lives and I just want to get my coffee nearby and star playing. I am the social outcast yet this is business, so whenever we are at loggerheads I'm the "irrational" one who is on the verge of a "meltdown", when indeed it is the singer who is on the verge and is projecting. I always stand my ground and we've had 3 breakups (me walking out of the rehearsal when pushed to a decision) but they always beg for me to come back - not sure why I bother casting pearls before swine - they do not frequently let me enter into conversations when they are talking band stuff and if I try to muscle my way in they call me arrogant and self-centered, when in truth they are the ones who are but in denial and projecting their drama onto me.

NTs are good at passing the blame and attributing motivations to others for what they'd be feeling if they were acting that way (faulty logic but in general NTs are right when they make those assumptions because they'd be valid assumptions for other NTs, just not for me).

There are other things, but this is quite enough (or maybe too much).

When we were in our mid teens my best friend started to notice how different I was, and that I didn't share many of her interests like boys, make-up and socializing. She tried for ages to turn me into a clone of her, and when that didn't work we started to drift apart. I didn't want to tell anybody about my AS but I didn't want to lose her as a friend either so when she was moaning at me for something I told her about it and why I would never be like her. She read up on AS and was able to understand why I was the way I was, and she understood that I wasn't just being awkward. She doesn't press me to be someone that I'm not anymore, except when we're going for a night out she still insists on doing my hair, make-up and dressing me in one of her dresses. I quite like that though so I can't complain.

Sometimes I think that my parents want to change my personality.

I think so, but i end up changing them too.

From year 7-9 at school I had an on/off friendship with a girl called Natalie. She always tried to change me and make me more "girly", she kept warning me that I'd never get a boyfriend if I wasn't super-girly. I went her house once when I was 13 and she wanted us to give eachother make overs and she put all this sparkly s**t on me and she put it on like a kid playing with their mum's make-up, I looked stupid. Once I mentioned that I had a skateboard for my 12th birthday and she was horrified and was like "no you can't go on skateboards it's not girly enough!!" I didn't care though. She rang me on the phone loads and kept going on about doing stupid hand stands and crap to bubblegum pop music for the school talent shows, I didn't want to do that at all but still talked about it anyway. It's like she was on a mission to change me into a copy of her. We kept breaking and making friends all the time so I gave up eventually, I can't stand her now she's annoying and a dumb ass with an IQ of about 0.1.

My parents. They still try to change me even today. My mom loves to throw my stuff away, and they both like to bash me.

Why do you think I'm always trying to hide everything from them.

Last edited by persian85033 on 04 Sep 2009, 2:39 pm, edited 1 time in total.

OMG I have had men telling me I would never find a guy if I don't like sex or don't want it and I thought then they're dirty men then who don't care about me. I didn't think that was them trying to change me, they were just telling me.

It often feels as though many people are trying to do that. Perhaps they aren't.

Lots of people have tried to change me.

My mother tried to appeal to my nonexistent empathy to change my behavior. Yeah, right!

My wife tried to change my faults. It turns out that they have nothing to do with my upbringing, but are hard-wired into my brain. She hasn't given up, but her low social intelligence stymies her: "That's what's wrong with you!" It's really more like, "That's something you're not doing well. Let me explain...", but she loses me at her first exclamation. Even after my dx, she thinks I'm defective.

I took a course that tried to make better leaders out of us. I lacked the prerequisite: empathy.

People tried to get me to like rock. Sorry, but it is antithetical to classical music, my first love.

In high school, conformity was the order of the day. Needless to say, I didn't even know how to conform.

One girlfriend "changed" me without trying. She was very attractive and socially intelligent. She pointed out things I was doing wrong and, for once, I had someone whose opinion I could trust. But, then, it was I who consciously made an effort to change.

MY MOTHER!! !

I don't even talk to her anymore. When i was little i would just let my sister get whatever she wanted because she did this ear piercing scream. It was easier for me to just let her have her way. "Stop being a bloody christian martyr. Say what you want."

Then when i would live with her in high school and uni (I was tossed back and forth between my mum's and dad's house because nobody wanted me) "Everyone goes out to pubs and clubs. Be normal." I was going though an interest of beating every level of windows spider solitaire. I would go and sit on the roof of a building in town and drink a bottle of scotch while banging my head on the exhaust chute. I got out of the house though.

When i was 10 she burnt my VHS tape of forrest gump because i would watch it all day when i was at home and recite it when i couldn't watch it. I still watch it over and over. When we drove from one side of australia to the other i recited it non stop.

Many, many times , many people have tried to change many different things about me. The immature interests was always a big one........some people have such a problem with that!........

yeah, mostly my bosses at work. they wanted me to be "more personable" and "show interest in others" and things like that. might as well ask me to fly around like superman. when the desired changes failed to manifest they would just terminate my employment. my salary history is a nice bell curve where, after two masters degrees and 25 years of work, i am now earning - unadjusted - the same salary i was making in 1990. adjusting for 19 years of inflation and well ... you get the picture. kids right out of college are making more than i make. for a few years in the middle i earned a six figure income. sucks to be in IT...sucks to be me.

My sister tried to change me, before I was diagnosed. I was diagnosed when I was 19. My sister moved away when I was 14. Some of the leaders in my church youth group tried to change me. I was more cooperative with the people in my church youth group and they did a decent job teaching me how to handle social situations. I felt like my sister was trying to be my mother. She was making a big deal about my obsessions, and I thought there is nothing wrong with being obsessive if it doesn't cause problems, but I did not have the ability to tell her that my obsessions are no big deal.