LSI baiting

[Olimpia]

Yes. A lot of good came from those relationships. In fact, some of the best things in my life came from those relationships.
@Cassandra, since you have Ni, I'm sure you are aware of how changing one thing in your life can change everything else. Maybe for the worse.

This is actually why I don't try to change people. I just wait for them to figure it out on their own. (If I get impatient, I might drop some hints that there is an area they might want to look at.)
There were many times during my marriage when I found myself wishing that my SLI ex would be a bit different in some small way, but I never mentioned that to her, because that thought was closely followed by the knowledge that changing one small thing for the better might result in a much larger change somewhere else for the worse.

I see.

I expect most people not to change much at their core. When there is someone who I am not into now, I'll let it be. There are people who are in love with the potential idea of a person: "If only... then..." They'll date them, hoping they'd change, but it never happens. I am not like that. I do gauge how someone will develop in the future and whether I'd be on board with that or not – whether it would be an improvement to them as a person and our potential relationship. However, if I did not like them enough already as they are in this moment, I would not go for it. I find it rather detrimental to love someone only for what you think they should or could be.

Having said that, supposedly it can be very beneficial if people see the best in each other. To some extent, this is a positive illusion, but one that is not grounded on wanting to change someone or feeling like they'd only be good enough if they were different.

So yeah, I never attempt to change anyone. Most people won't change at their core, and their bad habits can only be changed when they want them to change. Once a guy who was interested in me figured out I wouldn't date someone who was addicted to smoking cigarettes or drinking, so he tried his best to limit his consumption of those things. I did not tell him to do that, he did that on his own accord. I knew it would not make much of a difference, that it wouldn't last, and I was not interested in him in that way anyway. I am rather sure he tried giving it all up mainly because of me; he tried to "change for me". Needless to say, it didn't work out. He eventually started drinking and smoking again, and that was that.

Personally, I am much more tempted to change myself to appease another person. But it is really exhausting. I cannot keep it up for too long. And on some level, it is psychologically painful. It is almost like selling your soul to the devil, hoping he'd love you for doing so. But at the end, your soul is gone and the devil values you even less than before because you entirely gave yourself up for him, lacking in self-worth and -respect.

[Shytan]

Personally, I am much more tempted to change myself to appease another person. But it is really exhausting. I cannot keep it up for too long. And on some level, it is psychologically painful. It is almost like selling your soul to the devil, hoping he'd love you for doing so. But at the end, your soul is gone and the devil values you even less than before because you entirely gave yourself up for him, lacking in self-worth and -respect.

This sounds about right. What scares me about myself, though, is that my tendency to try and change myself to merge with someone actually leads to a permanent transformation. My core, as you said, remains the same but traits that I developed stay incorporated within me. I become a product of my core as well as what the people I loved expected from me. However, I only change myself to what I find pleasant in their expectations, I cannot and will not force myself into something that I do not want to be, If that even makes sense.