This Is What Fixing Someone Really Means Because It’s More Than Just Trying To Change Them

The truth is I keep going back and forth about whether or not you could truly ‘fix’ another person. I’m a firm believer that love fixes people and you could fix people too if they’re willing to give you a chance but then I realized that it seldom works because you end up hurting yourself and then you have to start fixing yourself all over again.

But lately, I feel like we’ve been using the term ‘fix’ in all the wrong ways. Lately, fixing people feels so right. 

Because fixing someone is not rescuing them or changing them or saving their lives, it’s simply helping them love themselves more, helping them see the beauty they’ve been missing or hiding, helping them realize that it’s okay to show the parts of themselves that they’re not proud of to us and it will not change the way we feel about them or change our minds.

Fixing someone means unbreaking their heart piece by piece, when you give them a new kind of love they’re not used to, when you send them good morning and good night texts when they were used to having their texts ignored. When you hang out with them and ask them all the questions they’ve always wanted to answer, when you let them speak and you listen because you care, because you’re curious, because you want to understand the beautiful yet complex human being in front of you.

Fixing someone means staying when they’re used to people leaving. It means trying to understand them when they got used to being misunderstood and disconnected. It means being there for them when no one else wants to be. It means choosing them over and over again.

Fixing someone means encouraging them to love themselves a little bit more, when you notice the little quirks and find them endearing, when you see them on their bad days and still feel like spending all your time with them, when you listen to their difficult childhood or painful stories and you don’t judge them or think any less of them and when you let them know that they don’t have to be a certain way to impress you or win your love.

Fixing someone means making them feel like a winner even when they’re completely lost. It means holding their hand as you walk with them through their journey without asking them to run faster or lead the way. Fixing someone means loving them through all the transitions, the confusion, the tears, the pain and the loneliness that come with trying to fix themselves.

Fixing someone doesn’t mean you’re trying to change them, it means you’re trying to bring out the best in them because it’s already there. It’s who they are. They just need an extra push. Fixing someone means pushing them to become who they really are instead of asking them to become someone they’re not. Fixing someone means healing them by loving them even when they feel incomplete.

Rania Naim is a poet and author of the new book All The Words I Should Have Said, available here.