Fixer, Project, Partner
Three roles people play in relationships, and why only the third one works.
- Difficulty
- Moderate
- Time to result
- ~months to results
- Steps
- 4
- Confidence
- 93%
Shetty identifies three roles people occupy in relationships. The fixer looks for someone to repair. The project wants to be repaired by someone else. The supporter, or true equal, adds value to the other person, occasionally takes on either of the other roles, but fundamentally treats the relationship as something worked on together. The diagnostic underneath it is brutal: if you are trying to change someone, you do not love them, you love their potential — a version of them you have imagined. Reach for this when you catch yourself waiting for a partner to become who you know they could be.
Origin
Written into '8 Rules of Love' and drawn from Shetty's couples coaching, where he repeatedly encountered partners trying to hand each other a book or a habit as a fix.
Core principles
- 01People do not change for people, they change for themselves.
- 02Loving someone's potential is not loving them.
- 03Whoever you date, you will want to change, because you assume your values are universal.
- 04Relationships are about respecting other people's values, not converting them to yours.
- 05The goal is a true equal, not a rescuer and a rescued.
How to run it
- 1
Identify which role you are playing
Work out whether you are looking for someone to fix, waiting to be fixed, or genuinely operating as a partner. Shetty's tell for the fixer role is a running mental list of what your partner should change.
Pro tip Notice the flattery in the fixer role — Shetty says we want to believe we are better, greater human beings because we see something better for someone.
Watch out Both the fixer and project roles feel like love from the inside, which is why they persist.
- 2
Stop trying to change them
Shetty's first and bluntest instruction: stop trying to change anyone. People do not change for you, they change for themselves, and if they do not want to change, they are not changing. If you want to change your partner, they are probably not the right person for you.
Pro tip Check whether the impulse is really about them. Shetty's own example is judging his wife's priorities — meditation and the gym — as less valid than his workload, and calling that a weed in himself.
Watch out Pushing personal development on a partner backfires hardest. Shetty says a partner pressed to read his book will not only refuse, they will sour on growth entirely.
- 3
Switch to respecting their values instead of converting them
Replace 'I like this, why don't you like it' with 'I love that you love that, you go do your thing, I'll go do mine.' Shetty argues forcing a partner to your interests is not compromise or connection and is actively ruining relationships.
Pro tip Watch the football with someone who loves football. Shetty's point is that shared interest is not the currency of a relationship — respected values are.
Watch out Do not confuse this with disengagement; the ladder-of-intimacy work still requires shared new experiences.
- 4
Move into the partner role by asking, not directing
The supporter role is enacted through the direction question — where do you want to be, and do you want my help getting there — and by opening things as conversations rather than instructions.
Pro tip Shetty models this by asking his wife whether she is thinking about goals for the year and whether she wants to talk about it, because he is doing his own.
Watch out If the answer to the direction question is something you cannot live with, that is the honest end, and no manipulation or magic trick will change it.
In the wild
Shetty describes people telling him their partner will not read his book and asking how to make them. He tells them not to, and Bartlett decodes why: 'babe, please read this book' about being great in bed reads as 'you are not good in bed'.
→ Shetty's verdict is that the push will tip that person over the edge and turn them off personal development altogether — he compares it to people becoming atheists because a religion failed them.
Shetty says a guru, like a coach, never dictates the pace of the student — his own monk teacher never asked why, after seventeen years of meditation, he was not a perfect meditator. He applied the same to his wife's restaurant question and to their goal-setting.
→ She opened up to some of his ideas and ways of working precisely because he opened them as conversation, and she reciprocated by changing his diet and training habits without ever calling him unhealthy.
Common mistakes
Believing your values are the universal correct ones
Shetty names this as the weed everyone carries: the belief that my perspective, my priorities and my values should be everyone's. He catches himself judging his wife's meditation and gym priorities as less valuable than his workday output.
Handing your partner a book, a diet or a practice as a fix
Forcing a partner into your growth trend — personal development, health, mindfulness, yoga — pushes them away far more than it entices them, and permanently taints the thing you were recommending.
Is it for you?
Best for
Anyone with a running list of things they wish their partner would change.
Not ideal for
Situations where a partner's behaviour is genuinely harmful and acceptance is not the right response.
From the transcript
“there are three roles we play in relationships one is the fixer we want to find someone to fix and the other is we play…”
“if you're trying to change them then you don't love them you love their potential you love a version of them that you think they…”
“relationships are so much more about learning to respect other people's values than they are to make them value what we value”
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