Do people ever truly change?

“The thing that we need to come to terms with is that he was going to hit her sooner or later. This is what abusers do.” 

This is the sentence that I ended my last op-ed with, and what feels like an appropriate beginning to this op-ed as well.

Last semester, I wrote an op-ed about the Ismailiya Bride incident, where the groom physically abused the bride hours before their wedding. It was a terribly frustrating incident that was a reminder of how domestic abuse wasn’t just the case for many, but that sometimes it started that early in the victims’ lives. What I didn’t know back then was that nine months later, I’d be writing an op-ed about the exact same story. 

About a month ago, I woke up to the news that Maha, otherwise known as the “Ismailiya Bride”, filed an official police case against her husband for allegedly having physically abused her throughout their short eight months of marriage. She emphasized that he had allegedly locked her up in their apartment for weeks, assaulted her and threatened to harm her family if she spoke out on the abuse.

A few weeks later, it was announced that the groom will face one year of imprisonment and a fine of 2000 LE for physically abusing his wife.

Isn’t it saddening to say that part of me knew this exact pattern was going to happen? That I knew some people are just not bound to change? 

I’m all about giving people second chances, but second chances are often open invitations for people to make the same mistakes again. 

In February, when the groom was given room to “justify” his actions on Egyptian news platforms, one thing that caught my attention was how he explained that they married out of love, and that they’ve “been together for years”. 

But is knowing someone for a long period of time a strong enough reason to excuse cheating? Is being madly in love an immediate pass for letting someone publicly humiliate you? A lot of people abuse the fact that we’ve known them for a long time and use it as a justification for us to tolerate their behaviors. 

And sadly, we get so emotionally attached to the people in their lives that setting boundaries and cutting them off is still seen as “rude” by many, so we resort to accepting their toxic behaviors instead.

But some people are just not capable of changing, no matter how much we want them to, and no matter how much they want to. Some people spend their entire lives switching back and forth doing the same mistakes again, while hurting us in the process.

We always put too much hope on people’s potential, on what they could be rather than what they really are. And I’m still unsure, is this considered being naive or brave enough to take a risk?