Once they knew my middle name, they howled in delight

Dr. Wallace: My first name is Buster, and my middle name is Rover. Our family thankfully has a common, normal last name.

I’ve been teased at school before, particularly in grade school about having the first name Buster; some of the older kids thought it sounded like I was named after a dog.

One kid even kept bringing dog treats to school and leaving them in front of my locker when I was in seventh grade. That was years ago, but in one of my high school classes one of our teachers created a project in which we all had to write our first and middle names in an essay and explain to the best of our ability why our parents selected the names they did.

Well, I’ll bet you can guess what happened. Even though there is a very good reason why my father likes the middle name Rover, some kids in my class saw the combination of Buster and Rover and went wild!

Now I’m the talk of the school. It seems that every time I come around the corner, I hear some guy whistle behind my back and yell, “Here, boy!” It usually draws a laugh or two at my expense.

For what it’s worth, my father was a great athlete, and he played the “rover” position on the field, which is where the name came from. Do you have any suggestions on how I can combat this problem?

— Mocked for My Names, via email

Mocked for my names:

Two strategies come to mind. One is to ignore things completely and simply smile and laugh and go about your business as if this does not bother or affect you at all. If you show no reaction, the joke will get old quite soon and likely fade away naturally.

The second one is to study as many of the other students’ names as you can and come up with unique and interesting ways to use one of your suspected tormentors’ names in an unflattering innuendo.

But instead of yelling anything across the campus or even in the hallways, simply walk up to the guy and explain to him that you could easily counterattack using your unflattering interpretation of his name. Simply say that you’d prefer to just let this all go and not to escalate the matter. This will likely quiet the jokester quickly.

I thought I could change him

Dr. Wallace: I became involved with my boyfriend even though I knew he had a few very bad habits. He, of course, also had some good personality traits and I liked him for other reasons, but I knew going into the relationship that he had a drinking problem and engaged in recreational drug use.

I felt that I could encourage him to make positive changes to keep me in the relationship and when we started out, he agreed exactly with my logic. He made some mild efforts for a while to curtail some of his drinking and most of his recreational drug usage.

But slowly over time not only has he returned to his old ways, but also, he has even escalated things at times, especially with his drug usage.

I won’t go into the details but there have recently been a few very unsavory incidents that he has created, one in private and one in public that have caused me to rethink my situation entirely.

Even though I worked really hard to try to encourage him and provide him every opportunity to make positive changes in his life, he never did. In fact, these days I’d say he’s not really going backward; he’s going downhill fast. Last week during one of our quieter moments, I gave him a big hug and told him I would always care for him and always be here to support him if he wanted to make changes, but that I was no longer going to be involved in a relationship with him.

Yes, I’m feeling a little lonely this week but I’m taking time to write to you in case it may help others in the future. The lesson I’ve learned is that no matter how much you want another person to change, that person must initiate the changes from within — not simply because someone else wishes them to do so. This relationship took up eight months of my life, but I’ve learned a good lesson and I won’t enter a similar relationship ever again. I’ll never fall for the illusion of thinking I can change another person.

— I’ve Learned My Lesson, via email

I’ve learned my lesson:

Thank you for sharing your story and taking the time to write about it. Indeed when meaningful personal changes are concerned, the key element is and always has been the willingness of the person at hand to make the decision to implement these changes. No one else, no matter how well-intentioned, can make this change for a person abusing substances.

Oftentimes those with these habits talk a good game about making changes but never seem to get around to them for various reasons. I commend you for standing up for yourself and for valuing your time as well.

You also did a good thing to tell him that you will always be there for him if he wants to make substantive changes, but you were quite wise in my opinion to exit the relationship at this point. Hopefully your story will resonate with others so that some of them may notice similarities to your situation that may help them in their lives.

Dr. Robert Wallace welcomes questions from readers. Although he is unable to reply to all of them individually, he will answer as many as possible in this column. Email him at rwallace@thegreatestgift.com.