The True Self – How Does Someone You’ve Known for a Long Time Change for You?
„Trust opens the door to the soul when we feel safe enough to be ourselves.”
/József Nyitrai 11.23.2025./
In Every Relationship, There Comes a Moment When We Feel the Other Person Has Changed
In every relationship, there comes a moment when we feel that the other person has somehow changed. A friend, a partner, or even a family member, someone we’ve known for years, suddenly behaves differently, and we are left wondering, „What happened to them?” The truth, however, is that it’s not necessarily them who has changed. Perhaps we’ve simply gotten to know them better, discovering new aspects of their personality that we hadn’t noticed before. But what lies behind this phenomenon, and why does it seem like people change over time when, in fact, they might be the same as they always were?
Life is a continuous process of discovery, and our relationships with others, just like our understanding of ourselves, evolve. At first, everything is seen clearly and simply because our image of the other person is fresh and not yet burdened by years of experience. The first impressions, the initial conversations, the surface-level information—these are all based on how a person presents themselves, how they react in certain situations, and what their honest responses are.
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But as the years pass, more and more details emerge. An unexpected moment, a surprising reaction, or even a sudden problem that we need to solve together, all reveal new sides of the person we didn’t see before. And this is where the phenomenon that many perceive as „change” begins. The reality, however, is that we are simply seeing more deeply into their world, the motives behind their behavior, their way of thinking, which we didn’t notice at first glance.
This, of course, can be a pleasant surprise. Sometimes, people reveal things about themselves that they hadn’t noticed before or didn’t want to express. A sudden act of kindness, an honest conversation, or a reaction that doesn’t fit the previous picture but makes the relationship even more complete. However, there are times when this discovery causes confusion, and we feel like the person has become someone else, because we can no longer relate to them the way we did before.
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It can also happen that the other person, through their own change, shows us things that were not visible before. Perhaps new life circumstances, experiences, or inner struggles have made them behave differently, but this doesn’t necessarily mean that they have fundamentally changed. It’s more about seeing a new behavior or shift in them, something they hadn’t shown before or that wasn’t needed at the start of our relationship.
In such moments, we can easily fall into the trap of trying to figure out why the other person has changed and what happened to them. But perhaps what’s really happening is that their personality simply wasn’t as present in our daily lives until now. Now, having gotten to know them better, we are forming a more complete picture of who they are.
Often, our reaction to others’ changes reflects how we ourselves evolve and change over time. A long-time friend who initially showed no interest in understanding things more deeply might, over a long conversation, begin to express thoughts and feelings they hadn’t shared before. For us, this represents a new experience, one that’s difficult to interpret based on our previous perception of them. But their reaction is still their reality; it just hadn’t been given the chance to fully emerge before.
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Therefore, in relationships, these „new discoveries” don’t always indicate a real change; they simply mean that we’re connecting on a deeper level, and new layers of the person are becoming visible to us. The emotional dynamic may evolve, but the person we are relating to is still the same one we’ve known. It’s the process of discovery and understanding that brings about the difference, not the person themselves.
And perhaps this deeper, more genuine knowledge is what truly makes our relationships valuable. As we come to better understand the other person, we also become more open and accepting, because love and respect aren’t based only on how we’d like to know someone but on the ability to accept that the other person is constantly changing, growing, and evolving, and we are evolving with them.
In the end, it’s not always the other person who changes, but rather our image of them that becomes refined and deepened as we get to know them better. This is true not only for personal relationships but also for our ongoing process of self-discovery. The real change may not be in the other person, but in the way we begin to see them again and again.
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As trust builds, a person begins to show more of themselves. At this point, we may think they’ve changed, but in fact, they’re still the same person, we’ve just come to know them better.
Trust is a key element in every human relationship, because as it grows stronger over time, we begin to reveal more of ourselves. Hidden feelings and thoughts gradually come to the surface, and what was once a secret becomes part of the relationship. Often, this confuses us, and we feel like the other person has changed. In reality, they haven’t; we’ve simply gotten to know them better, and now we are able to believe that we are safe enough to be ourselves. Trust, then, not only strengthens commitment but also opens the path to honesty and mutual understanding.
💎 Written by: József Nyitrai
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