Everyone has past. I do have past too. Many people do have meaning in my life, they gave nuance in determining my personality. And personal experience, I believe, indeed determines character. Inveterate character, when we all get older, is getting more difficult to shape. That is why when we step out from an old surround, move into a newly environs, sometimes much effort and trouble must be coped. This is not only about adapting into new place or location, but also about dealing sucessfully with human being. Moreover, in personal relation.
In scientific way, I often see an adaptation as attaining new state of equillibrium. When a solution is unbalanced, by the accesion of new substance, it will subsequently reach another state of equillibrium. The higher attractive force between the two substances, then the easier they get into the new equillibrium, and also the more impregnable the new condition will be formed. The time required in attaining this new equillibrium is also influenced by many factors.
Human beings are unfortunately and profoundly different from chemical substance, in which we can find the physical and chemical properties to investigate the possibility of harmonious formation. Subconcious mind, being realized or not, is a cognitive factor that tends to have great effect upon what people do or say or act upon something. Subconcious mind itself is formed by education, personal experience, environment, feeling,interest etc. When we realize these things, we realize too that human are way way way much a complex system then chemical substance. Many exceptions, many inconformities from psychological theories.
As time passes by, based from the availability of attractive force, intention from both sides to form harmonious formation, and compromise, I believe that new equillibrium state will be attained, anyway. I just wish that the time necessitated in this process will not relatively long.