Virat Kohli may often be referred to as a ‘green forest,’ but he has also had his share of challenges and downfalls. But the one moment he credits as life-changing was meeting his wife, actor Anushka Sharma. “A life-changing moment would be when I met Anushka because I saw a different side of life. It wasn’t similar to my environment. It was a different perspective, a different point of view. So, that was life-changing,” he told the RCB podcast hosted by comedian and host Danish Sait in 2023.

Virat, who got married to Anushka in 2017, added, “Because when you fall in love, when you love the person that you are with, you start processing those changes within you as well. Because you have to move together, right? You have to open yourself up. You need to accept a lot of things. And that for me was life-changing because I changed a lot after I met her and we started dating.”

He went on to describe something many people experience but rarely articulate: when you truly love someone, you begin processing changes within yourself too. “You open yourself, learn to accept differences, and gradually discover how two people can move through life together. There is something far more psychologically significant in those words than a romantic tribute to a spouse,” reflected Delnna Rrajesh, psychotherapist, and relationship breakthrough coach.

Sometimes, a partner introduces us to a reality our conditioning never showed us. “And sometimes, simply discovering that another way of living, loving, communicating or relating exists can change us profoundly,” added Delnna.

When two people enter a relationship, therefore, it is never only two adults meeting. Two biographies meet. “Two childhoods meet. Two family systems meet. Two sets of spoken and unspoken rules about love enter the relationship. Along with them come old loyalties, fears, coping mechanisms, expectations and beliefs about how life is supposed to be lived. This is why apparently small disagreements can sometimes carry extraordinary emotional intensity: the couple may be discussing the present, but decades of personal history may be participating in the conversation,” shared Delnna.

Here’s what you should consider

This is also why intimate relationships can trigger us so profoundly. “Our partners come close enough to touch psychological places that colleagues, acquaintances and even friends may never reach. Their behaviour can inadvertently activate fears of rejection, abandonment, inadequacy, criticism or loss of control. Yet there is another side to this vulnerability. The person close enough to encounter some of our oldest patterns may also introduce us to new emotional possibilities,” expressed Delnna.

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A healthy relationship can expose us to ways of thinking, feeling, and living that were unavailable within our original environment.


However, this is precisely where an important distinction must be made. “Not every change produced by a relationship is growth. Controlling relationships change people too. If loving someone requires you to become progressively smaller, quieter, more isolated or more afraid, that is not self-expansion. If you abandon friendships, ambitions, values, financial independence or personal boundaries because your partner is threatened by them, that is not healthy compromise. If maintaining peace requires one person to continually disappear, the relationship is not teaching acceptance; it is teaching self-abandonment,” described Delnna.

There is another lesson here for long-term relationships. We sometimes assume intimacy means knowing everything about our partner, when genuine intimacy may require repeatedly discovering them. “The person we married at 28 will not necessarily think, desire, fear or dream in precisely the same way at 38, 48 or 68. Parenthood changes people. So do success, failure, grief, illness, healing, ageing and experience. Relationships can stagnate when familiarity replaces curiosity, and we continue interacting with an old version of the person beside us,” said Delnna.

Sometimes the greatest gift another human being gives us is not a better version of the life we already understood. “It is the realisation that life, love and even we ourselves could be different from everything we once believed possible,” said Delnna.