Why does changing one aspect of a persons life completely change personality?

[Marshalscienceguy]

Now I see this a lot and I can identify the cause but I don't understand why this happens. You also cant always predict what person is going to become bad after something changes. Now I don't mean stuff like "Oh my grandfather died" since yes I can understand how that can have a DRASTIC change on your personality. Not that it will in every case. What I mean is things like "Got a Girl/Boyfriend for the first time" or "Won the lottery" stuff like that. Than the person becomes intolerable and impossible to deal with after that. It can happen to both men and women and I don't completely understand why this happens or what it means about the person. I know that some people when good things happen to them do not become jerks but this does seem to happen with a number of people and whats disappointing is initially these people will seem like some of the greatest people around. They could be gift giving, remember everyone's birthday, Always their for everyone and than get a date for the first time and start treating everyone like trash. At which point a lot of people try to put up with it believing they will do better but eventually just end up leaving the person since they can no longer take the abuse. This means they lose the partner than originally likes them because they thought they were sweet, they lose their best friends and pretty much anyone else who had faith in them.

[Phi for All]

Once again, I think the culprit here is confirmation bias. We have preconceived notions of how a person in a relationship should act, or what millionaires do with their money. When we encounter a similar situation for the first time, we act the way we think we're supposed to, which rarely reflects the way experienced people behave.

 

Relationships are more difficult as we combine them. Learning to be a friend is like juggling with one ball. Learning to juggle multiple friendships takes experience. Toss an intimate relationship in there and now you've got a ball, two grapefruit, a couple of bowling pins and a chainsaw to juggle. And remember that just about every part of society reveres the intimate relationship over the friendship. The pressure to find a mate is often seen as a priority.

 

Money is funny. We all have notions about how rich people spend it. If we suddenly come into a lot of money when we had little previously, the only blueprint for behavior we have are these notions. And they're mostly wrong, and often ludicrous. Rich people don't stay rich if they go through their bucks like lottery winners do. But the media glamorizes the lottery winners/sports rookies/young inheritors who buy out hotel floors or walk around with posses of posers, and it all looks like so much fun and money is power and makes you important. And when you're used to making $5000 last all month, $1,000,000 seems like it's never going to run out.

 

So, in essence, I think the reason it feels like you lose those people is because they aren't acting like themselves. They're acting the way they've seen others in similar situations, but without the depth of experience a veteran to such situations has.

[Delta1212]

Once again, I think the culprit here is confirmation bias. We have preconceived notions of how a person in a relationship should act, or what millionaires do with their money. When we encounter a similar situation for the first time, we act the way we think we're supposed to, which rarely reflects the way experienced people behave.

 

Relationships are more difficult as we combine them. Learning to be a friend is like juggling with one ball. Learning to juggle multiple friendships takes experience. Toss an intimate relationship in there and now you've got a ball, two grapefruit, a couple of bowling pins and a chainsaw to juggle. And remember that just about every part of society reveres the intimate relationship over the friendship. The pressure to find a mate is often seen as a priority.

 

Money is funny. We all have notions about how rich people spend it. If we suddenly come into a lot of money when we had little previously, the only blueprint for behavior we have are these notions. And they're mostly wrong, and often ludicrous. Rich people don't stay rich if they go through their bucks like lottery winners do. But the media glamorizes the lottery winners/sports rookies/young inheritors who buy out hotel floors or walk around with posses of posers, and it all looks like so much fun and money is power and makes you important. And when you're used to making $5000 last all month, $1,000,000 seems like it's never going to run out.

 

So, in essence, I think the reason it feels like you lose those people is because they aren't acting like themselves. They're acting the way they've seen others in similar situations, but without the depth of experience a veteran to such situations has.

Probably the best advice I've seen regarding what to do with an unexpected financial windfall of significant size, but it lottery, inheritance or what have you, is to find some place to park it and then don't touch it for six month when you'll have gotten more used to the idea that it's there and the impulse to go out and buy everything just because you can will have had time to diminish.

[Phi for All]

I think anytime there is a great change that takes place out of sync with the rest of your life experiences, you fall back on on your preconceived notions of the right way to behave. Normally, you work and save to get money over time, so your whole life is synced to that process, and windfalls upset that.

 

Your first time being fired, your first close death, your first car accident, these things take us by surprise and so we often handle them badly. Hopefully our friends will take this into consideration and not consider it intentional abuse if we act erratically.