Do people change?

Hi friends,

I need advice.

I am 26(f) and my partner in question is a 27(m).

After 1 year of being single, going to therapy, and working on myself - I feel ready to enter a relationship.

Six years ago I matched with a man on a dating app and we really hit it off. We were living in two different provinces that were kilometres away and we spent days on end chatting on the phone video chatting and getting to know each other. After a few months of this we finally got together after he moved one hour away from me. Everything was going well, however we ended up hooking up and after our first and only day he ghosted me for six months. For years after that every six months or so he would start Initiating contact with me and we would hang out hook up and repeat the cycle. During this time he would do crazy things like drive 12 hours to see me for the weekend and make sacrifices of his free time to see me. However he never could commit or come to an answer of why he would feel the need to ghost me after every encounter.

Flash forward to years ago I decided to no longer have contact with this person.I started a new relationship with someone else ended that relationship and decided to spend time on my own.

he wasn’t aware that I was in a relationship and after a year of not talking he messaged me unprompted and apologized for everything he had ever done to me and came clean knowing that it wasn’t right and asked for me to give him another chance. I was very hesitant because of his past behaviour and I didn’t think that he was able to change. So I ignored him for months, and I ignored all of his request to hang out because I figured I knew the outcome. After he apologized for the fifth time and begged me to hang out with them because he wanted to show me that he wasn’t a piece of shit his words not mine, I said yes.

Hanging out with him now it’s very strange I find he’s very attentive to the details of our past and he brings up things that we have gone through and a little things that he remembers about me a lot more than he ever had before. Things I didn’t even think he noticed about me and things I didn’t think that he cared about. During sex he’s a lot more attentive to my needs and he is more affectionate and person such as holding my hand, kissing

my forehead, kissing me before bed and when we wake up.He is also been making plans with me right after we hang out which has never happened before in our history. We have hung out a few times now and anytime that were texting and he doesn’t respond in a timely fashion he messages me and apologizes and makes a comment about how he doesn’t want me to think that he is ignoring me and that he’s just busy or at work etc. This behaviour for him is very out of character and I want to know do you think that he is changed now that we are nearing her 30s and he wants to settle down? Or do people like him never change?

I am scared to revert the progress I’ve made on myself through therapy in my year being single.

Any advice is appreciated