This is the question that generates more debate in this community than any other. And most of the debate misses the point entirely.
Let me give you Neville’s actual answer and then the implication most people do not want to hear.
What Neville Said
Neville’s position on this was unambiguous. Yes, you can influence your experience of a specific person. Everyone in your world is yourself pushed out, which means your inner assumptions about that person, your inner image of who they are and how they behave, shapes your outer experience of them.
He documented case after case of people whose specific relationships transformed when their inner assumptions changed. Not by forcing the other person. By changing what they held as real internally.
The cold partner became warm. The estranged family member reconnected. The person who had walked away came back. In every case the outer change followed an inner one.
So yes. The specific person can change. The specific relationship can change. The experience you have of that specific individual is subject to the law.
The Part People Resist
Neville’s golden rule was explicit. When your desire concerns another, make sure what you are imagining for them is something they would accept. Imagine no ill will. Imagine their highest good.
He was not teaching people to control others or force them into relationships. He was teaching people to change their own inner world, their inner image of the other person, their inner conversation about the relationship, their inner assumption about what the relationship could be, and watch the outer relationship reflect the change.
The distinction matters. You are not programming another person. You are changing what you are putting out. And what you put out is what comes back.
The Deeper Issue Most People Avoid
Most specific person situations are not really about the other person. They are about yourself.
When you feel you need a specific person to complete you, to validate you, to prove you are loveable, the underlying issue is what you imagine about yourself. Its almost never about someone else. It is on becoming someone who is whole and solid regardless of the outer relationship.
Ironically, this shift, from “I need them to love me” to “I am someone who is deeply loved and they are one expression of that,” tends to produce faster results in the specific situation than direct focus on the person does.
Build up the you that is loved and loving. The specific person reflects the new you.