This is rolling back a ways, but:
That actually sounds perfectly reasonable. Any weirdness that ensues is clearly the result of how the humans of Creation are impossibly weak-willed and fickle beings that will abandoned long-held beliefs over the course of a coffee break or two.
Well, the thing is that's actually pretty true. Extremely long-held beliefs are usually long-held not because a person has any real
devotion to it, but the fact the subject lives in the kind of place where they are never put in a position to question or explore the assumptions backing up that belief. That is just the natural process of Learning about oneself, your values, and becoming worldly, changing your mind over time about what things you appreciate most and the ways you interpret them compared to the presented alternatives. People who will dig in and voraciously defend Exactly what they are Certain they know, come hell or high water, are few and far between. Far rarer than the average mortal on the street, and in ways that isn't always to their own benefit either.
While on the other hand, people can hold onto specific views also because they constantly have others around them reinforcing that belief onto them if they would ever second-guess it or themselves, whether by confirmation bias or desire to have it BE true. Everyone knows someone who started hanging out with another crowd and slowly became almost an entirely different person after adopting their beliefs and attitudes, eventually split away from them and returned "to normal," and Intimacies are intended to operate no differently.
You're not
supposed to hold the same Intimacies forever and ever unless you're an absolute Rock which people are forced to break themselves against, because Intimacies are naturally mutable and ultimately rooted in transitory things and not Facts. You don't love your wife because you have held an Intimacy of "My Wife (True Love)" on your sheet for 5 years ingame, but because Intimacies
about your wife are Always consistantly present among those you possess, even though you may have fallen into and out of love with her for several years now as fights and reconciliations have eroded and rebuilt them over time.
Now sure, the book makes a
real hash of actually Explaining any of this depth, going only so far as to say "these are easy to lose and easy to gain" but that's nothing new for Exalted or White Wolf. The underlying ideal though is that Intimacies are supposed to inherently support eachother and Evolve, and that the PCs are by no means the only ones capable of building or eroding the Intimacies of others. Sure, you may spend one whole scene utterly tearing down the entire worldview of an immaculate monk and replacing it with your own, and send her packing conflicted about the truths she was brought up in. But she
also still holds Intimacies towards her fellow immaculates at the temple and her grandmaster, whom you never touched on and she deeply trusts not to lead her astray.
Once she returns she can go to them, express her crisis of faith and immediately begin rebuilding a replacement Intimacy once again from the influence of those around her, perhaps even Stronger this time because her environment shows her a new vantage point she never really accounted for. Perhaps it was never about the teachings of the dragons which resonated so strongly with her, and Was in fact the sense of peace and belonging that she was always relying on. Which is how you end up with Round 2 next you meet, where she recognizes that you may have spoken truthfully about the Order being a sham and a Solar Exalted being the true masters of the world, but she's now certain it will not be You to bring that message to the region, as you've already shown your willingness to step over people (including her) on your path to power, and that is the new reason why she will continue to oppose you, not because of any illusions of righteousness and overthrowing golden demons.
That is the kind of stuff you make really impressive stories out of, and its never intended to be quite so simple as shouting Dominate Person at someone until the single checkmark on their sheet preventing them from kowtowing to you becomes ticked. Though admittedly, the ability of the mechanics and tools presented to Accomplish these things are often scattershot at best.
