When sodium chloride dissolves in water, the crystal lattice — a precise, repeating arrangement of Na+ and Cl- ions — comes apart. Water molecules, being polar, surround each ion, shielding it from its former neighbours. The solid vanishes; the solution remains clear.
This is solvation, and it happens constantly. The sugar in coffee. The oxygen in blood. The carbon dioxide in champagne. Each is a dissolution.
What is less obvious is that solvation is reversible. Evaporate the water and the salt returns, often in different crystal form. The dissolution was a loan, not a destruction. But some dissolutions are not reversible: burn the sugar and no amount of cooling will reconstitute it. The distinction between physical dissolution (solvation, phase change) and chemical dissolution (decomposition, reaction) is a matter of whether the molecules themselves survive the process.
The solvent does not emerge unchanged either. Water that has dissolved salt is no longer pure water — its boiling point, freezing point, and electrical conductivity have all shifted. The solvent is altered by what it dissolves. In this, as in much else, chemistry is a metaphor.