But Philippa showed me that part of falling in love is letting another person have an impact on you. You’re not rigid and unchanging, she told me, you’re altered by each other, ‘like two stones rubbing together until suddenly they fit’. The important distinction? When you want to change to keep a partner interested, that’s ‘adaption’, which is bad because you’re bending your identity to please another. Whereas when you change alongside another person, that’s ‘mutual impact’, because you’re not putting on an act to please anyone. Instead, you’re growing, individually and together.
