Instead, I have wanted to be changed. To become or resemble an ideal of someone’s romantic partner, always looking within myself to identify what it was that got in the way of love, the tiny adjustments I could make to fulfil another’s vision. My eyes were so trained on my own imperfect state that I failed to consider the imperfection of the romantic partners I sought. If I think back to the man I had the affair with, the desire for him to like me like me – to see me as valuable to him beyond sexual pleasure – was so strong I didn’t even ask myself if I liked him. Once the spell was broken, I realised I didn’t. He would text me now and then over the years since we were involved, telling me he missed me, talking like friends. There was no friendship there for me. He was boring, arrogant, talked down to me. And who would blame him when I so clearly placed myself in service to him, failed to stand up for things that I desperately wanted, became oddly characterless in the face of his personality.