Conformity is a narrowing of the mental scope. It's an understanding that the world is the way it is. That there is a goal of life, and that goal is to find one's place within this set world. This worldview isn't innate. It's learned, perpetuated. By parents. By teachers. By friends.

Although the connotation is often negative, the world needs conformists, and in much more abundance than nonconformists. They both serve a vital role in the academic and artistic advancement of humanity. Survival, and flourishment, rely on a certain balance of both worldviews in the population.

Humanity has a tendency to distance itself from the rest of the animal kingdom, as if there was some bifurcation in our evolutionary paths long ago. But Homo sapiens have walked the earth for 300,000 years, compared to the 3,500,000,000 years that life has evolved on earth; that means that 99.991% of our natural selection is still shared. It seems reasonable, then, to interpret much of human behavior through an evolutionary lens. Our habits, our responses to stimuli, our behavior, is likely no different at its core from that of our evolutionary predecessors.

The decision of whether or not to break-up with someone at any given time can probably be expressed as a polynomial (i.e. ax^i + by^j + cz^k + ...) where the coefficients (a, b, ...) are the weights of how important the factors (x, y, ...) are to the individual (for simplicity, we'll use "you"). If the sum of all of the terms in this polynomial is smaller than some constant ψ (where 0 < ψ < 1), then you feel as though it makes sense to break up with your partner. If the sum is greater than ψ, then you feel as though you should stay with your partner. The factors are your perception¹ of their various traits. For example, x could be your partner's attitude toward saving money, y could be the physical attraction you have to your partner, z could be your partner's capacity for empathy or patience, etc. If a factor is unimportant to you, it'll have a small coefficient (i.e. it plays a small role in determining the outcome).