Relationships require constant tending.

People die. Friends come and go. Jobs change. Health and families and dreams change too.

Each individual is simultaneously changing. And so there is a constant tension between the ‘best’ thing for each individual and a constantly shifting background that makes what’s ‘best’ only ever temporary.

You meet, you move in together, you build careers, you get engaged, you move countries, you get married, you have children, you care for your parents and you react to life’s vicissitudes.

Change most often presents as a problem.

You move in together, so you have to solve for who makes the bed.

You buy a house together, so you have to solve for who funds the deposit and pays the mortgage.

You make a career change, and you have to solve for who sacrifices and for how long.

But what starts as a seemingly endless set of challenges, over time, turns into a pile of solved problems.

And one day, you look over your shoulder at that pile, and it’s so big, and so full of talks and arguments and memories and passion that suddenly those challenges don’t seem like challenges any more.

There’s some point, where you’ve been through so many things, in so many ways, that you can no longer conceive of a scenario where a solution would not be possible.

But the most important part is in those uncertain years, as things are evolving, to be actively trying to build that pile of solved problems.

One by one. Month by month. Year by year.

Unafraid. Hopeful and willing.

That pile of solved problems. Heaping it high enough to believe that eventually, inevitably, everything will make it on there.