You must both be free and able to live without each other. Be together by choice, not necessity or dependence. Love your partner, but don’t need your partner. Need is insatiable. Need destroys love.

Thinking now of how closely I have guarded my shared domestic territories, I fear I might not ever be able to give an inch should I want to share a home again. A wall for a partner’s record collection. A bike in the hall. A plant I find ugly. A rite of passage – we’re moving in together – feels remote not just because I’m single, but because I’m un