For me, this is Johanna. We first met when she was 21 and I was 22 and later became a couple. What is me in me has unfolded primarily in her company. This has been a mutual unfolding; we spoke each other into being.

W.H. Auden, the British poet, praised metrical rules because they “forbid automatic responses, force us to have second thoughts, free from the fetters of Self.”

Looking at it like this, like a loop, one way to think about improving a relationship is to ask, how can we increase the cycle speed?

Can we learn more about each other sooner? Can we act on that knowledge faster? We have a long way to go and limited time.

Can we remove bottlenecks along the loop?

Often, modern houses make this harder. They force you to live inside a preplanned, static vision. Unresponsive to your evolution, they alienate.

There is a corollary for relationships. Some relationships are hard, or even impossible, to change. As an individual, you grow—but your father won’t acknowledge that change or adapt to it, and the... See more