Awake at 3 a.m. I started picturing him. He’s always lying in bed on his back, with one arm folded up under his head. He’s always talking about something, looking up at the ceiling. I’m always nestled against his side, with my head resting on his right shoulder and my right arm at an angle lying across his chest.

He doesn’t have any particular look. Friends ask me all the time what my “type” is. I always respond that I don’t know that I have a type; more I know what I don’t like.

Once I said that it mattered that I knew what his favourite novel was and, more importantly, understood why. That this mattered more than how we went about our relationships – our attitudes, responses, and expectations. At the time I felt all those things, those differences, could be discussed and worked out. The other was the sort of deep connection that is a rarity.

Sounds silly now.

Now I realize that this is one of the necessary things – how you relate to someone you love. It can’t all be discussed and worked out; either you have similar approaches or you don’t. Alongside your outlook on life and what centers and grounds you, this is essential. That in these you find a depth of connection whose meaning surpasses the rarity of the other connection.

This is the process. The process of broadening and narrowing your attraction as you experience another person. And another. And another.

So there are the essential things about him, at least the essential things at this point in my story. Then there are the things that aren’t necessary, but that you’d like for him to be, say, do, think, like, want. Here’s the fun of the new person who expands your list, who opens you up to new experiences – “I wouldn’t have put that on my list, but I really like it.”

My mind rambles around the attributes, building the list. I do like this; I don’t like that. Yet, it always comes back to the image. We lie there and he’s talking about something that interests him. And I’m content, absorbed in this moment, in him.