“How do you share a life with someone?” The question was surprising and she was not at all ready for it. 

They were sitting in their her favorite coffee shop, like they had recently become habituated to do. Just two long-time friends talking about life’s fuckery with each other over tall glasses of fancy coffee. They had started coming here to just talk. And then it became kind of a routine. Out of the blue, one of them would call the other and they would meet there for a couple of hours. Mostly, they’d talk about how life was treating them, their work, their thoughts in general. 

Seldom did they talk about confusing ideas. And even more rarely, they shared with each other deeply personal stuff. Those were things not meant for casual chill out times like this. But he had decided to break that unwritten understanding today. So when he asked her that, she wasn’t really ready and almost choked on the sip of coffee she had just taken. 

“What do you mean?” She asked, raising her eyebrows at him.

“You know what I mean. Like how do you find compatibility with someone? They keep saying on blog articles and inspirational videos that before you get married, you need to find compatibility. Or build it if you feel like it isn’t there but you like the other person too much to let go without trying.” 

“Yeah, I get what you mean. But why is it bothering you all of a sudden? Are you seeing someone that I don’t know about?”

“Well, no. Not really, but suppose, hypothetically, that I was. How would I go about processing something like that?”

She sipped the coffee in silence, carefully considering the thought for real this time. He did have a point. A part of her wanted to tell him, ‘if you really need to ask, you won’t understand it even if someone gave it to you in grade-school style writing.’ but she didn’t say that. The thought was worth considering. 

“I believe you need to learn them.” she began after what seemed like the whole evening had passed. “I believe you take your time to really notice things about them that make them, them. I believe you try to imagine what it would be like to grow up or grow old with them, like they write about in those old-school artistic novels.” 

She could see that she had caught his attention by that. The thought was spreading in her own mind too. As if the coffee had triggered the thought process. But more than that she figured that the thought, the idea would actually be helpful to them both in their respective lives. So she continued. 

“You will probably shed their tears more than your own, but you’d also laugh because they’re happy more times than for your own cheerfulness. You’d walk in their shoes, metaphorically of course, and wear their hearts on your sleeves, for that true sense of responsibility, more than your own vulnerability. You’d certainly wake up having dreams like they are used to having and scream together until you both start laughing when one of you has a nightmare. You’d probably say more things that you want  to say, rather than things that you should say. 

“And then one day, when you’re just chilling out somewhere, alone, wondering whether you have been a good partner, you would realize that things have changed. Your name would no longer describe your own self. You’d feel incomplete. 

“And hopefully, without really caring if it is so, they would feel all of the same things too.”