Here is my fantasy of the kind of married life I want.

We share wonderful meals together, the kind where afterward you just have to sit in silence and let yourself take in the experience because your mind is sort of numbed by how amazing the food was. “Mmm, yeah, a salmon-capers-and-artichoke-hearts omelette, who woulda thought!” I do lots and lots of cooking. (She might or might not cook. Either way is wonderful for me.) We try a huge variety of different foods. Sometimes they’re terrible. When that happens, we laugh about it.

We own a home. With a fantastic kitchen. And imaginative, colorful painting and wood floors. And cats. We have a paid housekeeper so our home is always in great shape (especially the kitchen), and we can spend our time on stuff we enjoy, not on household chores.

We have wonderful, playful sex together, and afterward it’s something like how we feel after those really good meals.

We spend a lot of our time doing our own things, often not together. I work hard on the career side of life, and she does whatever she likes apart from me. We tell each other about our days. Sometimes I get so into something that I work several all-nighters in a row, following my inspiration. Sometimes she does that, too, if she likes. It’s not the end of the world when one of us gets one of these inspirations and disappears for a few days. We find each other wonderful, but neither of us makes the other into the be-all-end-all of life.

Occasionally we do something artistic together, like make a movie or cook a “just-the-two-of-us potluck” meal. We’re able to collaborate.

We understand that we’re two separate people. We’re together because we enjoy each other’s company, we enjoy the rest of the world better when we enjoy it together, and we each find the other sexually exciting. Our relationship is nothing more than that, and nothing less.

When we get irritated with each other, we have the skills to handle it: we listen and hear what the other person is saying, we speak up and tell the other person what’s bugging us, we take a half-hour break to cool off if we need to, we learn what the other person’s need is, we use our creativity to work out a compromise. We don’t resort to blaming, guilt-tripping, whining, trying to argue the other person into submission, or otherwise trying to overpower the other person into knuckling under and going along, nor do we sulk and hold little trials in our own heads where we privately convict the other person of badness. We don’t store up evidence about how bad the other person was in order to spring it on them later during an argument. When there’s a problem, we solve it and make things good again—and we’re both pretty good at that. And then we kiss. (This paragraph is really, really important. You don’t have a good life by having everything go perfectly. You have a good life by having the skills to deal with trouble when it arises and turn things positive again. Some of the other paragraphs I could live without, but this one is a deal-breaker.)

When one of us has a problem, we brainstorm together to find a creative, simple solution. We each appreciate that the other person thinks differently. We are not the same and we like it that way. We actually like having the occasional tough problem that calls for our creativity.

We watch meteor showers together, go on hikes together, play Scrabble, talk silly, take showers together. We are always learning new things. We watch movies and cuddle on the couch. Some nights, it’s just snuggling. Some nights, we just look into each other’s eyes for a while, without saying anything.

Did I mention sharing wonderful meals together? “Mmm, yeah, zucchini with peanuts, tomatoes, and jalapeño peppers, who woulda thought!”