## perception of a partner [[thoughts/Aristotle|Aristotle]] calls a [[thoughts/friendship|friend]] “another self.” The _Magna Moralia_, which carries his name, adds the image of a mirror,[^1] because a virtuous friend can help us see our own character. A partner remains another human being carrying their own account of the relationship. They are the ones that made “rupture and repair”[^2] possible: someone to cry, disappoint, or annoy and still continue with. The relationship wouldn’t fracture at the first conflict. A partner is someone whose flaws become “your whole life”: their quirks become woven into your daily life. They have you “tossing and turning throughout the night”: their presence in your life has become significant enough to disturb your equilibrium. They’re Ava’s “pea on the bottom of the mattress”[^3] that makes you unable to rest easily in old patterns. A partner and you borrow time from each other without knowing how long you have. That uncertainty makes the time precious. A partner is someone you choose to keep learning with. When one arrangement stops working, you can try another. As Ava puts it, no one “can predict all the challenges that will emerge over 20 years of loving someone.” The partner is both witness and accomplice to your life’s narrative, though they may be writing a completely different story in their own mind. It’s this disconnect, the impossible attempt to fully know another consciousness while trapped in our own, that makes partnership both necessary and perpetually incomplete. ## what’s rly happening here? Since writing that essay, I realized that my gratitude also read as a confession. I wrote it to capture gratitude, for how she made 2024 gentler, more navigable. It wasn’t until others mentioned it that I recognized the undertow in my own words. I love her in a way that defies categorisation. It’s the kind of love that would cross continents for a single afternoon together. That remembers her nut allergy with the same vigilance I remember to breathe. That wants to send her pictures of interesting rocks found on morning walks, or screenshots of ridiculous luxury watches I’ll never buy. It’s love that manifests in tomato soup when she’s sick and memes when she’s sad. What draws me is her mind. She dissects problems, makes small things meaningful by noticing them, and tends to other people. I have started to use some of her ways of thinking. By every metric I’ve constructed for an ideal partner, she fits perfectly: the person I could build a life with, share silence with, grow old beside. But maybe that’s the trap. Maybe I’m pattern-matching against the space J left a year ago, trying to fill that particular emptiness with this particular friendship. The question isn’t whether I love her; that’s beyond doubt. The question is whether I’m confusing the safety of deep friendship with romantic love. Whether I’m mistaking the comfort of being truly known for something else. As [Ava writes](https://substack.com/home/post/p-149671363), “When you love someone, their beauty acquires a different kind of meaning.” But does that meaning have to be romantic? Nix uses Linda Montano and Tehching Hsieh’s [rope performance](https://www.startingfromnix.com/p/modern-friendship) to think about friendship. From July 1983 to July 1984 the two artists were tied together by an eight-foot rope and were not allowed to touch. Hsieh said afterwards, “We had a lot of fights and I don’t feel that is negative.” That tension is close to what I feel here. What I know is this: she is the first person I want to tell things to. > Maybe that’s enough knowing for now. Maybe, I have caught myself falling for her, again. [^1]: _Magna Moralia_ II.15, 1213a: as we look into a mirror to see our own face, we look at a friend to know ourselves, “for the friend is, as we assert, a second self.” whether Aristotle wrote it is disputed, but the mirror is in the Aristotelian corpus, not a later gloss. [^2]: the idea comes from psychology. Edward Tronick’s infant studies (the still-face experiment, 1978) called it “mismatch and repair”: small breaks and their repair are how the bond gets built. Jeremy Safran and Christopher Muran’s work on the therapy relationship (_Negotiating the Therapeutic Alliance_, 2000) made “rupture and repair” the usual name. [^3]: Ava, [the true shape of things](https://substack.com/home/post/p-149671363), _Bookbear Express_. the “tossing and turning” line is hers too.There is nothing more truly artistic than to love people.
Vincent van Gogh, letter to Theo, Arles, 18 September 1888