I think we all need someone who agrees with our deepest and most critical core values. Rules arise from core values but also from a lot of other aspects of our lower-priority values, needs and desires. Rules can be negotiated, but I think respect for core values is just not enough for happiness with a life partner. Those core values shape the ability to understand each other well enough to have the respect and the love that makes the rule stuff work out in the wash.

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Yes...I've known people and been in relationships where rules were negotiated, loop-holes were found and exploited, and the agreed-upon rules were not allowed to be renegotiated- or one person just made a power play and changed the rules and it was my way or the highway.

While I'm frequently frustrated by my current relationship taking so long to gel into a defined form, it's firmly rooted in shared values. Disagreements tend to float on the surface, and then kind of dissolve when we get down the their roots.

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I've also dated someone where despite both of us making seriously good-faith efforts to work together by setting up rules and talking issues to death, the rules and the talking never made us happy because they were stop-gap measures that could not smooth over the deeper differences within us.

With my husband, it's like what you say above, beautiful image by the way. Differences take work to resolve sometimes, but the work has a secret feel of harmony and partnership deep down even if we're upset with one another. There's an underlying synergy of how we feel about things in general that continually and gently buoys up all our efforts to figure out how to work the inevitable Stuff out.

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