"No one ever makes their peace with this fact immediately, and no one ever makes it just once. We are called on over and over to remember that the person we love does not always have the same thoughts, feelings, frames of reference, reactions, needs, fears, and desires that we do. But overall, the trajectory of a happy relationship, which begins with cherishing similarity, ends in cherishing difference. I could never declare with authority what I love most about C.; I love too much of her too much. But it is not a false consolation or a convenient exaggeration to say that I am most oven moved to gratitude and tenderness and awe by those parts of her that are least like me—because it is in them that I see her most clearly, and because it is thanks to them that my own world has grown so much larger. And I can declare with authority that her ability to love those parts of me that are least like her is the greatest gift anyone, outside of my parents, has ever given me."