James Cordova

And she was trying to get me to change to do something less dangerous.

for your exercise, please.

And the willingness to collaborate, the willingness to compromise for us came out of really compassionately understanding where the other person was coming from.

For me to really deeply compassionately understand how scary it was for her when I was out on the road.

So I'm out on the road having a great time cycling and she's at home terrified.

That I'm going to get hit by another car, that I'm going to get hurt, or that I'm going to get killed.

And for her to compassionately understand how important cycling is for me, both for my physical health, but mostly for my mental and emotional well-being.

And from that place, we were better able to think, well, what might a compromise be?

And the compromise that we actually worked out, which I find so beautiful, is that she bought an e-bike.

We're both quite delighted with the e-bike that she bought.

And so she goes cycling with me.

And that helps both of us.

She's with me and she's able to feel like she's got some influence, some control over what's going on on the road.

And I get to go out and go as fast or as long as I want because it's easier for her to keep up.

So it's actually become...

a really sweet source of connection between the two of us.

But, you know, it took us a while to find our way to that.

No, they definitely don't.

There are definitely problems that, for all of us in all of our relationships, there are problems that will stubbornly refuse to be solved.

They are areas of friction in our relationship that arise out of naturally occurring differences between us that aren't ever going to go away.