Caroline O'Donoghue: 7 things about long relationships

— right now, we’re in a phase of playing video games, haggling on Facebook Marketplace for used furniture, and getting through

I once read a quote by Marian Keyes where she talked about her marriage. She’s been married for 25 years, and in the quote she said that she didn’t view her relationship as one long relationship, but many little ones. She explained the constantly changing energies that push and pull between two people, the way dependencies shift, the way personalities subtly change over years together. It is, I think, one of the few pieces of relationship writing that has ever made real sense to me.

My boyfriend and I have been together for six years. Seven in April. We got together when I was 24 and now, at 30, I feel like we’re two strange plants that have been potted together down the back of the garden and forgotten, and in that time have become gnarled and knobbly and twisted together to the point where I don’t know which parts of my personality are organically mine and which we have invented as a result of spending so much time together. And, like Marian Keyes, in this great gnarling and knotting, I have identified many small phases. I think other people might have these phases too, so I have detailed them here.