Prior to marriage, I’d lived alone for twenty years with no housemates other than felines; Steve had been bach’ing it with two boys for nine. Marrying at midlife comes with a lot of challenges: negotiating shifting family roles, re-learning how to share a bathroom, ensuring the bride’s cats don’t blind the groom’s dog in a territorial rage. But I’m not sure anything could have prepared us for the sheer amount of stuff.

Our minds clearly process information in wildly different ways, and while this is true for all couples to some degree, our obvious disparity carries the distinct benefit of preventing romantic relationship pitfall #11: believing that true love creates magical mind-reading powers.