what would you say to the nervous Sandy two years ago?

 You are right to be nervous.

Not because this man is necessarily going to hurt you, and not because you are making a mistake by letting him in. You are nervous because some part of you already knows this is going to matter.

You are going to try very hard to stay sensible. You are going to tell yourself not to get attached too quickly, not to make assumptions, not to turn chemistry into destiny. Keep doing that. Your caution is not cynicism. It is wisdom you earned.

But don’t use wisdom as armour.

Go on the dates. Stay up too late talking. Go dancing. Travel. Laugh at the stupid things. Let yourself be surprised by how safe an ordinary Tuesday can feel with someone. Let him become important to you.

You are going to love him.

And for a while, that love will give you something you didn’t know you were missing: peace. Not excitement alone, not obsession, not the feeling of being rescued. Just the quiet pleasure of sharing a life with somebody you genuinely like.

There will also be moments when you feel confused. More than once, you will reach a point where you think you are walking in the same direction, only to discover that he is less certain than you believed. You will wonder whether you asked for too much. You will examine yourself very carefully. Sometimes you will compromise. Sometimes he will come toward you. Sometimes the two of you really will find each other in the middle.

Do not rewrite those moments later and tell yourself you were foolish.

You weren’t.

You made decisions based on what was true at the time.

There will come a point, though, when the question becomes bigger than whether you can make another compromise. It will become: are we actually building the same life?

When that moment comes, listen carefully.

Not only to whether he loves you. You will know that he does.

Listen for whether he can choose.

Listen for whether he can carry part of the future without you having to drag him toward it.

You are very capable, Sandy. That is both your strength and your danger. You can make almost anything work if you decide to. You can organise, adapt, forgive, explain, wait, and carry.

Do not accidentally turn marriage into another company you are CEO of.

You do not need a man who merely agrees to the life you build. You need someone who sometimes reaches for the blueprint before you do.

And if one day you discover that the person you love cannot give you that, it will hurt more than you can imagine right now.

But here is the thing I most want you to know:

You will be okay.

You will not become bitter.

You will not regret loving him.

You will be able to look at Sicily, Chongqing, the alpacas, the late nights, the family trips, the ordinary evenings, the ridiculous arguments, the tenderness — and say: that was real.

Real things are allowed to end.

Beautiful things are allowed to be incomplete.

And loving somebody does not require you to spend the rest of your life proving that the love was worth having.

So stop being quite so frightened of the butterflies.

Let the story happen.

Just promise yourself one thing:

If, two years from now, you have to choose between keeping him and keeping yourself, choose the version of love where you do not have to disappear.

You will understand what that means when you get there.