I look forward to growing old with my spouse.

Picture it concretely and it stops being abstract: two toothbrushes in the same glass, a pill organiser with the days printed on the lids, one of you doing up the other's coat button because the fingers no longer manage it.

That image usually gets filed under decline. It is also intimacy at its most practical.

Looking forward to it is a quiet kind of confidence. It means planning for a version of this that does not depend on either of you staying impressive.

Whatever you are doing today, you are already doing it with the person from that picture.