Excerpted from The Light We Carry. Copyright ©2022 by Michelle Obama. Reprinted with permission from Crown, Penguin Random House. All freedoms reserved.

Individuals often reach out to me seeking relationship advice. They remark on photographs they’ve seen of me and Barack together — laughing, or sharing a look, appearing content to be next to each other. They ask how we have managed to stay both married and unmiserable for 30 years now. I want to say, Indeed, genuinely, it’s a surprise to us, as well, now and then!

And really, I’m not joking. We have our issues, obviously, yet I love the man, and he adores me, presently, still, and seemingly forever.

Our affection is flawed, yet it’s real and we’re focused on it. This particular certainty sits parked like a grand piano in the center of each and every room we enter. We are, in many ways, totally different individuals. He’s an evening person who appreciates solitary pursuits. I’m an early bird who cherishes a packed room. In my opinion, he invests a lot of energy golfing.

In his opinion, I watch a lot of crude TV. However, between us, there’s a loving assuredness that’s as basic as knowing the other person is there to stay, regardless.

This is what I think individuals get on in those photographs: that tiny victory we feel, knowing that neither one of us has walked away. We remain.

Our marriage is a place where we can each be completely, comfortably, often annoyingly ourselves. For us, it’s a strong certainty in this present reality where certainty appears hard to obtain.

I tell this to my daughters now: You don’t want to settle down with someone because you’re looking for a breadwinner, or a caregiver, or a parent for your children, or a salvage from your concerns.

The goal, instead, is to find someone who will accomplish the work with you, not for you, contributing on all fronts and in all ways.

At the point when someone wants to play only one role, declaring anything like “I make the money, so don’t anticipate that I should change diapers,” my advice is start running for the slopes.

Partnership doesn’t change what your identity is. Similarly as Barack hasn’t changed a lot of in the 33 years since we met, neither have I.

The change is in what’s between us, the million small adjustments, compromises, and sacrifices we’ve each made in request to accommodate the nearby presence of the other.

Whatever seed of mutual interest got planted in the second we met and started to talk, that’s the thing we have developed after some time into certainty.

That’s the ongoing miracle, the conversation still under way, the home in which we live.