One of my more frequent recurring dreams is about a house. It is spacious, with whole wings waiting to be explored. There are balconies, lofts, nooks for children needing a fort, and bay windows. Which are clean BTW.

In fact the signature quality is that the house is in splendid condition. Then I wake up. 

The home John and I live in now is the first one we have ever owned, except for a Floridian bungalow we held the mortgage for for about ten minutes. While we bought it with almost no attention to needed repairs, we have made up for that in the fourteen years since. There are always areas in want of an upgrade. The windows needed replacing, at least if we wanted to stop heating the neighborhood, the walls begged for fresh paint, the toilets leaked. Each season we take on a few jobs, and coast on the ones already done. Every day I smile at the newly sanded floors. 

In our twenties we chatted with friends about our preschoolers. In our thirties we blabbed about teenagers. In our fifties we compare plumbers.

Owning a home means dealing with repairs. But doing so does not mean you made a mistake at closing. 

John Gottman is a big fan of relationship repairs. He wrote several books about the science of marriage and he cares not whether you sputter, disagree, or spat. He just keeps track of your repair tactics. Here is a list of ideas I wrote from a few years ago. Astonishingly, they are still necessary.