Organic and messy..................

Relationships bring us everything from joy to sadness to angst - sometimes the same relationship on the same day can bring all those!  Give your relationships attention and they will be the better for it:  more joy, less haste;  more up times, fewer difficult times.  As organic, messy human beings we cannot predict the consistency of our relationships, nor should we try and control them.  We should simple do our best to care for them.

-Nicholas Bate,  as excerpted from here