My ideal creative space is a tranquil attic office with wide windows and plenty of natural light. Time stretches in front of me, my to-do list empty save for writing. There are snacks.

I settle for hunching over my laptop on my couch late at night, grumbling about the noisy upstairs neighbors, stress-eating cookies, and booting my partner from the living room because, oh my god, even seeing him absentmindedly tap his foot out of the corner of my eye is enough to drive me mad. He complies because he is kind and supportive and forgiving in ways I could never be myself and in ways I may never fully understand. It all makes me feel like kind of a jerk.

The divides in our relationship mirror the split in my work. For journalism, the issue is time: Rushing to the office, waking up for early-morning calls, poring over edits. Fiction squeezes into my meager spare time. For that, creative energy and space are key. It’s a dance between chaotic scheduling and necessary moments of quiet.

I remind myself to make room for our relationship, to even pencil it in on my calendar if I must. It is worthwhile because: love. But also, if you are as lucky as I am, your relationship does not drain your creative life but, rather, enables you to do “the thing.”

My partner is my first reader, the one I trust with breaking the seal. He is there in the aftermath of harsh critique groups, rejections from magazines, eviscerating rounds of edits. He does chores and gets take-out for dinner when I’m crazy busy. And I don’t know what I would do without him at the times when I finally look up from my laptop, drained and drawn, and really, really need a hug.

I asked him how he deals with it and he said he sees us as a team: My wins are our wins. (Though I suspect it also has to do with his super-human generosity and the fact that he is, baseline, a far better person than me.) But perhaps he feels this way because I take his gifts and, in turn, try to give him the best of my work, of my gratitude, of my trust. It’s not enough to repay him, but it’s what I know how to do—and he gets that.