The day after writing the enthusiasm of uncertainty, I woke with the feeling that something was missing. It was too late, however, to add anything. I didn’t want to break my Saturday morning publication rhythm, established since creating this project; I didn’t want to write under pressure, as the previous essay had been written late Friday afternoon; I had to organize the family’s first meal of the day. While preparing breakfast for the offspring, what had perhaps been occupying my thoughts during sleep emerged: the relational dimension of uncertainty and its connection to enthusiasm was missing. I interrupted the morning duties to write a few paragraphs that would allow me to return to this current of thought later. Here are those and others that followed.

Uncertainty, which contains the unexpected, the unforeseen, is fundamental to the continuity of relationships. While the importance of predictability and security is undeniable, if in a relationship the future becomes predictable, if certainty installs itself in us—especially the us-with-the-other version—if it installs itself in the other, and if it installs itself in the relationship itself, the fire of curiosity has no conditions to continue.

As I explored in “The Curious Middle”, curiosity requires its own triangle of elements, just as fire requires heat, fuel, and oxygen. Curiosity serves as initial heat—the spark that transforms potential into actuality. Humility functions as fuel—without it, there’s nothing to burn, nothing to transform. Confidence acts as oxidizer—it allows vulnerability without destroying our sense of identity. In relationships, when any of these elements fails, curiosity extinguishes: without humility, we presume to know everything about the other; without confidence, the admission of ignorance becomes threatening; without the spark of curiosity, we’re left with only dead routine.

However, I don’t want to suggest that artificial insecurity is necessary for enthusiasm to remain. We must distinguish different types of security. There’s an ontological security that comes with healthy intimacy, established through the other’s presence—physical, symbolic, and affective. It’s the type of presence where silence signals comfort in intimacy, as I wrote before. This type of security is distinct from behavioral and logistical predictability, which translates into more than presumption—a certainty about what the other will do. When in this state, even if the other is unpredictable, the certainty inhabiting us might blind us to surprise, directing attention only to what we think we know.

Love—whether platonic, erotic, conjugal, or otherwise—also feeds on curiosity, on the vertigo of the unexpected, on surprise, on the enthusiasm that exists in the present because it’s nourished by an uncertain future that doesn’t represent a threat. In this state, the certainty that comes from the past allows us to live the uncertain future with more than security—with enthusiasm. It’s this enthusiasm fed by uncertainty that transforms continuity into a living choice, not a defunct inevitability.

And here we arrive at desire. Desire is a will—with evident intensity and an all-enveloping presence—to possess something: a thing, an experience, a feeling, someone. Desire contains a constant unknown: will we or won’t we get what we want? If desire is resolved often enough, whether through satisfaction or frustration, the unknown ceases to be. Then desire becomes banal, which is, by definition, uninteresting. There’s no interest in solving what’s already solved. Therefore, a banal desire ceases to be desire.

How then do we resolve the challenge that emerges when initial desire fades? How do we keep desire alive? I suspect curiosity plays a fundamental role. I remember, without recalling the source, reading or hearing someone say that a successful marriage depended on a kind of partial and selective amnesia. It implied forgetting some offenses, small or large, that our partner inflicts upon us. Similarly, I believe it’s also important that we forget the judgment that leads us to think we know everything about the other person. Or rather, that we don’t allow ourselves to be arrogant to that degree. This selective amnesia creates space for new experiences and explanations—it’s not erasing the past, but refusing to let it completely determine the future.

But there’s a distinction to make here: uncertainty about the end (will it end?) and uncertainty within continuity (how will it continue?). The first generates defensive anxiety; the second, when well inhabited, generates vitality. Continued curiosity will therefore be a way to maintain desire, making it evolve from initial to stable, though it may contemplate natural oscillations. Just as in a good conversation, whose outcome should remain unpredictable, a relationship must bear its uncertain end, feeding on yearning for contact and support, and transforming existential anxiety into creative energy.

But what if mature desire is that which manages to desire the known, the familiar? What if the true relational art is transforming the quotidian into the extraordinary through attention, not novelty? This might be a productive paradox, since particular attention allows novelty. Seeing, being, and existing attentively opens the possibility of seeing new things, new angles, new details—especially when it concerns a person, always changing, like all others. It’s like when we force ourselves to observe a work of art longer than we’d like. Moving away from or coexisting with boredom, removing the obstacle of presuming we already know everything, novelty appears.

I suspect the true relational uncertainty isn’t just about the other, but about ourselves in the presence of the other. The person we become in a relationship—not through consumption of relational experiences, but through genuine mutual discovery—is an important source of surprise. In this sense, the ordinary mystery of shared everyday life contains more depth than a thousand artificial adventures. Thus, uncertainty isn’t something to overcome, but the very source of relational vitality.