I think the most important quality in compatibility for living arrangements is companionship. Time spent sharing your day; quiet times just sitting on the patio or deck; fun events together like potlucks or Disneyland or movies or camping. Companionship is what binds us into a family, a tribe, a community.

Another word for it is love, but the word "love" drags along with it all the baggage of medieval romantic love, repressive Victorian love, conflicted 21st century love. I prefer to call it companionship, time spent together by choice: comfortable, fun, stimulating.

Companionship is what has been missing for me. For 18 years I had dogs for company, ameliorating the bleakness of the human relationship. A dog gives you unconditional love, a great sense of joy and in-the-moment participation. It was fairly easy to ignore the fact that my human partner was rigid, humorless, controlling, manipulative (narcissist). A blight on the landscape.

When Jasmine died, it became frightfully obvious how barren the human relationship had always been. The reason I had stayed so long was my fault, of course, since I was an enabler (now recovering). So easy to have 20/20 hindsight. And now N's too sick and old to abandon.

I loved my dogs and I miss them terribly. But right now I endure 15 hour days, working and then visiting N in the hospital afterward. I couldn't subject a dog (or dogs) to that kind of schedule, especially during the initial bonding period.

Jasmine would have understood; she would have known I was coming home eventually and would have spent her day napping and watching the squirrels being chased by the cats. A new dog would just be disoriented, frightened and feel abandoned.

So I will wait for retirement to adopt a dog for companionship. I don't think I'll ever trust a person that much again, to invite him/her into my life.