As we pass through the crisis of adulthood, we become experts in our own lives in a way that was not possible to us as children. This is one of the benefits that we receive in exchange for the loss of the kind of magic that informs childhood. Another one of the rewards is that as we come to a more accurate and more complete understanding of the way in which the world works and so our own place in it, we are capable of entering into and sustaining intimate relationships in a way that was also not available to us as children.