There seems to be a paradox in life where the harder you grasp, the more likely it will slip through your hands. We wish everything would be solid with a nice rubber grip. But relationships tend to be like sand, you can hold so much in the palm of your hand but when you close the fist it slips out betweens the fingers.
Or at least that’s how the literary trope goes. I’m not completely sure how often it is actually true, but it is certainly truthy.