On the other side of commitment
11 years ago, after a day of high school classes, a scrawny Pakistani boy held my hand for the first time and asked me to be his girlfriend. Now, we’re celebrating 11 years of togetherness and almost 3 years of marriage.
The Myth of Better Options
When you’ve only ever dated one person, you might start to wonder “What else is out there? Am I too young to commit?” Earlier on, I definitely fell prey to this illusion that the grass might be greener on the other side, that someone else out there could be an even better fit for me. There might be someone else out there who is hotter, smarter, richer, more successful, more empathetic, more, more, more.
What I failed to understand was that a person isn’t a collection of upgradeable parts. I realized I was thinking about changing individual components of a human being. I can’t trade in a single part of a person for a better piece; it would mean trading the whole person for a completely new one. For better, for worse, when you commit, you commit to the whole person.
Road to Commitment
I don’t have a love at first sight story. I can’t claim that from the moment I laid eyes on him outside of 4th period pre-calc, I knew that he was The One.
I often joke that the first 4 years of our relationship don’t count because our Real Adult relationship didn’t start until we graduated college. And in many ways, that’s true. Neither of us had truly experienced life’s hardships under the shelter and structure of high school and college. Neither of us really knew what we valued in ourselves, let alone a partner.
But from 21-25, I got to see some of our decisions start to compound and pay off. I moved from consulting to big tech, started working out more consistently, invested in my financial independence, and my sister and I paid off my parents’ home. We both got to see the results of each other’s actions and decide if we wanted to commit.
At 25 years old, and 8 years into our relationship, we seriously talked about marriage – we’d casually talked about it often, but never to the point of “if this isn’t heading towards marriage, we need to break up.”
Looking back, I couldn’t have made this commitment any earlier. We needed that time to see some evidence about who we each were. Then, once we decided to commit, we got married in 3 months.
Compounding
I obviously talk about compounding a lot, but nowhere is its impact more evident than in my marriage. I have woken up and consistently practiced loving this man for 4,018 days and counting.
However, that also means that no one has angered me more, disappointed me more, and argued with me more than my husband. Yet, with each conflict and resolution, we recommit to each other and get better at resolving them.
Freedom in Commitment
No decision has had more impact in my life than my commitment to my husband. And, paradoxically, no decision has given me more freedom.
Mainly, I’ve experienced freedom from optionality. I don’t need to agonize over finding or choosing my person. I don’t need to worry if my husband is going to be there for me.
The load-bearing strength of our relationship has given me the foundation to pursue instability elsewhere in life. I’ve been able to job hop, write, move to London, dance, quit my job, move to NY. Our stability lets us take risks in all the other aspects of our lives.
Even now, as we’re both deep in work sprints with barely time for each other or ourselves, we hold.
Reinvention
I often encounter people telling me how boring it must be to be with the same person every day for the rest of your life – I agree.
But, I’m not the same person I was yesterday, and I’m not married to the same person I was married to yesterday.
2017 Tasneem and 2024 Tasneem are incomparable. My husband has made me more ambitious, helped me learn how to communicate better, held me accountable for silly behaviors, and most importantly, loved each version of me along the way.
Looking forward
In 11 years, we’ve grown from awkward high schoolers to married adults building a life together. I’m not arrogant enough to claim we’ll definitely be together for the next 11 years, but I hope to be. I hope to keep growing in parallel. We’re both deep in building meaningful work for ourselves, and the next big thing might be starting a family. But for now, I’m grateful to have experienced this love for the entirety of our adult lives.