This article is part of the series:
Advice from a Sister from Another Mother
A collection of honest reflections and practical lessons from a 30-something to her 20-something sisters—about love, self-worth, career, money, and navigating this wild thing called life. Written from the other side of the storm—because I might know a thing or two.
Nobody warns you about year three.
Year one, you're still high on the wedding serotonin. Year two, you're settling in, finding your rhythm, discovering that he has a very specific way of loading the dishwasher and apparently it's a hill he will die on. But year three? That's when the dopamine wears off completely and you're left looking at this person across the dinner table thinking: okay. So this is it. This is the whole show.
And here's what nobody tells you: that moment isn't a red flag.
It's actually the beginning.
I've been married for six years now. Six years sounds like a lot until you talk to couples who've been together for thirty, and then you realise you're basically still in kindergarten. But six years is enough to have survived a few storms—financial ones, professional ones, grief, a global pandemic, and a collective existential crisis or two. Enough to have some notes.
So here are mine. For the version of you who's either dreaming about marriage, scared of it, newly in it, or currently wondering if you made a terrible mistake because he forgot to tell you he doesn't ever want to throw things away.
(Spoiler: he probably didn't. He's just a hoarder. That's a different conversation.)
Love is a verb. But not the romantic kind.
Before marriage, "love" felt like a feeling—something that happened to you. It arrived with butterflies and playlists and the particular electricity of someone texting you back.
Ten years in, love mostly looks like: did you eat? Making sure the other person has taken their vitamins. Sending a voice note that's basically just you complaining about traffic so they know you're safe. Sending Reels on Instagram on how to do things. Quietly not mentioning the stupid thing they said last Friday because you've decided it doesn't matter in the grand scheme of things.
It's less butterfly, more scaffolding. Less fireworks, more showing up consistently when everything is fine and also when everything is not.
The verb form of love isn't grand. It's unglamorous. And it's the only kind that actually holds.
You will not always like each other. That's allowed.
This one took me a while to make peace with.
There will be weeks, sometimes longer.. where you look at this person and feel roughly zero romantic feelings. Where you're coexisting in the same space but the warmth is somewhere on the floor between the bedroom and the kitchen and nobody's bending down to pick it up yet.
This is normal. This is not a sign you married the wrong person.
"We're not in love all the time" is not a confession of failure. It's just honesty. Feeling annoyed, disconnected, or even a little bored is not the end. It's Tuesday. It will pass.
What actually matters is, do you choose each other anyway? On the days when the feeling is thin—do you still reach for them? Or do you turn away?
That answer matters more than any feeling.
Marriage will hold up a mirror. And sometimes the mirror is rude.
Nobody warned me that marriage would be the most efficient personal development program I never signed up for.
You think you're patient? Wait until you're both tired, hungry, and disagreeing about something completely inconsequential at 10pm. You think you're a good communicator? Try explaining why you're upset when you're not even sure yourself.
Your partner will see the parts of you that your friends never do. The irritable parts. The insecure parts. The parts that sulk. The parts that shrink. And the terrifying part? You can't curate what they see. You live with them. The performance ends at the door.
But here's the flip side, being truly seen, messy parts and all, and still chosen? That's something. That's actually everything.
The "small stuff" is the stuff.
Before marriage, I thought the big things would be the tests. And yes, those matter. But the daily texture of a marriage—who makes the coffee, who remembers to call the repairman, who checks in when the other one goes quiet—that's where you actually feel loved or unloved.
It's not about grand gestures.
It's about "I bought your favourite snack because I was passing by and I thought of you."
It's about knowing someone well enough to know what they need before they say it.
That knowledge doesn't come automatically. It's built, slowly, over years of paying attention.
You can love someone and still need to grow separately.
Marriage isn't a merger. It's a partnership between two people who are still, individually, figuring out who they are. And sometimes that means one of you is going through a season that the other one can't fully enter.
You're allowed to have your own grief. Your own ambition. Your own crisis at 2am that has nothing to do with him.
The goal isn't to become one entity. The goal is to stay curious about each other. Who are you now? Who are you becoming?
The couples that last aren't the ones who stopped growing. They're the ones who kept growing—and kept turning toward each other to share what they found.
And finally, (try to) choose your person over being right.
Not always. Not in the big things. But in the small, daily, ego-bruising moments where you could win the argument or you could keep the peace, learn to read the difference.
Some hills are worth dying on.
Most of them aren't.
A marriage is a very long conversation. The point isn't to win it.
I won't pretend I have this figured out. Six years in, I'm still learning. Still getting it wrong some weeks. Still negotiating, adjusting, choosing—again and again.
But I'd choose it again.
The verb, not just the feeling.
Nobody tells you this part because it's harder to romanticise than the proposal. But it's also where the real thing lives—quiet, unglamorous, and surprisingly good.
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