💍 update 2: i got married 🥰 and what a journey it’s been so far! it has been so so nice to spend the past (almost) year not thinking much about how to present my marriage online, and instead directly focus a lot more on my relationship with my husband. i think especially in the context of muslim marriages where couples only start living together *after* they’re married, it is already such a huge life transition to adjust to without being consumed by the optics or ‘aesthetic’ of it all. marriage is about waaay way more than much of what is shared online, and it’s only if you experience it that you begin to understand it for yourself. with all the ups and downs that early married life entails, all i can say is alhamdulillah for it all 🥺 i would write a little cutesy message here for my husband to read, but by now i know him well enough to know he would absolutely cringe at even the thought of me being so vocal and ask why i couldn’t just say it to him directly instead. and he’d be right to ask that. we already see enough of the world around us through screens and pixels without also sharing our innermost feelings about each other over the internet for the whole world to bear witness, when it can be another opportunity to build a little more connection face-to-face to the person who matters the most. what i will say is that despite the both of us being very different people, somehow it just works. we’ve been in silly disagreements where we’re both arguing for exactly the same thing, only from two opposite points of view. my weaknesses are his strengths, and vice versa. and i think it boils down to being similar enough to value for and care about the same things and doing life together knowing that you’re building something beautiful along the way, while giving each other the space to be unique and grow too. and on some level, maybe a part of being married is about exactly that. happy almost-first anniversary hubs 🥹💕