10 Years of Love

9.7.26

For our 10-year anniversary as a couple, I wanted to take some time to reflect on 10 lessons that love has taught me—and to share what I’ve learned along the way.

I’m writing these for two reasons: first, as a love letter to my husband, honoring the life and love we’ve built together; and second, in the hope that something I’ve learned might offer a little more love, wisdom, or perspective to someone else.

Ten years of loving someone is a long time—and also, somehow, just the beginning. These are 10 things I’ve come to understand about love, partnership, growth, and what it means to choose each other again and again.

1. Long-term love is not only possible, it is fulfilling.

There is something so wonderful about growing with a person for a long period of time. Given our ages, we have been together for 1/3 of our lives already. To witness a person grow through their fears, perceived limits, and become so much more authentically themselves is a blessing and privilege. To me, I witness each person as an infinite Soul. There is an infinity to each person that I cannot fully understand. But to be able to spend a lifetime with a person, I get to really lean in and witness so much. This is deeply exciting to me.

2. I once read, “To be with someone is to attend a hundred birthday parties of who they are becoming.”

I might even say, we attend infinite birthdays of their becoming.

In the early days (and realistically, years) of our romantic relationship, I chased certainty + control (naturally, I would have never called it control). “If I just know exactly who he is and who he is becoming, then everything will be perfect. Because I know who I am, and I know who I will be.”

This sentiment has not worked out for me.

At the end of the day, it veers more childish than discerning. People change. Circumstances change. Everything we grieve, it shifts us. And actually, that is not only realistic, it is beautiful.

We must get to know someone’s deeper Soul, rather than trying to cling onto surface-level goals and interests. We have to understand that they will try out new philosophies of life, jobs, ideas, jobs. And realistically, so will we. Otherwise, we will stay stagnant, and that is not something I am interested in.

There is no true and lasting love that can grow in an environment of certainty and control.

What’s more, it is so inspiring to see that we don’t have to be the same person in order to stay together. Even just in 10 years, both of us have changed our minds and our hearts about so many things, had different philosophies, different wants and wishes, different boundaries with others. And yet, we have both grown together.

Because we are able to, and want to, truly understand the other person without controlling them.

To actually want to see each other grow is a beautiful thing. And to know that through all of it, we continually fall deeper in love.

Because you can only grow deeper in love if you actually grow deeper individually.

3. Both partners must, as a baseline, deeply care, respect, and have curiosity for themselves, each other, and growth.

This is a necessary place to begin when it comes to someone who you want to share your life with. There is much research that has found that your life partner deeply impacts your health. This is also the one immediate relationship we actually get to choose.

The privilege of free will and choice are heavy ones, but also can be used to grow deeply.

4. You have to have your own sense of self, interests, activities, hobbies. And they must too.

Otherwise, you are no longer people, you’re an enmeshed glob.

It is so fun to bring up and have fulfilling discussions about what you have been researching, playing with, and just share. This is not possible if you are not two separate people.

Your sense of self also needs to be strong, otherwise you will end up losing yourself, and becoming a shell of who you used to be.

5. Patience is a virtue.

You will never lose anything from developing patience, and you will most definitely gain from it.

We will all have hard days, and even seasons of life. To have a successful marriage, you must be disciplined about being patient.

To me, I’ve realized a lot of patience comes from humility. To look in the mirror, and notice that you yourself are not perfect—in fact, you can be annoying. This often gives us a bit of empathy when we look at our partner in their hard days.

A definition of patience I tend to like is also, “Patience is your attitude as you wait.”

We choose who we are every single day. Do you want to be an impatient partner, or a patient one?

Patience also innately requires regulation. The ability to check in with yourself, calm down, and re-orient.

6. Re-orient often.

Check in. How are things? Are you both feeling fulfilled? Are there words left unsaid?

I have seen the impact of allowing resentment to build up and not having conversations when needed. In the middle few years of our relationship, we let this happen. The results were painful.

It took going to couples therapy (quite the financial investment), and both being very courageous and talking about all the things we had let build up between us. Choosing to see each other’s perspective and not just believing, “Well, I’m right because I got hurt,” and not simply villainizing each other.

From then on, we were able to see ourselves, and ultimately each other, in a far more honest light.

Honesty, truth, and reflection are deeply important to any long-term relationship.

In my culture, when a couple gets engaged, we set a table full of symbolic items that bless the couple. I could do a whole post on that, but for now, I want to focus on the Mirror.

The mirror on the table represents exactly this—to look and see our vices, faults, and shortcomings. When both people do this, they have the humility and work ethic to be a better partner to each other.

7. Be giving, and stop keeping score.

This one follows from the previous point, but love is not an obligation, it is an active choice.

I have learned that what we notice, grows.

Love and life are also not always 50/50. There will definitely be times where one partner carries the other (emotionally, financially, physically), and a long-term relationship only works if we believe in the forever aspect of it.

Otherwise, it is a business transaction more than a human-human connection.

Along with this point, I will add that being a defensive person will never make you a good partner. Be open, loving, kind, and boundaried. This will innately lead to good results.

8. Controversial perhaps, but crucial to my relationship has been Spirituality.

To remember that there is a whole mysterious world out there. I personally believe in God (defined on my own terms and not by any religious dogma), and I believe in divine forces out there. I believe there were prophets and saints whose stories we can learn from.

I feel deeply spiritual in nature when I see a butterfly, when I realize how long the trees have lived here. How flowers have souls. How my grandparents’ prayers still protect me.

I think, to me, this perspective reminds me that the world is 2 days. In Persian, that sounds a lot more poetic: “Donya Do Rooz Eh.”

We are not here for a long time, and nothing is guaranteed to us. We were never guaranteed that life would be easy or fair. We were never guaranteed anything but the fact that the human condition is fatal.

We will all die.

We will all have our own hardships too.

Do we want to spend our time being victims to our circumstances, and being a miserable person to be around? Or do we want to be in love, actively?

Love is a verb and not a noun.

Be grateful for absolutely everything.

To me, in the hardest days, this helps me not be so egotistical and ruminate constantly + be perfectionistic + critical about my relationship + life.

To me, the first relationship I have is with God, the second with myself, and the third with my husband. Everyone else, who I also care about and love, comes next.

You get to create whatever spirituality and “orderings” you like for yourself.

9. Good men actually do exist.

If you told me this in the past, I’d moan and groan and get pissed off (I wonder why my relationship was not working LOL).

But truly, there are good men, good women, good genderfluid (+) people. And there are also bad men, bad women, and bad genderfluid (+) people.

When we start to make ourselves better than a whole group of people, whether through gender, race, status, it just leads to bad results.

Also, don’t even get me started on just a black-and-white “good” and “bad.”

I think that in my generation, we have gotten very comfy with saying things like “all men are trash, all men only act on impulse, all men are (insert derogatory word here).”

And tbh, if you are a Lesbian (or anyone who does not intend to date men), sure, I can see it. Go for it and have these mindsets if you so choose.

But if you are at all trying to date a man, or marry one, then this mindset will absolutely hinder you in your relationships.

Your perceptions are very powerful. They also create limiting beliefs.

Perhaps it’s twofold: you both have to believe in better men to attract them (you have to have standards + hold them steadfastly + not take shitty behavior, which will then be a self-fulfilling prophecy), but also, you will bring out a better side in a person by seeing them as their entire human Soul in all of their goodness.

10. I am so blessed and lucky to have grown with my husband :).

I have become a more discerning, caring, and loving person through this relationship.

I am grateful to every challenge for helping me grow, and I am grateful to every blessing and joy as well.

My hope and prayer is to have many, many, many more decades of growth and love in this relationship. <3

Tara

Photo From My Husband & I's Wedding :)