Dear beta,

Before you decide to get married, you will meet many people. Some you will like. Some you will love – and still find, when you look closely, that they are not someone you could build a life with. That distinction is important, beta: liking, loving, and being right for marriage are three different things, and learning to tell them apart will save you years.

And then one day, if you choose carefully, you will find someone who becomes your emotional anchor – someone steady, mature, who respects you as a full person and is genuinely kind. Everything else I will write to you about marriage, in the letters that follow, only works if you have first chosen this person well. So this letter comes before all the others.

I know it is harder for your generation than it was for mine. Situationships, benching, open relationships, keeping people on the side, never quite saying what you mean – so many complicated ways to avoid simply being honest with another human being. In all that noise, finding the right person and knowing they are right is genuinely difficult. So let me give you three things to hold on to.

One – watch how they handle your emotions.

Does this person ever manipulate you? The signs are quiet. The sob stories about their family, their friends, their hard life – told not to share, but to make you feel responsible for them. The line you’re the only one who understands me, used not as love but as a leash. The slow shift from treating you as a partner to treating you as something they own, something to command. The moment you sense that, beta – that you are being handled rather than loved – walk away. Don’t argue, don’t fix it, don’t wait for it to improve. Just go.

Two – don’t waste your years on someone who won’t commit.

There will be people who are afraid of commitment and will never say so. They will keep you close enough to stay, but never close enough to count on. They give no clear signs because the absence of a sign is the answer. Your twenties and thirties are precious and they do not come back. Do not spend them waiting for someone to become brave. If after a fair while a person cannot tell you where this is going, they have already told you.

Three – notice how they answer the hard questions.

This is the truest test. The right person will listen to you. They will give you space and time. They will offer honest counsel instead of control, and they will treat you – and your family – with respect.

And when you talk to them about the life that comes after the wedding, watch carefully. The right person will not flinch from the difficult questions. They will sit with you and actually talk through marriage, children, moving cities, money, what happens to your parents as they grow old, your friends, their friends, and everything in between. And here is the thing to look for, beta: they will think about all of it as a single unit – not from their side, not from yours, but from ours. They will be ready to take a step back for your career when it matters – and you should be just as ready to do the same for them. Because that, in the end, is the whole secret. Marriage is two people learning to work as one unit, while still remaining fully themselves.

Maturity is the quiet thread running through all three. Not who is the most charming, the most successful, the most impressive in a room – but who is grown-up enough to be honest, to be kind on an ordinary day, to choose us over ego, again and again.

Find that person, beta. Take your time finding them. And once you do, the letters that follow will tell you how to walk through the rest of it together.

With all my heart,

Mumma